Caroline Roffman Working with Sagacious Finds Pan Am Gold Medal Horse “Fit, Happy”

12 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on Caroline Roffman Working with Sagacious Finds Pan Am Gold Medal Horse “Fit, Happy”
Caroline Roffman riding Sagacious in a lesson with Debbie McDonald. © 2012 Ken Braddick/dressage-news.com

WAYNE, Illiois, Aug. 27–Sagacious HF is back in fulltime work with Caroline Roffman who took over the reins of the 13-year-old gelding from Lauren Sammis who had won team gold and individual silver medals at small tour at the 2007 Pan American Games.

Caroline, 23, was assigned the ride on the KWPN gelding after the U.S. National Championships where the horse was withdrawn for “health reasons” midway through the Olympic selection trials in June.

Caroline is working with Debbie McDonald, America’s Developing Horse coach, who gave her daily lessons over three days at the young and developing horse championships here.

The pair worked through several movements, including piaffe and passage, and appeared unruffled as he was ridden in an arena used to warm up young horses for the national championships.

Since moving up to Grand Prix during Florida’s 2009 winter circuit, two year after Pan Am success, Sagacious had an up and down record with periodic health issues over the next 3 1/2 years.

In 12 CDIs in that time, all within North America, Sagacious and Lauren enjoyed numerous victories, including a string of seven wins and one second place in 2009, to being eliminated from two shows.

“We’re just taking it one day at a time,” Caroline said while Al Guden, the owner of Hyperion Farm of Wellington stood nearby.

“Every inch of him has been gone over thoroughly by veterinarians. We have found nothing that stops from working him like any of our other horses.

“He gets worked five days a week, is on regular horse feed, goes on the tread mill and hacks out. We want to take him to different locations as possible so he gets used to many environments.

“We have no competitions in mind; we’re not even thinking about that.

“He’s fit, happy and just being a horse.”

And the barn name for Sagacious (Welt Hit II x Judith x Cocktail) was changed to “Kitty,” because Caroline said he was like a black cat.