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In this episode hosted by Tonya Johnston, Metal Skills Coach: 
Winn Alden 
Winn Alden is an accomplished hunter/jumper professional based in Virginia, where she runs Winn Alden Equestrian, a full-service boarding and show barn offering both horse training and rider coaching. With decades in the sport and a résumé of wins at many of the country's top shows across the hunters, jumpers, and equitation, she has earned a reputation as one of the East Coast's most respected horsewomen.
A consistent winner in the show ring, Winn has piloted top mounts to championships and blue ribbons at premier venues. Among her many highlights, she swept multiple features at the Tryon Fall Festival at TIEC in 2019—claiming a Welcome Stake, a Jumper Classic, and a USHJA National Hunter Derby—and captured the Grand Conformation Hunter Championship and the Robert M. Reel Perpetual Trophy at the Lexington Spring Encore aboard Genuine. She also topped the USHJA National Hunter Derby at the Lexington National Horse Show with Attila.
In addition to riding and training, Winn is a USEF licensed "R" judge in both Hunters and Hunter/Jumping Seat Equitation, with a judging schedule that has included numerous IHSA and IEA shows, among them two IHSA regionals. She is also a sought-after clinician, sharing her eye for correct, quality riding with students at every level.
Tonya's Tips to Prepare for Inportant Fall Shows
Tonya Johnston, MA, is a Mental Skills Coach and author who works with riders all over the world. Tonya specializes in working with equestrian athletes from disciplines such as hunter/jumper, three-day eventing, reining and dressage. Tonya’s book is called “Inside Your Ride: Mental Skills for Being Happy and Successful with Your Horse.”
Tonya’s individual clients range from youngsters just starting out in the pony divisions all the way up to professionals competing at international championships. She conducts mental training clinics at private barns throughout the country and also works with high school and university equestrian teams, including the Stanford, Savannah College of Art and Design and USC Equestrian Teams. Tonya has presented mental skills workshops for the USHJA, USEF, CPHA and PCHA associations.
Tonya has a monthly podcast called “Tonya Johnston’s Inside Your Ride” that is a part of the Plaid Horse Magazine’s Plaidcast. She has presented at the U.S. Dressage Federation and the U.S. Eventing Association national conventions, as well as the national conference for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Tonya had regular columns in Practical Horseman and Eventing USA, which at the time was the official publication of the U.S. Eventing Association. Tonya has appeared in a variety of equestrian magazines including The Chronicle of the Horse, The Equestrian News, The Plaid Horse, Equine Journal, iJump, Horse Showbiz, Equine Wellness, Paint Horse Journal, Riding, and Hoofbeats.
theplaidhorse.com
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!

Send us Fan Mail
Lila Kilby is the Equestrian Director at Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400-acre private residential community in Sylva, North Carolina, set amid the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. A Greenville, South Carolina native, Lila was bitten by the horse bug at age six on the back of a gentle Tennessee Walker named Sonny, and she never looked back. She earned her B.S. in Animal Science from Clemson University in 2016, then spent that year's show season working for a hunter/jumper veterinarian, traveling to circuits in Chicago, Traverse City, and Tryon.
At Balsam Mountain, Lila oversees a growing equestrian program that includes the care of a dozen horses, boarding, lessons, guided trail rides across more than 40 miles of mountain trails, and a full calendar of horse-related community events. She's known for her passion, her warm sense of humor, and her ever-present barn dog and unofficial mascot, Goose.
Balsam Mountain Preserve is a private, resort-style residential community set on roughly 4,400 acres high in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Sylva, North Carolina, surrounded by the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Built around a philosophy of low-density living and land conservation, the Preserve pairs breathtaking mountain scenery with a close-knit community spirit and a genuine commitment to preserving its natural landscape.
Residents enjoy an exceptional range of amenities, including an 18-hole championship mountain golf course, a full equestrian center, dining at The Summit House and The Mine Tavern, and more than 40 miles of well-maintained trails winding through peaks, valleys, and forests. The equestrian program, led by Equestrian Director Lila Kilby, offers boarding, lessons, and guided trail rides, and continues to grow with recently completed facilities that complement the community's original 14-stall barn.
With its blend of outdoor adventure, refined amenities, and mild mountain summers, Balsam Mountain Preserve stands out as one of the most desirable communities in the Carolinas for individuals and families seeking a life immersed in nature.
theplaidhorse.com
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!

Send us Fan Mail
Emi Richard is a top junior hunter/jumper and equitation rider from Middlefield, Connecticut, competing out of Zone 1. At 16, Emi Richard has accomplished more in her Junior career than most equestrians achieve in a lifetime. A gifted catch-rider, she has built a reputation for her adaptability in the irons and her deep connection with the horses and ponies she pilots.
In June 2026, Emi captured one of the sport's prestigious junior titles, winning the USHJA Gladstone Cup Equitation Classic—East at the Kentucky Horse Park during the Adequan/USEF Junior Hunter National Championships, aboard Nick Haness's Maybach. She topped a competitive field of 122 riders. Her earlier successes include topping the $10,000 Pony Hunter Winners Stake and being named Best Child Rider on a Pony at the Pennsylvania National.
theplaidhorse.com
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!

Send us Fan Mail
Dr. Michele Frazer, DVM, is a board-certified equine veterinarian at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, Kentucky — one of the world's oldest and most respected equine veterinary practices — where she holds dual diplomate status in two of the most demanding specialties in veterinary medicine. A diplomate of both the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and the American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care, Dr. Frazer represents the kind of deep, specialized expertise that the most complex equine cases demand. 
Her passion for horses and the equine industry was always present, but her specific desire to become an equine veterinarian crystallized in a memorable moment: watching Seattle Slew win the Triple Crown. From that spark, she built a career at the highest levels of equine medicine. Her professional interests center on neonatal medicine and the treatment and research of Lawsonia intracellularis, a bacterial pathogen that causes significant disease in young horses and remains an active area of veterinary research. 
Dr. Frazer describes her first week at Hagyard as her favorite memory of her veterinary career — a dream come true because of the people, the horses, and the extraordinary location in the heart of the Thoroughbred world. Outside of work, she is an enthusiastic supporter of the arts and shares her life with an impressive menagerie that includes horses, llamas, dogs, cats, saltwater fish, rabbits, and lizards.
Berry Porter is one of the most respected and inspiring professionals in American hunter-jumper sport — a trainer, judge, volunteer leader, and community builder whose career is as much a story about what is possible in this sport as it is about what he has accomplished within it.
Porter's introduction to the hunter-jumper world came through a pony ride as a young child in the Houston area — a single moment that set the course of his life. At 22, he attended his first hunter-jumper competition at the Great Southwest Equestrian Center in Katy, Texas, arriving without a groom — cleaning all the stalls himself, arriving at 3 or 4 am to do chores before stepping into his role as professional rider and trainer. That combination of humility and relentless work ethic has defined everything he has built since. 
Berry Porter is the head trainer at Brookside Pine Farms in Conroe, Texas, where he has developed many riders from the beginner level, progressing to compete in the collegiate ranks and succeed at the top levels of equestrian competition. He once watched Frank Madden, Stacia Klein Madden, Andre Dignelli, and Missy Clark on television and thought they were rock stars — and now has those same professionals on speed dial while his students go toe-to-toe with theirs at championship shows. 
His competitive accomplishments are substantial. At the 2025 Platinum Performance/USEF Show Jumping Talent Search Final — East, Porter took Leading Trainer honors after coaching riders Eleanor Rudnicki and Emily Jurnovoy to the top two finishes. His contributions to the governance of the sport are equally significant. Porter voluntarily serves on the USHJA Hunter Working Group and the Joint Equitation Task Force, and in December 2025 was awarded the USHJA President's Distinguished Service Award at the USHJA Evening of Equestrians — an honor bestowed upon members who have gone beyond the call of duty to bring the sport to a new level. In May 2026, he was named a recipient of the Ethos Award presented by Ethos Award Equestrian, Inc., which celebrates and elevates the contributions of Black and Brown equestrians who are creating meaningful change and inspiring a more inclusive future in the sport. Porter was among the initial members of the USHJA Diversity Task Force, formed in 2020, and has consistently approached conversations about race and access in equestrian sport with the levelheadedness, generosity, and fundamental optimism that characterize everything he does. Berry Porter is, in every sense, a professional whose presence in this sport makes it measurably better.
Eleanor Rudnicki is one of the most compelling success stories in American hunter-jumper sport — a young professional from Conroe, Texas whose journey from a small local barn and a cart-bred pony to the winner's circle of the nation's most prestigious equitation finals is the kind of story the sport tells about itself at its best, and one she actually lived.
Her start in the sport was far from glamorous. Growing up in Texas, she began at a small local barn with a pony originally bred to pull a cart — and that same pony, through hard work and persistence, carried her all the way to Pony Finals. The barn where she learned to ride focused primarily on jumpers, but Eleanor was drawn early and irrevocably to the hunters and equitation. She moved to Berry Porter's Brookside Pine Farm in Conroe, Texas at age twelve, and that partnership would prove to be the foundation of everything that followed.
What distinguished Eleanor throughout her junior career was not just talent but an extraordinary ability to catch ride — to get on a horse she had barely met and produce a performance that looked like years of partnership. Many of the horses she rode were new to either the equitation or hunter ring, and she fell in love early with the experience of feeling their progression and growth. That versatility produced results across the country at the highest levels of junior competition. In 2019, she won the THIS National Children's Medal Final, and that same year emerged victorious in the Hamel Foundation National Horse Show 3'3" Equitation Championship — impressively, during her first year competing in the equitation ranks and her first indoors season, on a horse she had ridden for the first time only one week prior. She went on to win the ASPCA Maclay at the Kentucky Summer Horse Show and captured the Overall Grand Championship in the 3'6" Junior Hunter National Championship — West in 2023, earning scores of 90 across all three phases on a catch ride.
The crowning achievement of her junior career came at the 2025 Platinum Performance/USEF Show Jumping Talent Search Finals — East, where she and Qwantreau, a 2016 Belgian Warmblood gelding, were crowned champions after navigating a technical 1.15m course featuring bending lines, unrelated distances, and an open water jump. The win made her the top finisher in one of the most coveted equitation-to-jumper transition competitions in the country and confirmed what the industry had known for years — that Eleanor Rudnicki was ready for whatever came next.
Now competing as a professional, she manages horses, clients, and staff while transitioning into the open jumper ranks, with her sights set on five-star shows and ultimately the U.S. Equestrian Team. The cart pony from Texas has taken her a very long way, and she is just getting started.
theplaidhorse.com
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!

Send us Fan Mail
Send us Fan Mail
Tonya Johnston, Mental Skills Coach speaks with researcher Janet Jones, Ph.D. about her new book, A Horse's World: A Neuroscientist's Journey Into the Equine Mind.  Brought to you by Taylor, Harris Insurance Services.
Host: Tonya Johnston, Visit her Website, Facebook and buy her book Inside Your Ride 
Guest:  Hailey Eynon and Sophia Donald, aboard their mounts Castelino 5 and Mister Carrera, captured the overall grand championship titles at the 2026 Adequan/USEF Junior Hunter National Championship – West at HITS Del Mar Horse Park (California). For both riders, the victories marked the culmination of years of partnership and near misses, making the titles especially meaningful.
Subscribe To: The Plaid Horse Magazine
Title Sponsor: Taylor, Harris Insurance Services
Sponsors: Zoetis, Proper Strides, ABI Attachments, Kerrits Equestrian Apparel, Great American Insurance Group, Grier School 
 Join us at an upcoming Plaidcast in Person live event!
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!
theplaidhorse.com
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Plaidcast. This podcast is a labor of love, and every single episode exists because of this incredible community of riders, trainers, barn managers, parents, and horse lovers who show up in the barn, in the ring, and right here with us.
At The Plaid Horse, our commitment goes far beyond the show ring. We believe deeply in the power of literacy and education and that every rider, at every level, deserves access to knowledge, stories, and ideas that make them a better horseperson and a better human being. Reading matters. Learning matters. And the stories we tell each other in this sport matter more than we sometimes realize.
Whether you are a junior rider picking up your first copy of The Plaid Horse  Magazine, a professional trainer looking for inspiration, or someone who simply loves horses and everything this world stands for then this community is for you. You belong here.
We build this together. Every article, every episode, every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new, to feel less alone in the challenges of this sport, and to be reminded of why we fell in love with horses in the first place.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, keep riding, and remember that the horse world is better when we build it together. I will see you at the ring!