If you want to make Jessica Wisdom do something, just tell her she can’t. Three instructors early in her career told her that she would never develop the feel riding required and told her she should just quit. That just propelled her to do the opposite. She worked harder and took lessons from trainers who helped her develop that feel.

Someone told Jessica that she wasn’t the dancing type so she didn’t just take a few classes—she learned many different styles, became competitive and blended skills she attained from dancing into her riding.

People doubtlessly questioned her sanity when she first took on a pony, North Forks Brenin Cardi, as her dressage mount. Now Cardi’s name is known throughout the Northwest as he racks up wins at every level. Others doubted Jessica could make a living riding horses and giving lessons and now it is plain to see she is thriving at both. Her intense determination and willingness to take up a challenge is woven throughout her story.

“Everybody says you are such a natural and that is so not true,” Jessica said. “I am the product of blood, sweat and tears the whole way. It wasn’t something that came naturally. I was very good at staying on, beyond that not so much.”

In her beginning years as a rider, Jessica needed that staying on, stick-to-it skill. At times it meant survival.

The Early Days

Jessica was adopted as a baby. Her adopted father was in the military and she moved every couple of years with her parents and sister. They lived in Virginia, Maryland, Japan, Hong Kong, throughout California and in Washington. She admits she has never been a very social person and said moving so often did not affect her very much. Though maybe she didn’t make a lot of human friends, she brought her first horses with her wherever she went. Her “My Little Pony” and “Breyer” horse collections remain with her to this day.

Real horses came into her life when she was 11. “My parents hate horses,” she said. “They really didn’t want me to do horses. They tried to talk me out of it, but I was stubborn.” She took it upon herself and begged the people at a California military base stable to let her scoop out stalls in exchange for being able to ride the ponies. “They (the ponies) usually tried to kill you—but that is okay it was a learning experience.”

When she was 12 she got the proverbial inappropriate first horse. You know the kind—crazy and wild. The kind you are convinced will put a lifetime of fear into the poor kid. To even get Cocoa, a Thoroughbred-Appy cross, in the trailer, the former owners used the aid of a tractor. But Jessica wasn’t scared of Cocoa. She did everything with the horse: from teaching him to lay down, kneel and bow, to pulling a sled around with bailing twine attached to a breast collar, to riding him saddless and bridleless. “If you could think of ways to get killed, I thought of everything,” she said.

Together, they did barrel racing, three day eventing and any other kind of riding Jessica could dream up. She said Cocoa was good at going fast during cross country but she usually jumped the jumps without him. All her time invested in Cocoa paid off and people started to notice. When Jessica realized Cocoa wasn’t going to make the Olympic team any time soon, she decided to sell him.

She was never short on horses though. A lady with a quarter horse mare wanted Jessica’s help with groundwork. She said her horse was dangerous to ride. Jessica did all the groundwork, but that wasn’t enough.

“I told her that I really thought I could ride this horse,” she said. “The owner said that the horse put three really serious trainers in the hospital and that she didn’t want me to ride the horse. So I begged and pestered and begged and pestered and finally she said if my parents signed a waiver I could ride her.” Noticing a theme here?

The horse bucked when you put the saddle on—so Jessica decided to ride the dangerous mare bareback. Luckily Jessica was right in her assessment and the mare did fantastic without the saddle. She ended up buying the mare with her stall cleaning savings for $1,000. Six months later Jessica was showing her with a saddle and was ready to sell her. The original owner bought her horse back for $4,900 recognizing all the work Jessica put into her. Before Jessica finished high school she was already training and selling horses.

Even with her horse training career budding, Jessica was able to also flourish in school. She started college before she was done with high school, did exceptional on her SATs and got accepted into the prestigious Naval Academy. She wanted to be a pilot.

“The Naval Academy was a means to an end,” she said. “It sounded fun. It was a way to travel and support the horses.” She never got to go to the Naval Academy’s though, because shortly after she got accepted she had a bad fall off a horse and got knocked out. With such a fall on her medical records she couldn’t go into the flight program. “That was kind of the higher power saying you are going to do horses for a living,” she said. Since then horses have not only been Jessica’s living, they have been her life.

At 20, Jessica got married to an enlisted man and they moved to Europe. Though her marriage was short lived, she got to experience the horse racing industry in England by living it. Jessica exercised the horses, helped at a sale barn and worked for a breeder during her year there. When her marriage ended she wanted to come home and worked for a short time in California.

At 22 she moved to Washington, where she said she met her first real trainers who had the most impact on her riding and teaching. Apprenticing first under Val Siverton, Jessica learned T-Touch (Linda Tellington Jones) methods, ground driving, and starting horses in a relaxed, correct way. “She teaches them (horses) how to use their body in a good way.” She lived on nothing and dreamed of someday having four horses in training and teaching four lessons a day.

“That was going to be my big goal,” she laughed. “Like I could really survive if I had that many horses. What did I know?!” Now she has 22 horses in training and teaches around six lessons a day, in addition to a busy clinic schedule that takes her around the country.

Though Val was wonderful at teaching Jessica horsemanship and she learned to deal with some rough problem horses, she was lacking classical dressage training. “I started showing these horses and I was getting slaughtered,” she said.

That is when Dr. Susan Connors came in. “She taught me a way to use my body to access the horse’s body and get a connection to their mind.” Jessica said prior to Dr. Connors she didn’t have a lot of tact with horses or people.

“If I couldn’t find my way around a problem, I was pretty happy to bulldoze through them—which is great if you have a horse that can work with a tactic like that. I was great with a horse that needed a kick, terrible on a horse that needed a little empathy.”

Those same skills she learned from the sensitive horses helped her become more sensitive and tactful with her students. “You have to learn how to interact with different personality types,” she said. Horses taught her to be a more empathetic person with other people. Now she asks herself, “Does this person just need me to sit here and listen, or does this person need me to offer them advice or do they need me to tell them what to do and help them do it by pushing…hard?”

If Siverton gave Jessica a way to deal with babies and problem horses and Dr. Connor gave her sensitivity and tact, then Jeremy Steinberg gave her riding brilliance. Her previous trainers did not compete—so she needed someone on the ground who knew what judges were looking for and Jeremy was that instructor. “He really got me winning in the ring,” she said. “My horses were always very relaxed and accurate—but they lacked the sparkle that you need to be successful.” Jessica said that Jeremy brings out the brilliance in everything.

Now, in addition to training with Jeremy, she takes regular lessons from Christian Garweg. She said Christian is great at getting to the root of a problem. Talking to Jessica, it was clear she also possesses that talent. She is great at problem-solving.

Somewhere along the way, Jessica started getting the opportunity to start riding horses with more potential. “Everybody starts out with everyday horses and then as you get successful with an everyday horse or two and you are consistent and you have a good business and personal ethic, it pays off.” Her reputation for dealing with problem horses got her noticed and more breeders started sending their young horses to her for training.

Working with youngsters, earned her recognition for her talent doing the in-hand showing. The next logical step was for her to be able to ride some of the babies she showed in hand. “I had access to all these awesome young stock and people knew me and they knew that their horse knew me,” she said. Usually, new trainers don’t get to keep the good horses and they get sold. Finally, Jessica did get to keep a good one. Cardi the wonder pony was a young stallion she showed first in hand and later started him under saddle. Jessica shares her ownership of Cardi with the woman who bred him, Cindy Miller of Winterlake Welsh.

“Cindy and I still joke that I made three trips to Europe looking for a stallion prospect for myself and I bought a pony from Oregon,” she said. Having worked Cardi up the levels with wins at each stop, Jessica plans to show Cardi Intermediare 1 this year. (See Sidebar for more on Cardi). The pony’s success is her proudest accomplishment since she trained him from the start.

Her biggest goal is “to prove that you can get to Grand Prix and still have a happy, healthy equine partner for the trip. I have such amazing horses to ride—they’ll decide their path and I’ll just be along for the ride.”

Between in hand shows, dressage shows where she is riding and shows where she helps her students, Jessica is completely booked every weekend in the summer. During the winter months her weekends are taken up with clinics in Southwest Washington, Spokane, Minnesota, and New York. With 12 hour days during the week, she has little time for a social life, pets (aside from a very self-sufficient cat) or other interests.

She said it is her fear of failure and intense personality that pushes her harder. Even so, Jessica is surprised by her own success. “Now I have twice as much work as I can handle,” she said. “You bust your tail long enough and something is going to go right. And it has. The right people see you working hard and having some integrity and that can open more doors than just raw talent.”

When Jessica is giving a lesson, she is literally riding the horse with her student from the ground. With her headset on, she misses nothing and gives her undivided attention to the rider. The result is striking. The rapport she has with her students and their excitement with their own progress is evident. Jessica’s ability as an instructor has come from her bottomless determination, hard work and the empathy horses taught her.

“Because it was hard for me I think that makes me a better teacher,” Jessica said. “Lots of the best riders in the world are horrid teachers because it is so easy for them because they have no idea how they do it. I know exactly how I did it, because I had to do it a million times wrong before I got it right. So now I can explain that in a 100 different ways, because that’s how many times I had to do it and how many different ways I had to explain it to myself before I finally got it. I think that’s what makes me a good trainer and a good teacher—because it is not always easy for me. That let’s me identify with other people who have to struggle.”

Click here to read about Jessica's proudest accomplishments.