�February 2006 - Australian Quarter Horse News

by MaryAnne Leighton

Why do Australia’s leading horsemen describe Vivian Wearing as the trainer’s trainer and the best all-round horsewoman in Australia? Why is she in such demand as a teacher and clinician?

Is it because she can sum up people and horses with equal ease or because she is passionate about teaching and lives, eats, breathes, sleeps and dreams it? Is it her ability to connect with her students and instantly assess their level of competence and the areas they most need help or because she listens to the horse, whose way of going tells her what needs to be worked on? Or is it because she has an open mind and the ability to pick up riding and training techniques from anywhere and analyse and adapt them very quickly?

According to leading horseman, Ian Francis, it is all of these and it is also because Vivian has competed and won at the highest level in almost every equestrian event that exists. ‘What most people don’t know about Vivian is how capable and successful a competitor she was prior to starting her teaching career,’ Ian said. ‘She was tough to beat.’

A lifetime spent in the saddle, taking the best from every instructor she has ever learned from, absorbing knowledge and analysing everything other riders and trainers do, has given Vivian the ability to refine and adapt this vast pool of knowledge. Now she can teach a receptive and talented student in two years what it took her twenty-five years to learn.

EArLy yEArs

Vivian was raised on cattle properties. She rode before she could walk, slept in front of her fa-ther’s saddle while he mustered cattle, and she lived a childhood that little girls who love horses can only dream about.

A precocious child, Viv was blessed to be born to parents who were prepared to indulge and encourage her consuming passion for horses. They were in a position to foster, develop and feed her natural talent by exposing her to the

best instructors and best horses available, and they did everything in their power to make it easy for Vivian to succeed. Even as a young child Vivian was a focussed and extremely suc-cessful competitor. At the age of six she attended

her first cutting clinic (with the legendary Ameri-can trainer, Pine Johnson), then entered her first cutting competition where she placed second to the great imported stallion, Dell Mingo Q-118.

At the age of eight her life revolved around daily dressage lessons with trainer Vince Corvi, a legend in the non-western riding world for produc-ing outstanding hacks and the riders who show them. A strong supporter of the adult Vivian as an instructor, Vince tells his clients, ‘If you can’t get to me for lessons then go to Vivian.’ Vivian still uses classical dressage principles whether she is teaching western riders, polo players, or dressage or pony club riders as every horse, no matter the discipline, must be elevated and come through from behind in order to work properly under saddle.

Showing dominated Vivian’s childhood and early teens and her attendance at school often dropped to three days a week to allow for show prepara-tion and travelling on the other two school days.

She held her first youth clinic at the age of fourteen and in that year won Queensland’s first Snaffle Bit Reining Futurity and was High Point Junior Youth at the first AQHA Championships in Melbourne.

Vivian WearingA Passion for Teaching

Vivian Wearing and her beloved Bundy (The Golden rule A2-771), demonstration horse extraordinaire.

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Bringing the crowd to their feet during the winning run of the senior Cutting at the third AQHA Championship show in 1980, sixteen-year-old Vivian riding Bill and Jean Deacon’s Commander’s Merit Q-668 (Commanders Boy* Q-215 x

Bar Glo Girl* Q-235). Vivian and Merit also won the senior reining and took out High Point youth at the show.

Also at fourteen Vivian won the Senior Western Pleasure at the Appaloosa National Show, was High Point Appaloosa Youth of Australia, won several Quarter Horse and Appaloosa national titles and was All Breeds Overall High Point Youth of Queensland.

At fifteen she left school to train horses for the public full time and one year later, at sixteen, was acclaimed nationwide when she took out an incredible double at the third AQHA Championship Show in 1980 – winning the Senior Cutting and the Senior Reining on the same horse, the first double of its kind at an AQHA Championship show. Incidentally, she was also High Point Youth at this show.

At nineteen, Vivian was training cutting horses and competing in cutting events in the USA with the 1983 World Champion Cutting Non-Pro, John Paxton, on horses owned by high-profile clients such as Julie Revson, the Revlon heiress.

At twenty Vivian spent two and a half years with Bill Bowden in Brisbane, suc-cessfully campaigning his superb show team, but she missed teaching and at the age of twenty-two began her current career of turning out national champion riders as well as national champion horses.

ProfEssioNAL sTuDENT

Vivian describes herself as a professional student who has dedicated her life to learning from the masters then communicating to others what she has learned. Ian Francis confirms that, ‘Vivian has made it her business to seek information and technique from as wide a range of people and disciplines as she possibly can.’

She is a thinking teacher who has a unique ability to work through problems and create alternative ways to teach a training principle. Her excitement when she discovers a new way of doing something is infectious and her boundless enthu-siasm inspires her students.

CLiNiCs AND LEssoNs

Vivian in the saddle is poetry in motion. Taking instruction from her (and I have) is a revelation. Unfailingly courteous and patient, her instructions are clear, concise and easily understandable. Her calm, positive attitude instils confidence in the most nervous rider and she never berates, ridicules or condescends a student. Lessons with Vivian are a joy as she truly loves people and has the ability to instinctively size up her students and know immediately which path to take with them. According to Ian Francis, ‘The fact that people are attracted to her gives Vivian a great advantage as an instructor.’

Vivian encourages her students to set achievable goals and her excitement over their small achievements spurs them on to the next level.

Those of Vivian’s students who show are extremely successful and you can identify them at a glance; they have the most beautiful seat on a horse and appear to melt into the saddle. A number of her students are now profes-sional trainers themselves but the quality of her instruction is the same for those who want only to trail ride. ‘I learned early on that many people who have horses have no interest in showing but they have lessons to improve themselves and their riding. I ac-cept that there is no rule that you have to show your horse – or even ride it every day. Just enjoy it.’

iNsPirATioNAL HorsEMEN

Vivian has learned from, and been inspired by, many of the

world’s leading horsemen and she continues learning to this day. She has the utmost respect for many of the old time Australian trainers, breeders and early horses: particularly Chilla Seeney and his great all-round mare, Baby Doll; Ian Francis whom Vivian describes as one of the best horsemen in the world, and Tony Ernst, ‘An extraordinary horseman. Working with Tony was a turning point in my life. He had a huge influence in developing me as a person. His calm, spiritual nature rubbed off on me so that I am better able to handle the situations that life throws at me.’

iNsPirATioNAL HorsEs

At the age of eight Vivian made newspaper headlines for the first time when she fell in love with the imported Appaloosa, Nevada Devil Dancer, at the Running N Ranch sale and conned her parents into spending $18,000 for the horse – who was not for sale.

She was beaten only once in her youth compe-tition days on the Appaloosa champion mare, Shalimar Saucy Bars, whom she later brought back into work after a seven-year retirement and blitzed the conservative dressage world, going directly into Novice class and taking out Hi Point Novice Horse in their first year. She admits she was intense about the dressage and had lessons every day.

More recently, Golden Elms Happy As Larry Q-27803 (Cody), challenged Vivian in a way she had never previously experienced and proved to her that, no matter how many years you have spent training horses, you can never think you have seen it all. There will always be one horse that pushes you to the limit and Vivian said, ‘This horse nearly broke my heart. I used to just sit down and cry because I simply couldn’t get through to him. He is the most

difficult horse I have ever known and he was so hard to train.’

Cody chose to be uncoordinated, uncoopera-tive, unwilling and simply refused to learn. Initially he was considered thick but Vivian now acknowledges that he is probably the most intelligent horse she has ever met. She said, ‘He is an intelligent horse who played dumb and who succeeded in calling the shots the whole time. He was only happy if he could see smoke coming out of my ears. He nearly broke me but, boy, he taught me a lot and made me a better person.’

In the early days of trying to teach him any-thing, in desperation Vivian asked friend and mentor, Ian Francis, to ride him and give his opinion. Ian was not impressed and doubted the horse had any talent. However, he recently revised his opinion, saying, ‘A couple of years later, Viv won a National Western Riding title on him. Now, winning a National Championship at that level is hard enough on a nice horse but you have to be a genius on a sorry one.’’

Under Vivian’s guidance, this ‘sorry’ horse who was uncoordinated, could not take a lead, did not care about his trainer’s reputation and had nothing going for him except the fact that he is absolutely stunning to look at, has now won open, youth and amateur titles at AQHA Cham-pionship shows and is an AQHA Champion and AQHA Champion Youth Horse, with more points and awards than we have room to print. On the strength of her success with Cody, Ian has been heard to remark, ‘Vivian could teach a camel to do flying changes.’

Cody’s owner, Barbara Clegg, deserves par-ticular credit for refusing to give up when the horse was at his worst. Barbara and her hus-band were prepared to invest the necessary

enormous amount of time (ten years), money and patience to prove what she had hoped when she bought him, that Cody is a brilliant horse. Dedicated owners like Barbara are to be commended as it is all too easy to dispose of a horse that takes too long to come up to its owner’s and trainer’s expectations.

MAN of THE MoMENT

Vivian’s current equine man of the moment is her beloved Bundy (The Golden Rule A2-771). Bundy was another problem child but he and Vivian quickly formed a strong bond and he is now an important part of her on-going evolution as a trainer and teacher. ‘I am now at a stage in my training where I have lots of ideas circu-lating and bubbling in my head at night and the next day Bundy has to put up with me experi-menting with different combinations to see if that exercise should proceed or follow this one, as I work out how they come together.’

Bundy is also an integral – and popular – part of Vivian’s clinics. Instead of describing how a half pass at the canter or a canter pirouette should look and how to achieve them, Vivian and Bundy go out and show clinic participants how it is done – and it is a beautiful thing to watch.

Always gracious, Vivian Wearing is proof that the greatest horsemen and horsewomen are born in the saddle, ride every day of their lives and are totally commit-ted to increasing their knowledge of horses. Her students and peers confirm she has truly earned the titles of the best all-round horsewoman in Australia and the trainers’ trainer.

in the usA, nineteen-year-old Vivian on freckles Honey Boy, a 4yo stallion by freckles Playboy; highest score in the

1st go-round of the 1983 Crawfish Clas-sic futurity in Baton rouge, Louisiana.

PhotograPher / WriterPhone: (07) 5573 3974 Email: ma-leighton@austarnet.com.au

MaryAnneLeighton•

~1997 ~• Vaquero Q-1

• Gregory Lougher • King Ranch Australia Pty Ltd

~ 1998 ~• Ian Francis

• Max McTaggart• Quarter Elgrando R1-167

• Jet Boom Q-467• Beggar Bingo Q-315

~1999 ~• Peter Baillieu

• Dell Mingo Q-118• Jubal R1-6213

• Kay Hill King (Imp) Q-330• Garry McPhee• Radoo R1-5699

• Morn Deck Q-2160• Hamish MacCallum

• Docs Spinifex Q-5015 ~ 2000 ~

• Chilla Seeney• Hugh Sawrey

• Lionel & Heather Richardson• Docs Freckles Oak Q-14053• Linden Super Star R2-1528

~ 2001 ~• Jack Reilly

• Robert Baldwin~ 2003 ~

• Chickeramic Q-337~ 2004 ~

• Jack Cooper~ 2005 ~

• Martin Lemann• Winderadeen Peppycose

Q-17365

AQHA

ofhallfame

Vivian and the $18,000 horse that was not for sale but that she somehow persuaded the

owner to sell and her parents to buy for her.

� Australian Quarter Horse News - February 2006

Also at fourteen Vivian won the Senior Western Pleasure at the Appaloosa National Show, was High Point Appaloosa Youth of Australia, won several Quarter Horse and Appaloosa national titles and was All Breeds Overall High Point Youth of Queensland.

At fifteen she left school to train horses for the public full time and one year later, at sixteen, was acclaimed nationwide when she took out an incredible double at the third AQHA Championship Show in 1980 – winning the Senior Cutting and the Senior Reining on the same horse, the first double of its kind at an AQHA Championship show. Incidentally, she was also High Point Youth at this show.

At nineteen, Vivian was training cutting horses and competing in cutting events in the USA with the 1983 World Champion Cutting Non-Pro, John Paxton, on horses owned by high-profile clients such as Julie Revson, the Revlon heiress.

At twenty Vivian spent two and a half years with Bill Bowden in Brisbane, suc-cessfully campaigning his superb show team, but she missed teaching and at the age of twenty-two began her current career of turning out national champion riders as well as national champion horses.

ProfEssioNAL sTuDENT

Vivian describes herself as a professional student who has dedicated her life to learning from the masters then communicating to others what she has learned. Ian Francis confirms that, ‘Vivian has made it her business to seek information and technique from as wide a range of people and disciplines as she possibly can.’

She is a thinking teacher who has a unique ability to work through problems and create alternative ways to teach a training principle. Her excitement when she discovers a new way of doing something is infectious and her boundless enthu-siasm inspires her students.

CLiNiCs AND LEssoNs

Vivian in the saddle is poetry in motion. Taking instruction from her (and I have) is a revelation. Unfailingly courteous and patient, her instructions are clear, concise and easily understandable. Her calm, positive attitude instils confidence in the most nervous rider and she never berates, ridicules or condescends a student. Lessons with Vivian are a joy as she truly loves people and has the ability to instinctively size up her students and know immediately which path to take with them. According to Ian Francis, ‘The fact that people are attracted to her gives Vivian a great advantage as an instructor.’

Vivian encourages her students to set achievable goals and her excitement over their small achievements spurs them on to the next level.

Those of Vivian’s students who show are extremely successful and you can identify them at a glance; they have the most beautiful seat on a horse and appear to melt into the saddle. A number of her students are now profes-sional trainers themselves but the quality of her instruction is the same for those who want only to trail ride. ‘I learned early on that many people who have horses have no interest in showing but they have lessons to improve themselves and their riding. I ac-cept that there is no rule that you have to show your horse – or even ride it every day. Just enjoy it.’

iNsPirATioNAL HorsEMEN

Vivian has learned from, and been inspired by, many of the

world’s leading horsemen and she continues learning to this day. She has the utmost respect for many of the old time Australian trainers, breeders and early horses: particularly Chilla Seeney and his great all-round mare, Baby Doll; Ian Francis whom Vivian describes as one of the best horsemen in the world, and Tony Ernst, ‘An extraordinary horseman. Working with Tony was a turning point in my life. He had a huge influence in developing me as a person. His calm, spiritual nature rubbed off on me so that I am better able to handle the situations that life throws at me.’

iNsPirATioNAL HorsEs

At the age of eight Vivian made newspaper headlines for the first time when she fell in love with the imported Appaloosa, Nevada Devil Dancer, at the Running N Ranch sale and conned her parents into spending $18,000 for the horse – who was not for sale.

She was beaten only once in her youth compe-tition days on the Appaloosa champion mare, Shalimar Saucy Bars, whom she later brought back into work after a seven-year retirement and blitzed the conservative dressage world, going directly into Novice class and taking out Hi Point Novice Horse in their first year. She admits she was intense about the dressage and had lessons every day.

More recently, Golden Elms Happy As Larry Q-27803 (Cody), challenged Vivian in a way she had never previously experienced and proved to her that, no matter how many years you have spent training horses, you can never think you have seen it all. There will always be one horse that pushes you to the limit and Vivian said, ‘This horse nearly broke my heart. I used to just sit down and cry because I simply couldn’t get through to him. He is the most

difficult horse I have ever known and he was so hard to train.’

Cody chose to be uncoordinated, uncoopera-tive, unwilling and simply refused to learn. Initially he was considered thick but Vivian now acknowledges that he is probably the most intelligent horse she has ever met. She said, ‘He is an intelligent horse who played dumb and who succeeded in calling the shots the whole time. He was only happy if he could see smoke coming out of my ears. He nearly broke me but, boy, he taught me a lot and made me a better person.’

In the early days of trying to teach him any-thing, in desperation Vivian asked friend and mentor, Ian Francis, to ride him and give his opinion. Ian was not impressed and doubted the horse had any talent. However, he recently revised his opinion, saying, ‘A couple of years later, Viv won a National Western Riding title on him. Now, winning a National Championship at that level is hard enough on a nice horse but you have to be a genius on a sorry one.’’

Under Vivian’s guidance, this ‘sorry’ horse who was uncoordinated, could not take a lead, did not care about his trainer’s reputation and had nothing going for him except the fact that he is absolutely stunning to look at, has now won open, youth and amateur titles at AQHA Cham-pionship shows and is an AQHA Champion and AQHA Champion Youth Horse, with more points and awards than we have room to print. On the strength of her success with Cody, Ian has been heard to remark, ‘Vivian could teach a camel to do flying changes.’

Cody’s owner, Barbara Clegg, deserves par-ticular credit for refusing to give up when the horse was at his worst. Barbara and her hus-band were prepared to invest the necessary

enormous amount of time (ten years), money and patience to prove what she had hoped when she bought him, that Cody is a brilliant horse. Dedicated owners like Barbara are to be commended as it is all too easy to dispose of a horse that takes too long to come up to its owner’s and trainer’s expectations.

MAN of THE MoMENT

Vivian’s current equine man of the moment is her beloved Bundy (The Golden Rule A2-771). Bundy was another problem child but he and Vivian quickly formed a strong bond and he is now an important part of her on-going evolution as a trainer and teacher. ‘I am now at a stage in my training where I have lots of ideas circu-lating and bubbling in my head at night and the next day Bundy has to put up with me experi-menting with different combinations to see if that exercise should proceed or follow this one, as I work out how they come together.’

Bundy is also an integral – and popular – part of Vivian’s clinics. Instead of describing how a half pass at the canter or a canter pirouette should look and how to achieve them, Vivian and Bundy go out and show clinic participants how it is done – and it is a beautiful thing to watch.

Always gracious, Vivian Wearing is proof that the greatest horsemen and horsewomen are born in the saddle, ride every day of their lives and are totally commit-ted to increasing their knowledge of horses. Her students and peers confirm she has truly earned the titles of the best all-round horsewoman in Australia and the trainers’ trainer.

in the usA, nineteen-year-old Vivian on freckles Honey Boy, a 4yo stallion by freckles Playboy; highest score in the

1st go-round of the 1983 Crawfish Clas-sic futurity in Baton rouge, Louisiana.

PhotograPher / WriterPhone: (07) 5573 3974 Email: ma-leighton@austarnet.com.au

MaryAnneLeighton•

~1997 ~• Vaquero Q-1

• Gregory Lougher • King Ranch Australia Pty Ltd

~ 1998 ~• Ian Francis

• Max McTaggart• Quarter Elgrando R1-167

• Jet Boom Q-467• Beggar Bingo Q-315

~1999 ~• Peter Baillieu

• Dell Mingo Q-118• Jubal R1-6213

• Kay Hill King (Imp) Q-330• Garry McPhee• Radoo R1-5699

• Morn Deck Q-2160• Hamish MacCallum

• Docs Spinifex Q-5015 ~ 2000 ~

• Chilla Seeney• Hugh Sawrey

• Lionel & Heather Richardson• Docs Freckles Oak Q-14053• Linden Super Star R2-1528

~ 2001 ~• Jack Reilly

• Robert Baldwin~ 2003 ~

• Chickeramic Q-337~ 2004 ~

• Jack Cooper~ 2005 ~

• Martin Lemann• Winderadeen Peppycose

Q-17365

AQHA

ofhallfame

Vivian and the $18,000 horse that was not for sale but that she somehow persuaded the

owner to sell and her parents to buy for her.

�February 2006 - Australian Quarter Horse News