As Sara Strauss deftly untacks the mare she has just finished schooling in dressage, a gaited Paso Fino named Panda is waiting nearby for her to work with next.
When she is finished with Panda, the young trainer – fit from her hours spent riding and working at the farm – could wind up in the barn devoting an hour to teaching a horse to pick up its feet for cleaning for the first time, or she could be called out to help pick up a horse left to starve in what the local authorities have identified as a severe neglect case.
It’s a training schedule unlike that of discipline-specific trainers focused on helping horses and riders achieve their competition goals. That’s because unlike most hunter/jumper, dressage, eventing, or western trainers, Sara doesn’t focus on a specific discipline. She never gets to choose her clientele or turn away horses that might not be the right fit, and before her horses can achieve competition goals, she first has to help save their lives.
For more than a decade, Sara has been the head trainer at Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Woodbine, Maryland, where she has given hundreds of horses a new lease on life.
Continue reading in the November 2019 issue of Sidelines Magazine here!