Equestrian Tea Time
Emma Jenkinson and Isabeau Solace discuss the state of the equine industry with guests.
Equestrian Tea Time
Making Horse Shows Accessible: Stephanie Bowers on Building Kensington Farm Online
https://kensingtonfarmonlinehorseshows.com/
What if your next horse show didn’t require a trailer, a hotel, or a 3 a.m. alarm—and still gave you real scores, thoughtful feedback, and a shot at year-end prizes? We sit down with A‑circuit rider and trainer Stephanie Bowers to explore how Kensington Farm Online Horse Shows is opening the gate to riders of every budget, ability, and barn setup.
Stephanie shares the origin story of taking shows online and details the growing slate of divisions: hunter, jumper, equitation, western dressage, minis, and therapeutic classes with assisted and independent options. We dig into how clear, rider-friendly specs reduce anxiety, why affordability matters in a tight economy, and how video-based entries create stronger learning loops. From monthly deadlines to series points and a free Kindness Award open to anyone, the focus is on a kinder, more accessible competitive experience that still values sound judging, horsemanship, and progress over perfection.
We also talk practicalities: how to enter via QR code and Google Drive, what to film, and when to submit. For riders seeking deeper coaching, Stephanie offers optional one‑on‑one feedback consults to review your test or round together and turn notes into an action plan. We look ahead to para-friendly classes and invite the community to help shape new divisions so more people can participate—whether you ride, lead in-hand, long-line, or work with a mini. If you’ve ever felt priced out, burned out, or boxed out by tradition, this conversation offers a hopeful, concrete path forward.
Ready to compete from home, learn faster, and feel included? Subscribe, share this episode with a barn friend, and tell us which class you want to see next. Your input can build the next division.
emmajenkinsondressage@gmail.com
https://youtube.com/@emmajenkinsondressage?si=Zt9ma9vtpMK2iZV7
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Equestrian Tea Time. I am your host, Isabeau Solace. In this episode, my co-host, Emma Jenkinson, talks with Stephanie Bowers of Kensington Farm Online Horse Shows. Stephanie is a uh longtime A-Circuit horse professional. She has started an online horse show series. You can go to their Facebook page, Kensington Farm Online Horse Shows, where you will find QR codes to um enter and confirm your video submissions for the October 2025 horse show. The closing date for those horse shows are, I believe, October 16th, which is in two days. So uh I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Stephanie is very passionate about trying to make horse showing available to everyone and anyone. They are eager for feedback. If you'd like to see more classes and divisions under the rules section, you can find uh information about how to get in touch with them. And uh, we'll link that in the show notes also. Uh, they'd love to hear about any more divisions or classes that you'd like to have added. So thanks for joining us today and enjoy.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for joining us. I'm your co-host, Emma Jenkinson. Today we're talking with the one the only Stephanie Bowers, a longtime A-Circuit rider and trainer, now a private A-Circuit hunter-jumper trainer, who has recently moved to the online space with her horse show series, Kensington Farm Online Horse Shows. She wants to make sure that everyone has access to horse shows and feedback no matter their disability, no matter your budget, horse showing should be accessible. And that's what Stephanie is offering us here. If you've been thinking about online horse showing or wonder what that is, here is the episode for you. Stephanie's gonna tell us all about how that works, and we discuss how we can change the industry for the better with these online horse shows and other virtual resources. Now, hello.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, how are you? We're good, dusty and dry. We're way overdue for rain. I'm in in New Hampshire and we are in a dry spell. It's like the desert here.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty bad here, too. I'm in Tennessee, but I actually grew up in Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, cool. Yes, thank you so much for joining us. Yes, just can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be doing these online horse shows?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Um, so I've been a trainer for about 30 years, and I've been a private trainer for about the past four. And when I was trying to figure out what I want to do next with my career, I wanted to do something that would help people, and I wanted to do something that would help the animals. This sort of fell in our laps. It was one of those things where one day I was listening to the reasons that people couldn't attend our home shows. And in one second, I thought, okay, I'm gonna do it online. And three weeks later, we launched it. So it was definitely something different than I've ever done before.
SPEAKER_02:That is wonderful. And I'm just so excited. I kind of ran into you on a Facebook post and a Facebook group, as seems seems to have happened with a lot of the community we're building here. But I just um I think you're great. Um, I was wondering just a little bit about your background because you had said that you've been in the horse show scene for a long time, and I know nothing about that really.
SPEAKER_01:And that was a long time ago. And I've been showing basically since then, I have been training and having clients on the A circuit for a very long time. My daughter went to all of the 3-6 equitation finals. We went to Harrisburg, we went to Hunter and Cup, and we went to um the McClay Regionals. So I've just been doing this my entire life.
SPEAKER_02:And I had also heard that you were, were you her horse showing this week or this weekend?
SPEAKER_01:We were supposed to, so yes, we were supposed to be showing for the next two weeks and that got canceled.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no. Well, I guess maybe then you didn't have to, you know, do a horse show weekend, but oh no.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:So Kensington Farms online horse shows is what the horse show series is called. And Kensington Farms is your your farm. Is that right? Excellent. And I just was loving the not only is it an online horse show, but what it is is affordable, accessible to everyone, accessible to anybody, any space, you know, available, like the backyard or a pasture. Also, we're gonna be able to make classes for people with disabilities and find ways to include everyone. I just think that is fantastic. Just like to hear a little bit more about that and then the October Horse Show series and a few of the classes that you are already offering, because I heard you had many, many classes.
SPEAKER_01:We currently have hunter, jumper, equitation, western dressage, mini classes, and we did get our therapeutic classes up as well. And the next thing we're working on is Arabian classes. We've actually had quite a bit of interest in that as well. So basically, we are trying to make this affordable to everybody. It's not, you don't have to have show clothes, you don't have to have the best hack, you don't have to have the best ring. Just want this to be a place that everybody can show and everybody has a fair shot. So just because you don't have the most expensive boots, it doesn't matter. If you have, you know, as long as you have boots, it doesn't matter if you're wearing jeans. And we wanted this to be an environment that people can learn and make it affordable. It also, from our perspective, takes a lot of the stress away from showing. You don't have to trailer, you don't have to wake up at three o'clock in the morning, you don't have to worry if it starts to rain or if it's icy or if it's snowy or if it's freezing cold. We show your around. And since you have basically a month to get your videos submitted, you can wait till the weather works wherever you live. So that's really what we are trying to do was make this something that everybody could have access to.
SPEAKER_02:Fantastic. And can you tell me what therapeutic classes are?
SPEAKER_01:Therapeutic classes are basically they get they allow assistance if you need it. We can there are also classes that are independently ridden. And for example, we have a walk-only dressage test. So if you feel that you need assistance with the walk-only test, that's fine. If you feel like you can do it independently, that's great too. But we also have the walk trot, the the intro walk trot tests. If you feel that you could do that either assisted or independently, I also heard you had mini classes. Yes, we do have mini classes as well. We have all sorts of different mini classes from driving to in-hand jumping, which is just the cutest thing you're ever gonna see. It's so cute.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome, including everybody. What else was I going to ask you about with this? Oh, yes. So it also sounds like there are some point awards and then the kindness awards. So could you tell us about those?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. We have we have series end and year end prizes. So we have, for example, we have the winter series and you would get prizes the end of the winter series, and we also give out prizes in December. So we have the three series and year-end prizes. So all of your points go towards series and year end. The biggest thing that I'm excited about with this is the kindness award. And that is free of charge. You don't have to be, actually, you don't have to be in horses at all. But either you could nominate yourself for something that you feel you've done that is in any way kind. It could be to animals, it could be, you know, to somebody else, it could be somebody you helped in the neighborhood, it could be somebody you helped in your family, but there's no charge for that. And that is just an opportunity to give, to start recognizing people that are doing kind things for others. And I think that's a really important thing to be working on right now is making an effort to be kind to others. And so that's what the kindness award is about. But there's no charge, and you you don't have to even be a rider. You don't have to be entered in the show, you just have to sign up for that.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. That's so cool. With that, uh, just in case anyone has never done an online horse show, how does that work?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's actually quite easy. So we have everything in a packet, in a in a Google Drive packet, and we can send that to you, or there is a QR link that you can go to that can take you to the entry form. And basically you enter and then you send your payment, and then you have two weeks to upload your videos. We do have specifications for all the classes. So if you're not sure what you're supposed to do in the class, we have an entire section that tells you exactly what to do. It's quite easy. I think it's probably all in all would take under an hour to do your videos and enter.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. The last thing I was gonna ask you that I kind of ask all of the guests is just if you were someone who wanted to get into the industry these days, what would you suggest? Are there any resources or just things you would suggest to learn in the industry these days? Or you know, what crap not to take from people, whatever comes to mind.
SPEAKER_01:I personally think that this industry is ridiculously expensive and it's very hard to get accepted as a new professional. If are you referring to becoming a professional in this industry?
SPEAKER_02:You know, getting I think there's a lot of people who want to get into the industry as amateurs. There's also a lot of people who might want to get into it professionally, and then I personally worry about how that's gonna work and if there's a place for new professionals coming in and how they get that education personally. Um, but whatever angle you want to take on it or whatever comes to mind.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, well, I do feel that one thing that is probably going to become a lot more accessible to a lot of people is online lessons. It can be done in several different ways. You can you can record yourself, you can watch other videos. There, there are lots of different ways that that can be done. I think that's going to become a pretty important tool. The other thing that I would highly recommend is go to, if you're interested in horse shows and if you're interested in getting into this industry, either as an amateur or as a professional, go to the best shows you can find in your area and sit and listen. And just listen to what everybody says. And I'm not saying to do what everybody says, but you can get hours upon hours upon hours of free lessons by watching and listening. And I feel like that is just something that a lot more people could have access to and not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in lessons and horse shows to learn a lot of stuff you can learn sitting on the rail and watching.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's excellent advice. And then maybe for those of us, like I wanted to go scribe this year actually for the only major horse show we have here, but I just my health wouldn't allow it. It's more like trekking around the show grounds that it's an issue for me. Um, but I I kind of found a way around it, and I'm currently learning a little bit from you. I don't know how much of this you want me to say out there, Stephanie, but um, that you are, you know, helping me start to learn a little bit about judging and also hunter judge jumpers judging and things that I just know nothing about. So um I think it's also possible to to find mentors online. And then again, my instructor, I take online lessons from her once a month. Um, and we just do it live on Facebook Messenger, actually, and it works quite well.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and and I think I think it's important to find different ways because this the industry is going in a different direction, I feel. And I feel like we have to have as many different avenues as we can find to learn and not and like said not spend$100,000 trying to learn.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it is it can get quite expensive. And then as a professional, I know that like the people, the professionals I support need me to show up regularly in some capacity, and we all need that. And so I think online stuff is going to become one of the new norms, and I think that's something I'm just trying to educate about on this podcast a lot is that there's access for everyone, and there's access to horses even when we start, you know, not being able to ride anymore, or you know, things happen. And I've found some ways around it, and I just hope to give people some hope with that. And I'm loving all these online horse shows, online resources, online instructors coming out, and um, it's all very much more affordable as well.
SPEAKER_01:And I think with the economy the way it is, I think that's really important. I think if you only come to these shows and enter one class, if that's what you want to do, that's absolutely fine. It's we just want this to be something that people can maybe create their own goals, and you don't have to have to spend thousands of dollars to go to to one horse show for the weekend. And honestly, doing this, you could spend maybe a thousand dollars and do the whole year. I just feel like with with the economy, we've got to start looking at different ways to do things, and to keep this industry going, we have to find different ways. And I just I think the online stuff is going to be huge.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I think it's amazing, and I think it's amazing what you're doing with that, and also that you know it's very affordable. What is it? It's 25 for dressage classes, dressage tests, and then for uh all the other classes, and then 15 for for that's correct. Yeah, that is that is incredibly affordable, and there are no other and and for those of us who maybe like was just listening to a podcast where Anna Buffini, I don't know if you know who she is, but she has been very big since a young teen in the dressage shows, and she's actually stepping away from that. And some people have you know gotten a bad taste for horse shows in their mouth. And so I hope that horse show things like this can maybe bring some people back to horse shows and remember the the real benefit of those, which in my opinion is to test your horsemanship skills and then improve your horsemanship skills with feedback. And so I also wanted to mention that you offer not just the classes, but if you want to, you can also is it called, Stephanie, that you offering it a consultation, okay? Like a consultation for feedback on your your dressage test or your whatever class you entered, that then she can go over that footage with you in real time on the phone and give you real feedback to have something to do moving forward. And so again, that's a really affordable way to get the full benefit of what a horse show has to offer, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:And that's really what we're looking for with that we're charging$35 for a half hour for that. And we think that's incredibly affordable to most people. And we can watch the video together and say these are some of the things you could work on here, and these are some of the things you could work on here. And the biggest thing is just making this accessible to as many people as we can, and that's really the key, I think, to all of this is accessibility.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely. And like I know we were chatting last week a little bit, and I had said that, you know, I don't necessarily need a certification in anything, but the only ones accessible to me as somebody who doesn't want to demonstrate my riding or probably cannot demonstrate like walk, trot, and canter anymore, is that I'm not um, those a lot of the certifications aren't available to me. Um, and so I'm so happy that you're making the horse stuff available to everyone. And for instance, me and my instructor are working on figuring out how I can use like a golf cart or my wheelchair to do long lining with my horses and some more advanced dressage stuff uh where I don't have to walk. And so I don't know anyone out there who'd be willing to try to figure out like a horse show class for us folk who are in wheelchairs and things. And so I'm so glad that that's maybe an option here.
SPEAKER_01:It definitely is, and I would love to talk to you another time about what classes you would like to see and the specifications for those classes. I think the specifications are really important in the whole. I think we need to know step by step what is expected so that people hopefully won't have as much anxiety. This is what I have to do. I can practice this as many times as I want before I video. And if you mess up during the video, you can do it again. But if you will sit down and say, this is what I would like to see, and this is how I think it should be run. We really have gotten so much feedback from I don't know, how a hundred more people of what they want to see. And really that's what this is about is what do you want to see? What does you know the person next to you want to see? And so far, the only thing is we haven't gone through the whole list, but we are very open to whatever anybody, whatever anybody wants to see. We would love to find a way to incorporate this into our show.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think something I may do is I'm in some disability groups for riders, and I may put a call out to get in touch with them about what they need from online horse shows so we can all start talking about yeah, what that would look like. Cause it's it's not just me. In fact, I'm not a full-time wheelchair user. And so I'd want to discuss that with some other pair riders and wheelchair users and like see what they are capable of doing. Cause a lot of them, I think, were like I've seen people trying to uh getting kicked out of real horse shows because of like being in a wheelchair, but they just want to do an in-hand class like everybody else, and they do it. So it's incredible kind of what they they can make happen. And so I also have to experiment with it and get a golf cart.
SPEAKER_01:I actually heard about that. I heard about a situation where the rider was, I believe she was kicked out of the show and it was a very big deal. And that is what we are trying to not have. There are a handful of people that want to do a certain class, we'll add it because we just want this, we want this to be accessible to everybody, and we want everybody to feel included, and we don't want we just want everybody to to to matter in this series. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So if that's so awesome. And so um, what I've also seen is just a lot of things happen in the industry this year that are kind of making people question whether they want to support the in-person horse shows and also others worrying that that may be taken away from us if we continue to conduct ourselves the way we do. But I argue that the way around that is just to support people doing things like you, because if all of our attention turns to doing the right thing and accessibility and all this, then the industry is going to have to hop on board or they're not going to have the attention and money of the rest of us who want to do horse shows and things like that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I one thing I would like to say is that if anybody has anything that they would like to see, please reach out to us and let us talk about how to make it happen. Because I'm sure there are situations that I'm not even aware of that we would like to talk to people. And I I am concerned about the future of our sport. And there are a lot of very, very big issues right now that I think needed to come to light, but they're now coming to light. And we don't know how things are going to land with all of that. So I do think that hopefully this will hopefully this will just make it so that every single person has access to, if they want to, has access to to showing.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And with that, you know, just giving people another option or a better option, a lot of times can change, like the change could be incredible just from this small community and that we have been building and showing people that they can have access to online resources and that can work. And a lot of us have to learn about the technology first. I definitely had to learn a lot of stuff, like how to put a thing on a tripod to do the online lessons with my instructor and stuff, but we just we figure it out. Horse people, we figure it out. So I'm so glad. The next thing is just so we're doing you're doing an October horse show series, so that's starting now, and we will be linking or putting the flyer and links to sign up for classes and all of your contact info.
SPEAKER_01:And I think what one one last thing I would like to say is add anything you like to us and let us figure out how to help you, how to help whomever you may be. But give us a chance to try to figure out how to accommodate whatever people are interested in. And I think in the horse world, I think there's a lot of it's this way or the highway. And we really want to at this from a completely different angle than that. We want to figure it out to help others, not hey, if you want to do this our way, we'd love to have you. No, we would like to have input to see what direction do people want us to go. Do you want more of this? Do you want more of that? Do you want less of this, more of that? It's whatever people want, not our way or the highway. And I just feel like that is not a very, very common mentality in this industry.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And I think just like it, our existence is helping change the industry and changing people's mindsets around all of this. And some of us are like traumatized from past experiences, and so it's really nice to, you know, have the option to horse show and not have to go anywhere and have the option if you can't ride or are in a wheelchair, things like that are kind of unheard of. And so, yeah, uh good. I'm so glad that you came up with this and that it's getting some traction and we want to help with that. So if there's anything else we can do for you moving forward, let us know.
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, we very, very much appreciate this time and your interest in this because we do want to get the word out there and we do want we want people to benefit from this. So hopefully that will happen, and I'm very grateful for your time.
SPEAKER_02:Of course. And then I think we will be just making sure to, you know, send me a flyer every time a new horse show series is coming up, and we'll go ahead and mention it um probably once a month and also in our email newsletter whenever I get that going. Information to sign up for the horse show is below. Don't miss the October show. It ends at just the end of the week on October 16th to sign up, and then your videos must be in by October 21st. But you don't want to miss the costume class because that is only once a year for October. Sign up for the November show, it will be closing November 16th. So if you're not ready to do the October show, get into the November one. And don't hesitate to reach out to myself or Stephanie if you have any thoughts about para riding classes or you have special classes you would like to be added to the horse show series, please reach out. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
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