Sue got her start in horses at eight when her dad gave her and her brother a pony for Christmas. Little did he know what this was going to lead to! An active Pony Clubber, she competed in the pony hunter/jumper divisions later graduating to the junior and open hunter divisions with 4’ fences on her TB mare. Sue developed an interest in dressage in her late teens and that soon became her passion. By the mid ‘70’s and into the ‘80’s she was competing at Training and 1st Level on her homebred Canadian Sport Horses. By the early ‘90’s she was competing at 2nd Level on her Hanoverian crossbred gelding, Dragon Walk.

With a background in science and 26 years of experience in animal research, Sue has always asked the questions “why” and “how”, especially when it came to horses and riding! In 1985 she attended the first Centered Riding® Instructors Course in Canada and discovered that CR answered many of those questions. In 1990, she took 3 ½ months leave from her research position to apprentice with Sally Swift, founder of Centered Riding, and earned her CR Senior Level IV Clinician status. To stay current, she regularly attends CR Clinician Update Clinics and is the only active CR Level IV in Canada to have apprenticed directly with Sally Swift.

Sue met and rode with Jill Hassler-Scoop at Hill Top Farm in MD in 1997and was in the first group of instructors to complete the Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning – a forerunner to the Balimo Program. Through Jill, Sue met Eckart Meyners in 2004 and got more answers to her “why” and “how” questions. Determined to learn more about his work, Sue was delighted to be asked to join a core group of American instructors to train with Eckart Meyners and Hannes Müller. After attending and riding in clinics and workshops with these men in the US and Germany, she graduated from the Balimo Program with the first group of instructors in October 2005. In August 2006 Sue joined the Balimo Program Distance Learning faculty and continues to act as a mentor for several of the courses.

After 30-years of running a boarding stable and riding school, Sue sold the farm in October 2003 and now lives in Stittsville Ontario, a suburb of Ottawa, Canada’s capital. Having taken early retirement in 1997 when Agriculture Canada closed the research centre, Sue now travels extensively teaching Balimo Clinics and Centered Riding Open, Advanced Clinics and Instructor Courses and Instructor Update Clinics in Canada, the US and Europe.

At clinics, Sue teaches novice to FEI riders of all disciplines including western pleasure, reining, hunter/jumper, dressage, gaited, saddle seat, endurance and recreational riders. At home, her current students include recreational and dressage riders from Training to Third Level.

When home between clinics, Sue keeps busy training her Hanoverian-cross gelding, Woody, teaching a growing number of private students, gardening and doing Agility with Maddy, her Hungarian Vizsla.

"I feel that I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what Eckart has to offer: that by continuing my education, through Balimo workshops and symposiums, I will be a better and stronger rider and teacher to the ultimate benefit of my students and their horses."