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Eurodressage FOCUS
Making Dressage a Family Affaire
January 10, 2008
Dressage is known to be a solitary sport with one
rider at the epicenter and a team of supporters behind
the horse and rider combination. The typical sight
at shows are the daughter or son riding the horse with
the parents helping as grooms, rooting for their
child in their role of emotional and financial
supporters.
But dressage can also be a family affaire and the
Davis family proves this. They
united themselves as a family by taking on dressage
as their hobby. Many times a week, father Michael Davis
drove his leading
ladies, 10-year
old daughter
BeBe
and wife Sara, to Cesar Parra's
Performance Farm in Jupiter, FL, for lessons and training,
but
he was
unable
to
convince
Sara or
Bebe to join him on family outings
near the river or at sea to share in his own passion
for fishing. That was a decisive moment for him to
change the organization of his leisure time.
Michael decided he could bring his family together
by learning to ride himself. He made a deal
with Cesar to secretly take
lessons at Performance Farm on days that Sara and BeBe
were
not riding. Michael bought himself the steady schoolmaster
Haschar and as a Christmas present he surprised his
wife and daughter by mounting his own horse and riding
it
in the indoor school in front of their eyes and shocked
composure.
 The
Davis family is now united in their hobby at
Performance Farm in the winter and at Rita Brown's
equestrian centre in Massachussetts during the summer.
BeBe rides her recently imported Dutch
FEI dressage pony Bobo, wife Sara saddles Dancing
Queen and Michael trains Haschar in private lessons.
"It is great to see an entire family having fun
with horses. They not only share their passion for
horses,
but in the limited amount of spare time Michael has,
he gets to see his family having fun doing sports,"
Olympic dressage rider Parra explained. "As their
trainer, it gives me a great feeling of pleasure of
joy."
Originally trained as
a dentist, Dr. Parra has instead devoted his life to
the pursuit of perfection in the
saddle. Splitting his time between
New Jersey and Florida, Dr. Parra has
a thriving business of horses in training as well
as a loyal following
of young riders and amateurs. Cesar is one of only four
dressage trainers residing in the United States to
be recognized
by the
exclusive International Dressage Trainer's Club. Performance
Farm was founded in 1999. Parra
and his
team provide full-service training
based on the Classical German Training Methods. This
entails a tailored program for the
horse and rider, and a team which communicates with
the owner and service providers to optimize the health
of the horse.
Related Links
Official
Website Performance Farm
A Walk on the Premises of Dr. Cesar Parra
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