E-Mail This Page

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Collecting Gaits Farm/USEF Dressage Festival of Champions

Jodie Kelly and Lora Kay Witterstaeter: Teacher and Student Share Gladstone Experience
By Lynndee Kemmet for Dressagedaily.com

Lora Kay Witterstaeter Learns to Love Dressage

But Witterstaeter admits she’s beginning to like dressage more and more. “The dressage flat work also helps with my jumping a lot. But I’m starting to like the dressage a little bit better. Since I got into the juniors and am doing more challenging things, it’s more of an accomplishment and so now it’s more interesting.”

The young rider is also honest enough to admit that she’s a tad lazy and that may be why she didn’t take to dressage as quickly as jumping. “I have a younger horse that’s really bratty and she doesn’t like to do dressage because it’s harder and I’d agree and think, ‘ugh, too much work.’ So, we’d go off and jump and that was easier for us.” Witterstaeter is a good student who mostly gets “As and Bs,” but said she could do better. “My mom would like me to do better, but I’m a little lazy.”

The young rider also has a bit of a disability, but one would never know it. She has a hearing disability and as a result, often can’t hear the bell or whistle to enter the ring during competition. “I’m always looking around. We have people all around the ring and when it rings, they tell me. Otherwise, I don’t hear it and just wander around.”

Witterstaeter jokingly said that at clinics, clinicians are advised to “just yell at me, because I can’t hear. With teachers, a lot of times I don’t hear them and they say, ‘she’s ignoring me,’ which is not true. I just don’t hear them.”

But the disability doesn’t bother Witterstaeter and it doesn’t bother Kelly. Both “are used to it.” And Witterstaeter said that thus far, she’s never missed her entry in competition. “Usually somebody starts yelling at me fast enough and I get in there.”

Related Links- Find More Related Links Using our Google Search Feature
On the Scene at the Collecting Gaits Farm/USEF Dressage Festival of Champions
Jodie Stevens Kelly and Her Former Buckeroo Take Blue in Intermediaire II