The Greenhorn Chronicles 52: Quentin Judge on Double H Farm (1)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/22
The Greenhorn Chronicles 52: Quentin Judge on Double H Farm (1)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Quentin Judge. You are based in Florida at Double H Farm, correct?
Quentin Judge: Yes, we are in Florida half the year and New York the other half.
Jacobsen: What is the facility in New York? I am still waiting to learn of that one.
Judge: It is a new facility for us. We have been in Ridgefield, Connecticut, for about 13 years. This last spring, we unexpectedly sold our farm there and bought a little bit of a smaller place about 15 minutes away. It has been a historic horse farm for a long, long time. It will be some work and changes, but it is a great place. We are excited about it.
Jacobsen: Since you moved to a smaller facility, how are you finding managing and owning it, working with clients and staff, and other similar tasks?
Judge: It has been a positive change for us. The original we had was quite big. The business we were running was in response to the facility we had. It was about 60 stalls and big trucks. It was a big business. We have focused more on training and our clients and reduced the size while keeping the quality high or even higher in the sport.
Jacobsen: Do you have the same clientele or a new set of clients?
Judge: Same clientele. We now have four clients who ride with us and bring horses and different levels that they do. That has all stayed consistent. We have slightly increased our number of sales horses in the last few years. My wife is a hunter rider. We have returned to the hunter market, which suits our sales. We brought along a few more young horses to sell. Our number of clients has stayed about the same. We do not have stalls to rent to outside boarders.
Jacobsen: Do you find it easier to be more detail-oriented with fewer horses and fewer clients to work with and care for?
Judge: Yes. Being able not to be spread thin and focusing on what horses we have is better for me. At the beginning of my training career, I wanted a successful business. Everyone did well. However, I would like to be someone other than the trainer who would hire many assistant trainers with people who came to Double H Farm and wanted to train with me. I realized we wanted a different direction than having a big business like that. So, yes, having fewer horses allows me to be more focused on the clients we have and to focus on their results and their long-term goals.
Jacobsen: What is the range of riding that you are doing right now?
Judge: Myself, you mean day-to-day or the horses?
Jacobsen: I mean day-to-day and the level of the clients getting trained.
Judge: I have up to 5* Grand Prix horses down to 5 or 6-year-old jumpers or hunters. I run the gamut there. Horses are very expensive these days. We are always on the hunt for young, talented horses. It is bringing them along and feeding them into FEI horses and seeing where they end their career. For our clients, we train so many adult hunters and jumpers. In the last season, many people jumped 3* and 4* grand prixs. It is big.
Jacobsen: How do you approach training an individual regardless of their level? Do you take them at their current skill level and push them to see how far they can go with the scope of their horse and technicality?
Judge: For me, I find it… I should not say. I follow the same playbook with our client’s horses as my own. It sounds like a line. However, it is soundness, the right horse in the right class, and the right rider with the right ability. I try to set people and my horses up for success. In this industry, people often have a couple of horses, and maybe the horse is not perfectly suited to them. I start with their goals and ask, “What are your goals? What do you want to do in the next 12 months? What is the crazy goal?” Whatever it is, “Let us try to work on both things, the immediate and the long-term, and see how far we can get.”
We have had great success across-the-board training at Double H. Everyone who has ridden with us has jumped bigger than they had before. Some had moved up more. It takes dedication from the riders themselves to know this is not an instant result and instant gratification. It is realistic in show jumping. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes honing skills and the right riding classes. It means something other than buying a bunch of overqualified horses and having them jump smaller. It is having horses prepared to do what we want them to do. The adult jumpers are confident, straight, and so on, and have a horse with the right scope to jump the jump and the right heart and mind to remain confident.
For a 4* and 5* grand prix, you need a horse that is just as good as any: fast enough and with scope. Putting the right horse for the right rider and giving that rider as many skills as they can handle in the ring is a basic principle.
Jacobsen: Since this is a transitional set of interviews from the Canadian to the American and to the Mexican base of the equestrian world, I am aware. The Americans are far better at funding equestrian sports than Canadians. Why is that? How does this type of financial support help bolster and maintain the quality of the sport for Americans?
Judge: That is why Americans and Canadians are so close on the same continent. Why is the sport so much deeper across the board in the States versus Canada? I cannot say. I know it is a historic sport in the States. We have fox hunting. It is a long history of equestrian sport, starting in the Northeast in Virginia, in that area, and then branching out across the States. When more people have a longer history of show jumping in a country like the United States, you have more people involved. The funding should be available. I worked closely with Ian Millar. He is a good friend and a mentor of mine. I talk to him in passing about the lack. He wants to see more depth in the riders in Canada, which needs more funding.
Canada, compared to the US, is huge. It is more spread out in the population. There are fewer hotbeds of equestrian sport as here in Florida and California. That may be why there is not enough momentum in one area to pick up the pace and get people excited and involved in supporting Canadian riders. However, yes, this is a very expensive sport. It gets more expensive all of the time. At the top level, what we are all trying to do does not matter how much money we have. If you have a billion dollars to spend on horses, many people have a billion dollars on horses these days [Laughing]. It is not simply throwing the money around and becoming the best in the world.
You are one of at least 50 people or many people looking at that same horse. The funding is hugely important. The history of horse owners in the States is strong because of the US riding team. In the 80s, the owners owned the horses and leased them back to the team. There is a real history of support and recognition of owners of horses in the United States, which is different from Canada. People being recognized for owning the horses encouraged them to continue doing so. There is more of a backbone for recognizing the owners, which does help.
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