Who’s Behind Saddle Up University?
Sarah Geis’s Story

Since it can seem that anyone can call themselves a horse trainer these days, not everyone practices what they preach. Here's a little about me for those looking for someone with real experience who can back up her words: 

I love people as much as I love horses. Specifically, I love helping people grow in their confidence and horsemanship, and helping good horses become better horses. This is both a passion and a mission. 

I started riding anything I could get my hands on as early as I can remember outside of Dallas, TX. It ran the gamut from an unlucky dauchshund (yep…tried to ride her), to the standard pony rides and tourist trail excursions, to hunter/jumper lessons starting when I was 5. I couldn’t ever get enough horse time or education, (and doing it through more lessons was expensive), so I became the classic barn rat kid willing to muck stalls, clean tack, groom horses, and of course, exercise ride anything in exchange for a little bit more knowledge. In one barn during middle school, that turned into me being the kid who got to test out and desensitize the new, sometimes slightly troubled lesson horses. But I loved it, and with every buck, spook, jump refusal, and missed jump distance, I got more addicted to improving my horsemanship and I was determined to help these horses get better.

In late middle school, I bought and started training a 3 year old off-the-track thoroughbred for eventing. Sound stupid? It was. It turns out that allowance money doesn’t usually buy you the best or safest “first horse.” But I learned how to be gritty and sticky pretty quick. During that first year with my own horse, I started asking other owners at the barn if I could practice some techniques on their horses, since I was reading everything on horse training I could get my hands on- from Monte Foreman to Ray Hunt. Somehow, these owners were willing to give a 13-year-old a chance. 

The next year, I met a natural horsemanship and ranch horse clinician at my boarding facility who was helping someone else with their difficult horse. I was fascinated with how quickly and gently he made progress. I started working for this trainer so I would have more training opportunities. There, I was able to teach lessons, assist in clinics, train colts, help problem horses, run summer ranch camps, move cattle in and out of the dense West Texas mesquite brush (often on rank colts), and more. Every fall, we did horse training demos multiple times a day for two weeks straight at the State Fair of Texas. All the while, I continued training and riding my thoroughbred in eventing (and sometimes used him to demonstrate jumping, dressage, and liberty work at the State Fair). On my own, I showed in everything I could with every training horse that was good enough, so I could have an objective measuring stick to gauge my riding and training skills with.

In college, I moved to Colorado and worked for a trainer who had more of an old school style with a western pleasure emphasis, where I learned to incorporate more lightness, finesse, body control, and biomechanics into my training. I realized that natural horsemanship had a place, but wasn’t going to help every horse in every situation and sure as heck wasn’t giving me that show ring finesse I wanted. I started colts, fixed problem horses (lots of natural horsemanship induced issues…), bucked out renegades, gave lessons, and purchased what I considered to be “diamonds in the rough”- horses needing a little training, fixing, feeding, and so on- to eventually resell. These ranged from gaited horses, to western pleasure horses, to hunter/jumpers. A couple summers I created a horse program for a Boy Scout camp, and started hunter ponies and Oldenberg warmbloods for a good friend and mentor back in Texas. During that time, I continued showing in everything I could to challenge and improve my skill set.

Due to many reasons that would take too much time here, including a fair bit of industry burnout, I thought that I’d shift my focus for a while to my other loves- philosophy and theology. I went to Denver Seminary in 2008 for a master’s in philosophy of religion, and stayed on to teach there. During those years, I kept training a horse or two on the side, mostly as a traveling trainer. But the desire to jump back into the horse business full-time started growing again, and peaked just as I got fed up with the growing politicization, bureaucracy, and unproductive trends in my school (and in higher education more generally). So, in 2018, I left academia and jumped back into full-time horse training. This time around, my primary emphases are reined cowhorse and cutting, but everything I do is underpinned by a philosophically, interdisciplinary, and biomechanically geared approach. And I’m still learning and growing.

Throughout my over 30 years in the horse industry, I’ve had many talented coaches and mentors. Some taught me how to train, some how to teach, some how to live, and a couple of them inadvertently taught me what not to do and who not to be. Through lots of trial and error, wrecks and lightbulb moments, and by the grace of God, I’ve learned from all these experiences. Drawing from that diverse background, including the years teaching graduate school philosophy, I try to train in a way that adapts to the needs of each individual horse. I also aim to teach in a flexible, empathetic, logical way that I wish I had had more access to years ago. Ultimately, I try to be direct, clear, encouraging, challenging when needed, and someone you can trust to care about you and your horse. That’s the goal anyway. 🙂

My training style is first and foremost a PRACTICAL one. Horses need fairness and understanding, but they also need to be realistically educated in order to be safe and fun for their humans. So, for example, you won’t find me wasting time doing a bunch of circus tricks or mystical woo-woo stuff with a horse that isn’t well versed in the basics. Focused, soft, responsive horses are safer, and that means more fun for the owners!