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California Riding Magazine • October, 2009 Tiffany Silverman: |
Well-known and highly regarded San Diego trainer Tiffany Silverman is immersed in the dressage world. Since switching her focus from eventing to dressage three years ago, Silverman has helped her students advance toward the FEI levels and recently scored a USDF silver medal for herself. She’ll increase her long-standing involvement with the San Diego Chapter of the California Dressage Society next year when she assumes a formal role on the board. Yet it’s not just dressage that makes her proud of her training program, Unbridled, Ltd., in San Diego County’s Valley Center. Silverman and her husband, Mark Silverman, DVM, own the property and Tiffany runs the enterprise the way she sees fit. In a training context, that means a strict adherence to the German Training Scale that builds rhythm, suppleness, contact, impulsion, straightness and collection. This is coupled with the conviction that no horse or rider should spend every day “riding around the rectangle,” she says, even when that rectangle is a lovely, crumb rubber-footed dressage court with mirrors. Hacking out in the adjacent hayfields, cavaletti and working around the facility’s gallop track are mental and physical cross training for almost all of the typically 15 horses in what Silverman describes as a “boutique” training barn. “Dressage with a sense of humor” characterizes the environment at Unbridled, Ltd. While she and her students take their progress in the sport very seriously, “we’re not chain-smoking at the score board waiting for our scores to come up,” she laughs. Silverman’s perspective was influenced by her years as an eventer. She left that discipline three years ago to focus on dressage and has not looked back. “I love this sport because there is so much to accomplish, yet it is without the fear-factor that often comes with eventing. “I’ll take performance anxiety over a fear of crashing any day!” she asserts. “If you blow a test, there’s always another test to do. We often laugh off our mistakes in the arena by saying, ‘It’s only dressage: nobody dies today.’” The Silvermans’ collective expertise gives them the unique ability to care for the whole horse. Mark is a top sporthorse veterinarian, equine dentist and podiatrist. On top of that, he was an FEI level dressage rider himself years ago, which augments his ability to weigh in wisely on just about any health or training issue. Tiffany is a Master Saddle Fitter, a title that requires a deep understanding of a horse’s static and dynamic movements, anatomy, balance and biomechanics. Together, the couple provides “kind of a one stop shopping” for everything a horse and rider needs to advance their partnership in healthy and effective ways. Physical fitness also plays a huge role in the training program, and it’s not unusual for Tiffany to end a lesson by introducing her students to yoga poses or stretches on the barn aisle floor that may strengthen their balance in the saddle. Tiffany attained many of her goals in the eventing world, most notably that of being long listed for the USET team. Throughout that time, she loved dressage best of the sport’s three disciplines, which is unusual for an eventer. In 2006, changes in the sport and the birth of her and Mark’s son Caleb contributed to her decision to switch full time to dressage. In making the transition, Silverman credits Reitlehrer FN Jurgen Hoffman with helping her tremendously. “It was critical to align myself with somebody who I respect,” she explains. “He’s my coach, mentor, friend and provides professional guidance to me in my own riding and with my students and their horses.” The proprietor of San Diego’s German Dressage, with his wife and fellow Grand Prix rider and coach Jennifer, Jurgen Hoffman would be proud of Tiffany’s adherence to the German Training Scale. “Any of my students will attest that they spend most of their time on a 20-meter circle, and they don’t move on until it’s balanced, rhythmical and relaxed. I whole heartedly believe in this system.” Silverman’s students are mostly adults, although she is open to taking on serious young riders who own their own horses. Her sole Young Rider at the moment, Brittaney Edwards, is newly mounted on a horse that Silverman found in Germany. Another newcomer in the barn is Demi Sekt, last year’s USDF Fourth Level Horse Of The Year, recently purchased for Susan Bedford. Although Unbridled, Ltd., is a small program, Silverman says there is “always room for the right horse and rider.” That right rider, the trainer explains, will share her belief that dressage should be pursued seriously and that a balanced horse, both physically and mentally, creates a happy rider. They must also believe that show ring success is secondary to the everyday pleasures of progressing with horses in a beautiful, happy and supportive environment. Those who fit that bill will find themselves well-suited to Silverman’s Unbridled experience.
For more information on Tiffany Silverman’s Unbridled, Ltd., call 760-220-4755 or visit www.unbridledltd.com. |
