Working Hands; Her Story continued ...
Her personal riding "consultant" is Frances Carbonnel, whom also operates her business, Classical Legacy, out of Mariah Farms. Corrine and Frances have known each other since 2004 and their friendship has grown into a professional relationship. The two have given clinics combining their strengths and skills for powerful results, and intend to explore the concept further. Corrine recognizes Frances as a master; a brilliant trainer and instructor, and since discovering both the Andulusian and Classical Dressage Theory through Frances, she is gleefully back in the dressage saddle again.
When Corrine is not working "up north", she works as an Independently Contracted horse trainer for Lasting Partnerships Training Center; a local facility owned and operated by Michelle Conner and her husband, Bryan. Another brilliant horsewoman whose passion is drafts and driving; Corrine is thrilled to be working for a woman she has known since Pherwyn was a toddler. Because LPTC has a working relationship with Front Range Equine Rescue, many of the horses Corrine works with belong to the rescue and are at LPTC for assessment and rehabilitation. Corrine has made an art of using her bodywork skills when needed to get through mental and physical blocks to progress many of the remedial horses come to FRER with.
She currently lives on a small acreage she calls "Paarden Me Farm"; a nod to her heritage and her hardness of hearing. (Paarden is Dutch for Horses). There too are her personal horses, her barn cat "Underfoot", her Pyrenese/Australian Shephard puppy named Koos, (see him on hounds page), some 25 chickens, and her "boys": Her son Pherwyn and her boyfriend, Aaron. Aaron is a breeder and handler of Bulldogs, and sole proprietor of Mandala Bulldogs. Consequently, the Bulldogs of Mandala are also welcome residents at Paarden Me Farm.
Having finally overcome her mental limitations, Corrine has embraced a life with horses. Horses are central to her career and her own well-being. But a Gypsy at heart: she tinkers with tribal fusion dance and Mehndi, jazz/blues singing, poetry, photography, drawing (lately her boyfriend’s bulldogs), and anything artsy fartsy when she needs "recreation" outside of horsemanship.
Though she had given up on pursuing dressage back in 2001 after a string of "lessons" from area trainers ended in humiliation and pain, she decided to tinker with competitive trail riding and endurance. She opened her mind to "cowboy wisdom", read and loved all of Mark Rashid’s books and jumped at the chance to do a clinic with him. There she met Soraya Van Asten, who called herself a recovering dressage queen. When she bumped into Soraya again at a Peggy Cummings clinic, Corrine asked Soraya to give her lessons- willing to give dressage one more shot if it was practiced with concepts of connected riding. Through Soraya, Corrine also attended some clinics with Kim Walness. It was Kim who mentioned Equine Touch™ to Soraya, and Soraya in turn encouraged Corrine to pursue it.
It was a life changing connection. After completing level 1, Corrine knew she was on to something. This new system of bodywork did not tax her body the way equine massage did, and she reaped consistent results. Over the course of 1 &½ years, Corrine traveled throughout Colorado and Texas to attend and complete all the levels of training with Jock and Ivana Ruddock; founders of The Equine Touch™ Foundation, to became a certified Practitioner of The Equine Touch™. Corrine will be forever indebted to the dynamic couple who gave her the gift of their knowledge.
At 29, Corrine was diagnosed with Fascio-Scapulo-Humeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD), a form of Muscular Dystrophy. While her symptoms of this disease are evident to a schooled eye, and can be traced back to the age of about 9; Corrine believes an accurate diagnosis eluded doctors for 20 years in part because of the disease’s obscurity, but also because she has such high and normal function; the disease progression being much slower than what is expected. The diagnosis helped Corrine understand some of the struggles she had encountered earlier in life: hitting a wall with athletics where she formerly excelled; losing muscle and strength the harder she worked. It also explained the hearing disability she was born with. But she learned to be careful that a diagnosis did not become mentally limiting. She had coped and managed the disease even when she didn’t know what it was. These skills continue as part of her lifestyle; another reason horses are central. She credits a lifetime of riding to her ability to not just walk; but function with relatively few handicaps typically associated with her disease. Given that she pursued a career in Therapeutic Riding before her diagnosis; Corrine clearly had a subconscious personal experience of the healing power of horses.
These Days…
Her pursuit of improving the well-being of horses is something she views as her pleasure and duty; payback and gratitude to animals that have quite literally saved her life.
Corrine is affectionately called "Miss Cori" by her many riding students of all ages and abilities. Though she no longer works in the non-profit field of Therapeutic Riding, she instructs private students both abled and DIF-abled and maintains her certification with NARHA. Additionally, she works for Darla Orton’s riding program; Kids and Horses, operated out of Mariah Farms in Elizabeth, CO. Corrine enjoys this collaboration immensely, even loaning one of her personal lesson horses to the program while it is in season.
When her child was less than a month old, a close friend and single mother of a child with CP was tragically killed in a car crash. Corrine asked what she could do to help with the child who had survived. Corrine learned that Eden did therapeutic riding weekly, and that she could volunteer to be her "sidewalker".
Thus she discovered The North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, and learned that there were Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor courses. Soon she was the local non-profit Therapeutic Riding center’s Part Time Volunteer Coordinator and Instructor in Training; accumulating her required apprenticeship hours. She captained a schooling team that exercised the therapy horses. She also practiced her self-study of hands-on horse therapies on these horses. Over the next 8 years she would work in varying capacities with 4 area therapeutic riding and driving programs from Palmer Divide to Pueblo; accumulating a lifetime worth of humbling stories of the horses, riders, and volunteers whom are the heart of the industry.