About the teaching
The HUMAN Staff
Our teaching is supported by wonderful school horses.
John-John and Sofía are brilliant, talented, cherished and well-cared-for instructors. Want to learn about them? Scroll down past the primates and you’ll find the equine staff.
Mary Anne Campbell
Mary Anne is our school director, senior teacher and primary trainer. Credentialed by the Foundation for the Equestrian Arts as an instructor in classical dressage, Mary Anne has an international following and regularly teaches dressage in Europe. Mary Anne has the deep, old knowledge based in the literature of thousands of years of equitation, and decades of riding and teaching experience to bring that home to you.
Kathy and Mary Anne working with Kathy’s horse, Trinket
Mary Anne’s work is guided by the unique mentality of the student she’s mentoring. If you’re a ‘top down’ learner, you’ll find the theoretical basis on which to build your riding. At the same time, she’ll help your brain begin to integrate with your body more and more effectively.
If you’re a kinesthetic, or a heart-felt learner, you’ll be working in a movement, or a connection based series of lessons as Mary Anne will slowly help your mind begin to make sense of the interaction.
Enjoying people as much as she does horses, Mary Anne meets you where you are and helps you develop into the best rider you can be.
Mary Anne, training session on Trinket- Piaffe
Kat Campbell
Office support and administration
Kat, Mary Anne’s daughter, grew up on the farm. She and her family now live in Portland, Oregon but by the magic of the internet she’s able to keep supporting Blue River with her administrative skills.
Lauren Whittaker
Assistant Teacher and Trainer.
Like many kids in her generation, Lauren first became interested in riding thanks to Spirit-Stallion of the Cimarron and has been hooked ever since. She has now been riding for about 12 years. She began as a Western rider and about six years ago discovered she has also enjoyed English riding as well. She worked for two years at Equine Rescue in California, where she rehabilitated horses, including her own horse, Leo.
At the rescue she also took part in the summer camp program as a camp counselor. She is fantastic with kids and loves watching them learn and have fun with the horses. Lauren is well versed in classical dressage and she has also dabbled in Roping, Cutting, H/J, Eventing, Mounted Archery, Trails, and different horse shows. Lauren is a powerhouse of a young woman. She is deeply sweet and intelligent. We are so glad to have her as a member of the team.
The community here
Blue River Farm, like French Classical Riding, is all about connection. We have amazing riders here, some have ridden at this farm for twenty years and more. There are horses that started here as youngsters who are now in their twenties. And all of the people, and all of their horses, are well worth getting to know.
It’s fun to be here. And we LIKE it that way!
Learn More.
The Equine Staff
John-John
John-John's cool. He's an arabian/saddlebred (American Showhorse) gelding who spent his formative years being a halter stallion.
John-John is stunning, and he’s definitely got ADHD. But along with his love of repetitive patterns in EVERYTHING he's got a great sense of humor and he’s smart and engaging. And he's also a fantastic horse for seatwork: steady at the trot, and he's got an easy trot to sit as well. We adore John-John even though, having been a stallion through his early years, he is committed to nipping as a polite form of conversation. He’s a little baffled at our bad manners that we don’t appreciate it! We have ways to make that less of a worry for his riders! So mostly he just bites the end of a whip and wonders if it’s time to trot yet.
He likes trotting.
Sofía
Generously donated to the riding school by one of our boarders, Sofía is a 15.2 hand Lipizzaner mare. She’s full of drama and charisma and she can do all the upper level work. She’s beautiful in hand as well as under saddle.
Sofía will teach you the aids for piaffe and passage, for shoulder in and half-pass, and how to scratch exactly the one place on her neck that makes her nose go all wobbly like…. that.