After over twenty years away, professional reining horse breeder and trainer Manuelle Perrier moves back to the Pontiac.
Manuelle Perrier’s life has always involved a passion for horses. Her family were always involved in the horse industry, her father having Belgian horses and her mom had an affinity for quarter horses. She moved away from the Pontiac in 2000, staying in Beauce, Quebec to complete her training certification. From then on she lived in the South Shore of Montreal for 15 years, where she trained and bred horses with her long-time boyfriend Denis Longpre.
Like most people who ride and compete in western riding, Perrier started her . . .
show career barrel racing. However, this sport was missing something for Perrier. This missing piece was found when she tried reining for the first time. Reining is an western riding sport where the horses are ridden through a pattern involving circles, spins, and stops done at the lope or gallop. Every rider-horse pairing enters the ring with 70 points, and points are either given or taken away based on the execution of every maneuver in the pattern. Perrier fell in love with the precision, and technicality of this sport, as well as the willingness of the horses.
Since then, Perrier has competed in countless shows in Quebec and the United States. Though she maintains that she has always been a competitive person, Perrier states 2015 as being her most successful year in the show ring. She ranked 8th in the world in her division “Rookie Pro” and won her division in Quebec with her horse “High Voltage Jac”. Despite her success, her 2015 show season was not without its tragedies. During the fourth weekend of showing in Quebec, Perrier was working her horse in the warmup as usual. She was loping her horse when she heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot, and for the first 15 or so seconds nothing seemed to have changed. Her boyfriend and another trainer were watching from the stands, got to their feet and yelled at Perrier to stop. She stopped and got off of her horse. That is when the panic set in. Her horse began to breathe heavily and sweat, and a few seconds later he was not able to put any weight on one of his back legs. Perrier recounts staying up all night, crying and not being able to sleep until the vet arrived in the morning. The X-Ray showed that a bone in his hoof had completely shattered and there was nothing that could be done. Perrier looks back on her horse saying, “he was not just a good horse, he was a gentle horse. You know, the horse of your life. When I was riding him, everyone was screaming in the crowd.” The scores she gained riding “High Voltage Jac ‘’ sustained her place as Quebec champion.
Perrier is moving back to the area to be closer to family. Along with that she has big plans for the future of reining in Pontiac. She hopes to build a resource of riding lessons specialized in reining. She believes that this is an untapped market in the area, given that despite there being many horses, most are ridden recreationally. She adds “I also want to promote the importance of being well supervised by a professional and the importance of establishing a solid base on a horse.” Perrier has no intention of having a riding school at her Clarendon farm. She is more interested in traveling to people’s properties and teaching them there. She says that this is intriguing for her as people who own their own horses are more likely to have set training objectives that they are looking to accomplish and a drive to improve.
Perrier also argues that contact with horses can be immensely beneficial in people’s lives. More specifically she believes that contact with horses can make a difference in the social and emotional development of adolescents, she expresses that this is something that she can do in the the future, “one of my projects would be to establish a resource to help underprivileged teenagers.”
Apart from training, in the coming years Perrier will use her new farm and land to breed and raise quality reining horses. As of right now she only has five horses on her farm, she plans on continuing to renovate her cow barn into a stable. Though he is not there yet, she plans on moving her 2013 American Quarter Horse Association world champion stallion “Great Red Chex” to her farm.
