Starting Out

Carolyn Lowe has been instructing, training, competing, and building horse-related businesses for over 25 years. Specializing in dressage and western performance – western riding, reining, and western pleasure – she is committed to sharing her expertise with riders of all levels. Carolyn was born into a family-run riding business in River Falls, Wisconsin, a town that’s also home to a university with a nationally renowned equine program. This is where Carolyn began her mission to ride with and learn from extraordinary horsemen. She and her sisters grew up in the saddle, joining her father’s 48-year-long career in trails, sales, and instruction.

Building Experience

During her college years, Carolyn launched on the learning experiences that would shape her later businesses. She studied equine sciences at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, focusing on reining and cutting. She gained specialized knowledge of bits, working with the Myler brothers and with Greg Darnell. Once out of college, she went to California and worked as equitation instructor for a cutting horse ranch; she taught dressage, jumping, and western pleasure, as the Primary Instructor at Ojai Valley Farms. Carolyn also worked in the production end of the film industry! This production work, together with her experience in equestrian businesses, led her to work for the National Reining Horse Association producing reining shows. Carolyn’s western showing experience includes the American Quarter Horse Association, the National Cutting Horse Association, and the National Reining Horse Association.

Carolyn returned to River Falls to open her own business, Kinni Valley Riding Academy, in 1995. She’s recently expanded to buy her retired father’s business, so the farm, its horses, and its wealth of family experience have grown organically.

Training Influences

Carolyn began dressage training in her late teens and college years, with German cavalry officer Max von Bluecher, of Fortuna Farm in Long Lake, Minnesota. At the same time she continued to developed experience in reining and cutting, and studied with Ray Hunt, whose philosophy of training has deeply pervaded her own training and teaching practice. Carolyn has continued her dressage career through clinics and training visits with Isabelle Judet and Jean-Claude Chéret.

Carolyn’s teaching and training philosophy blends the precision of classical dressage with the simplicity, directness, and lightness of communication that emerges from the French dressage tradition. She also believes that focus on one’s center, giving the rider a confident seat, secure balance, and open dialogue, allows for ultimate communication with the horse. These ideals and ways of interacting make the horses and riders at Kinni Valley successful, relaxed, confident, and happy.

Favorite Quotes

If training has not made a horse more beautiful, nobler in carriage, more attentive in his behavior, revealing pleasure in his own accomplishment...then he has not truly been schooled in dressage." - Col. Handler

If given a little thought, a little understanding, and a little common sense, the horse gives back in full measure." – Ray Hunt

Nothing forced can ever be beautiful." - Xenophon, On Horsemanship, 4th Century B.C.

A horse gallops with his lung, perseveres with his heart, and wins with his character" - Tesio

You feel and listen to the horse. The experience of the results of his response helps you understand for the next time." - Tom Dorrance

Centering is a quieting of motion without loss of vitality" - Kenneth Beittel

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo da Vinci

The horse knows how to be a horse… What we should be doing is creating riders. That takes care of the horse immediately.” -Charles de Kunffy - former member of the Hungarian Olympic team

The apex of perfection in equestrian art is not an exhibition of a great deal of different airs and movements by the same horse, but rather the conservation of the horse's enjoyment, suppleness and finesse during the performance, which calls for comparison with the finest ballet, or performance of an orchestra, or seeing a play by Racine, so moving is the sight of perfectly unisoned movements." - Nuno Oliveira