Cowboy Dressage. Jessica Black
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of character that makes a horse at first a challenge and ultimately a pleasure to train, Compadre grew into a stallion as charismatic as he was talented.
First Steps
When pressed to identify one beginning moment, Deb stated, “Compadre’s 1993 victory pass in Oklahoma. They wouldn’t let him leave the ring.” Normally, a victory pass is a one shot deal: after receiving the prize, the winning horse is trotted or jogged down the rail, past the photographer, and out the gate. Sometimes the applause merits an extra pass; sometimes a horse will lope rather than jog. After being pinned Morgan Western Pleasure World Champion, Holiday Compadre jogged, trotted, cantered in zigzags with flying lead changes, galloped and stopped on a dime while the audience gave him a standing ovation. He and Eitan were showing off, demonstrating to an excited crowd the relationship between horse and rider that only comes from long hours of patient training. The judges clapped, the music played, and suddenly everything came together. The passion that had been sparked nearly fifty years earlier, seven thousand miles away, on a different continent, in a different world, found its unique outlet: a new form of Western riding that showcased the partnership between one man and an amazing horse.
That was where Cowboy Dressage began, according to Deb, because that was when they realized that it was about more than training and showing their horses. As she watched Eitan and Compadre parade their championship ribbons, she knew that they needed to find a way to reach more people, to make Eitan’s unique way of working available to more than the few horses he could reasonably train to such high standards. It would be a long time before they called it “Cowboy Dressage,” but Eitan’s desire to take the best of Western riding traditions and classical dressage was already evident in his work with Compadre.
Eitan Beth-Halachmy on Holiday Compadre: Morgan World Champion Western Pleasure Horse, 1993. “There is no famous horseman in the world that didn’t have a horse that made him famous,” Eitan says. Eitan and Compadre together set new standards of perfection for a Western horse, and not satisfied, went on to introduce the world to Cowboy Dressage.
Eitan had always had a passion for training horses, but it was not until he worked with Holiday Compadre that he realized the importance of the partnership between horse and rider. As he asked more and more of the liver chestnut stallion, he became aware of the reciprocity of the relationship: he had to trust Compadre, and Compadre had to trust him, and they had to understand each other completely. He began to spend long hours with the horse after the rest of the day’s work was done: grooming him, hand-walking him, talking to the stallion as he grazed. Afterwards, his exasperated wife would ask him why, after spending all day in the saddle with all the horses in training, he then spent hours more with Compadre. “I’m building something,” Eitan would answer. And he was: it was an investment of time that would pay off again and again in the years to come.
Eitan and Holiday Compadre perform with Michael Martin Murphy live at the Denver Stock Show in 2001. Compadre and Eitan set new standards for the Morgan Horse Western Pleasure and Freestyle Reining divisions, even as they began the long journey along the road to Cowboy Dressage as it is today.
Holiday Compadre was not an easy horse to train. He came to Eitan after bucking off everyone else who had tried to ride him. When Eitan first tried to get on, the colt just kept rearing. Eitan had to face him into the corner of the arena, and persist. With Compadre, nothing came easily at first; he didn’t do things just because someone told him to. Like many horses, he needed to understand why. With Eitan’s persistence and patience, though, Compadre developed into a virtuoso performer.
CARLYLE COMMAND
Holiday Compadre was one of Carlyle Command’s second crop of foals out of Deb’s mare Holiday Temptress (“Tess”). Carlyle was a beautiful young stallion with big promise, but like Compadre, he did not come into his own until he was six when he won World Champion Morgan Stallion and Reserve World Champion Park Harness Horse in 1986. The next year he captured both World Championship titles. Compadre is the best-known representative of the many sport horses Carlyle sired.
Deb clearly recalls when she decided to breed her mare to Carlyle: “Cheryl McLean suggested I breed Tess to Carlyle Command….Cheryl assured me that I would be very impressed with him. I went to the Morgan Horse Show in Monterey, California, just to see him. He was to be shown at halter by Tim Arcuri. I could hear hoof beats approaching the arena but could not see who they belonged to—but I knew it had to be Carlyle Command. The cadence told me it was a great horse entering the ring. I was right. He took my breath away.” Although she was not conscious of it until seeing him in the ring, Deb says she made the decision upon hearing his hoof beats.
Carlyle Command (Compadre’s sire) as he was when Debbie first saw him, shown by Tim and Jean Arcuri at the Golden West Morgan Horse Show in Monterey, California.
The power and grace of action that made Carlyle Command an impressive park horse was passed on to Compadre. You can see it in the videos of Compadre’s athletic movements: that 1993 victory pass evokes his sire’s struts down that same rail as Reserve and World Champion. And, they were struts: Carlyle Command had an amazing presence; he was hot stuff and he knew it. Holiday Compadre had that same attitude in the show ring.
After that initial Western Pleasure World Championship in 1993, Compadre went on to be the Morgan Grand National Freestyle Reining Champion the following year. He was pinned Reserve Freestyle Reining Champion in 1995, and once again Western Pleasure World Champion in 1996. More importantly, Compadre and Eitan became ambassadors for the Morgan breed and Eitan’s unique brand of horsemanship. Until Compadre was retired in 2002, they performed multiple times at Equitana USA in Lexington, Kentucky; at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio; at Dressage in the Wine Country (Santa Rosa, California); and at the Western States Horse Expo in Sacramento, California, to name a few, dancing to different music in dozens of different arenas, in front of thousands of people. Together, Eitan and Compadre traveled from one side of the country to the other, performing and teaching.
Finally, in 2002, they traveled to a cattle ranch in Wyoming, where Deb and Eitan wanted Compadre to give his farewell performance before the men, horses, and cattle that worked there. There they filmed footage for the beautiful video Dances with Cows. When the work was done, Eitan dismounted and unsaddled the horse for the last time. Compadre was only fifteen, but he had given all he could to Eitan and his many adoring audiences. He was beginning to notice an old injury, vestiges of an accident suffered on the road to his first Equitana in 1996. During a bad rainstorm, the truck and trailer had hydroplaned, jackknifed, and ended up totaled. Compadre had vet-checked sound and gone on to perform as part of the Morgan group, but afterward was obviously sore. He worked through it, and went on to perform for years, but by 2002, he was ready for his last ride, and when he jumped off in Wyoming, Eitan knew it was the end.
As a tribute to Compadre, Debbie and Eitan produced Dances with Cows; so compelling was the narration at the end, full of phrases like “danced his last dance,” and “greatness leaves with quiet dignity,” that viewers thought Compadre had died, so they had to change the end. It now states clearly, “Holiday Compadre was retired to stud on June 18, 2002.”
Luckily, by the time Compadre retired, Eitan and Debbie had a promising young colt in training that would become Eitan’s new partner and Cowboy Dressage ambassador. Santa Fe Renegade won six Morgan World Champion Western Pleasure titles, starting when he was only three years old. He then went on to carry Eitan at performances all over the world. In 2006, Eitan and Santa Fe were featured in the Closing Ceremony of the World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany. Their performance was part of the show designed to promote the 2010 World Equestrian Games to be