Maureen Kennedy dances with horses.
After a four-year hiatus following an injury, the MSU police sergeant is back at practice for dressage competitions — where a mounted horse is trained in a series of movements such as prancing in place and pirouettes.
Kennedy said she trained with Royal Canadian Mounted Police and is now working with horses Gigi and Winzig — each with their own personality — to get ready for competitions this summer.
"He's as brave as they come, but he's like a big, fuzzy lumpkins," Kennedy said of Winzig with a smile. "It's hilarious — he's like a big teddy bear."
While she is focused on the upcoming competitions, Kennedy said her dream is to do dressage to music.
"It's an expression of your talents, your arts," she said. "It's astonishingly beautiful and extremely difficult."
Dressage, an Olympic equestrian sport, is like "gymnastics for a horse," said Hilary Clayton, dressage chairwoman in equine sports medicine with the Mary Anne McPhail Equine Performance Center.
"You have to train them to be strong and supple and able to do different movements," Clayton said. "The horse and rider have to be very much attuned to each other.
"When you watch, it looks like the rider isn't doing anything and the horse is doing it all by himself."
Kennedy will attend a dressage clinic, which is open to the public, Dec. 10-11 with Tracey Lert, a dressage competitor and instructor from California.
"People will get a 45-minute private lesson at whatever level they're training at," Clayton said. "Anything from beginner to somebody riding at the top level."
The sequence of movements in a competition becomes more difficult as the rider advances, Kennedy said.
The center researches the sport of dressage, Clayton said.
"We try to put some science behind what people are doing with horses in competition," she said.
"We also investigate what causes injuries in horses and how to prevent them in training."
Kennedy is training with Rob van Wessum, a sport horse lameness clinician in the McPhail center. Van Wessum said he worked with the Netherlands police and is a dressage trainer and rider.
It's important to do special exercises with the horses to avoid injury, as well as to gain their trust, van Wessum said.
"The first goal is that the horse really wants to work with you," he said. "It takes a lot of work on confidence and trust."
Van Wessum said his interest in dressage began at the age of 10, when he worked in a dressage stable.
"It got into my veins at an early level," he said, adding that he's continued with it because it's fun to work with horses.
"Being on a horse and doing dressage, you have a feeling that you have a way of communicating with the horse," van Wessum said.
