Horsepower Horsemanship 

            Tanya King was born in Connecticut in 1988 where she was immediately introduced into the horse world. Her mother rode pregnant up until she couldn’t get on the horses anymore. A week after Tanya was born she was brought to the farm. This farm was in Southbury Connecticut and was a Thoroughbred racing farm. Tanya was riding her mother’s Thoroughbred that was blind in one eye by herself since she was two years old. "Amy" was Tanya’s babysitter, or at least that’s what Amy thought.

 

            When Tanya was 5 she got her first pony named Gray. Tanya had been involved in the Connecticut Gymkhana Association since she was little.  Throughout Tanya’s years in the CGA she won many awards, ribbons and paybacks on many different horses.

 

            Tanya grew up learning to ride with her mother and her Aunt Donna. She started to learn how to train horses at a very young age. Every summer was spent with Donna. Every Thursday they would go to the horse auction in Massachusetts. Sometimes they would bring horses home and sometimes they wouldn’t. This helped Tanya learn how to read horses because she did not know anything about these horses when they were brought home, including the reason they might have wound up at the auction to begin with. Tanya learned how to look for a good horse and how to tell if an animal was lame. Any time the vet was out looking at horses, Tanya would ask the vet questions and soak it up like a sponge.

 

            As Tanya got older her interests changed and she switched from Barrel Racing and Gymkhana to dressage in 2009 in an effort to help her Arabian and herself excel. She learned so much from her friend and mentor (Grand Prix Dressage rider) Pat. Tanya’s life changed when she started to understand the basics of classical dressage.

 

            Ever since Tanya was little she jumped and did hunter paces and small schooling shows but it wasn’t until moving to Kansas that she decided to get serious about english showing. After falling in love with Kansas on a visit in June of 2017, Tanya decided to move. Tanya broke her back on October 31st 2017 due to a horse related accident.  That did not stop her from following her dreams and continuing to ride and show.

 

            Tanya’s training and teaching style revolves around the relationship of the horse and the rider. She has an extensive history of helping “problem” horses and non-confident riders. Tanya does not consider herself a traditional Natural Horsemanship trainer because she does not have a cookie cutter approach to every horse. She takes what she has learned through various Natural Horsemanship, dressage and jumping trainers and continues to learn and applies it to the situation at hand. She has studied under multiple Natural Horsemanship trainers and has learned how to read horses and their behaviors. She believes in saddle fit and Chiropractic and that most “problems” stem from pain or fear. 

           

      Tanya likes to teach the rider/owner how to train their own horse.  She believes that every time you handle a horse you are training it and she wants her clients to learn as much as possible to keep the horses training and manners up on their own.  Tanya has extensive experience with issues such as, loading, barn sour, fear of water, dangerous ground manners, worming, bridling and head shy horses.

 

      Tanya’s current horse, Paxton, was a very high dollar yearling that was destined to be a western pleasure horse. He did not appreciate the way his new trainers were treating him and he became dangerous. He was sold to Tanya cheap in hopes that she can help him. After some extensive saddle fitting and chiropractic work he was able to restart his training as an eventer and jumper. Four years later, he is now her eventing, dressage, and jumper mount and also does lessons for adults and kids as young as two years old.