Natalya & Tater

Tater and I have been partnered for nearly four and a half years, and in that time I've watched a little girl's dream begin to unfold. The first time I rode him, I couldn't believe what I was sitting on — so much elasticity and quality, despite being wildly out of shape and unbalanced. He wasn't sure of much, but he tried anyway. I knew he was special. I knew he'd take me to the moon.

He was also significantly behind, and shut down from his previous training. So I made him a deal: thirty minutes of hacking, thirty minutes of work, every single day. It took six months before I saw a real shift in his attitude. The next hurdle was bigger — for two full years, we couldn't deliver a clean test. He'd go dead to my aids, or spook at everything, sometimes both.

With Kasey Perry-Glass, that started to change. By the end of his seventh year, we placed 3rd and 4th at Regional Championships. Then came Wellington, and our first CDI — and the moment everything fell apart. Mid-test, a champagne bottle popped in the VIP section. He couldn't recover. He jumped clean out of the arena. We were eliminated on our international debut.

I walked out of that ring in more shame than I'd ever felt. But it was the beginning of the real work — not just his, mine. I spent the next year rebuilding my own confidence, taking every low-pressure opportunity I could find to grow our trust together. By fall, we were scoring over 70% at I-1. In 2025, an abscess nearly derailed our qualifying season for Lamplight — and we still made it, finishing 6th in the I-1 Championship.

This year, we stepped up to Intermediate 2 and Developing Grand Prix. We've just earned our qualifying score for the Developing Grand Prix Championship at Lamplight. The next step is Grand Prix. The dream beyond that is Team USA.