Portraits by Kacy Brown
At 26, Mackenzie “Max” Suffy has already achieved the goal she set for herself as a Junior: to become a professional rider. But her path to getting there hasn’t been about chasing the biggest classes or the fastest route to the top. Instead, Max has spent years riding as many different horses as she could, working for experienced trainers and collecting pieces of their knowledge along the way.
Now, as head rider for Greg Franklin at Canterbury Farms in Lexington, Kentucky, and Ocala, Florida, she’s finding that all those experiences have prepared her for one of the parts of the job she enjoys most: developing young horses and helping them find their perfect partners.
Growing up in West Milford, New Jersey, Max started in Western tack because her mother, Michele Suffy, enjoyed it, but quickly found a local lesson barn that taught English. “I've literally always ridden horses. My mom rode pregnant with me, and then the second I could sit up on my own, I was on a horse,” Max said.
Max stayed at that barn, Hidden Acres, until she was 18, riding hunters, jumpers and equitation. Owners and trainers Brian and Jolene Cash, along with Jolene’s father, George Alala, gave her plenty of opportunities to ride different horses as she honed her skills.
The first competitive horse she owned was Booji, who “won everything” until an injury meant some time off.
Booji wasn’t quite Max’s favorite ride when she first got him, but her mother had picked him out and knew she’d figure out how to ride him. He’d had a head-on collision in a schooling ring before they bought him, so riding him around the Cashes’ arena while they taught lessons was a big learning curve.
“He was dressage broke at some point, so he had a lot of buttons that I didn't know how to push at 13, but he really taught me how to understand what the correct ways to ask for some of those movements were, which I appreciate now that I ride a lot of green horses because I understand how to teach it,” Max said.
She leased a horse from the Cashes, also named Cash, whom she competed in the 3’ Children’s Hunters, for a year while Booji was recovering. “He was a hard horse,” she recalled. “He was really spooky, so he was hard to get around the ring sometimes. But when you got through to him, it was really rewarding. He was great, but he was another big horse that was really quiet, which I appreciate because I feel like I have a lot of leg strength now. But very different from Booji, so that was a learning curve.”
Max’s next horse was Meitreo H, an Irish Sport Horse gelding whom she got when he was 6. She brought him along and competed in the equitation, hunter derbies and up to the 1.20m jumpers.
Meitreo H took her to the 2017 Dover Saddlery/USEF Hunter Seat Medal Final at the Pennsylvania National—both her and the Cashes’ first time, where she and the gelding both had some green moments but learned a lot, and she felt a huge sense of accomplishment bringing a young horse to that point.
During the winter circuits of 2016 to 2018, Max had the opportunity to ride with Robin Rost and Otis Brown, who were very influential during her equitation years. In Max’s senior year of high school, she got the chance to be a working student for Andre Dignelli at Heritage Farm in New York. She leased a more experienced horse, Calana von Worrenberg, and competed at the USEF Junior Hunter Finals-East, Medal Finals and the ASPCA Maclay Finals at the National Horse Show.
“A huge goal of mine was Maclay Finals,” she said. “I feel like that's the big equitation final that everyone wants to go to, so I was super appreciative to go with such a great horse and team, and that my mom was such a huge supporter because she knew that was something I really wanted to do, and she gave me all the ways to do it, and was like, ‘If you qualify, have at it.’”
During her time at Hidden Acres, Max met Will Baker, who’d come in to take over the farm when the Cashes moved back to their native Ireland. She rode and showed for him a bit and learned even more from him to add to her tool box.
“I got to ride a lot, which always kept me happy,” she said. “He was very easygoing. Nothing was a big deal—like, ‘horses are horses and stuff happens,’ which I appreciate because when you're young and you make a mistake it feels like the end of the world, and it's not. And he's consistently been someone who, if I need advice on a horse or an exercise that I haven't thought of, I can text or call and he's got an idea.”
Will has known Max since she was a freshman in college and thinks highly of her horsemanship. “She would work for me in the summers, and even from the start, anything that needed to be done got done—she would see problems before even I saw them, and things would be fixed,” he said. “She was always a really good team player and just a good horsewoman. Not to mention she also always rode really well, so that was a bonus.”
While Max was lucky enough to have the opportunity to show a lot as a Junior, she still put in the work outside of the show ring. Max and her mother often shipped their horses to shows, and Max worked off her lease at Heritage while soaking up all the knowledge she could. “I went in the morning and did some chores, course changing, organizing and things. I got to ride whatever horses they let me ride that day, which was anywhere between eight and 12 horses,” she said. “I appreciate that so much because I feel like I can get on most horses now, and I understand that all horses are different and they need different types of rides.”
Will described her as one of the hardest-working people he knows. “She’s always the first one in the barn,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if she just won the mini prix or whatever—she's there in the afternoon. She's helping clean stalls or give horses baths or clean tack, anything that needs to be done. Good days, bad days, she's always showing up—I think sometimes that’s overlooked in our industry because it’s so hard to keep that energy up every day, and she's one of the few people that I truly feel brings it 110% every single day. She's always really trying to get better, and to help make the horses or the people around her better.”
It was never a question that Max would ride in college, and she opted for the University of South Carolina, where she majored in sociology and rode on their NCEA team all four years, even during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
When she graduated in 2022, Max turned professional and landed a job in Kentucky with Elaine Schott at River Mountain Farm, where she stayed for three years. “I rode a lot of her young horses and showed client horses and got a lot of opportunity to horse show and make a little bit of a name for myself—not a big name, but enough that people knew who I was in Kentucky. As a young professional, it's hard to find a place that you just get to show right off the bat. So, I was very appreciative of that,” she said.
Of the 10 to 15 client and sales horses in the barn, Max rides five to 10 a day and spends a lot of time showing at the Kentucky Horse Park in the warmer months, which is 10 minutes from the farm. Greg is also a judge, so when he’s traveling, she teaches clients at home.
While almost every horse at the barn is for sale, Max still enjoys bonding with the horses she’s showing. One of her current favorites is Landman, a Zangersheide gelding she’s competing in the 3’9” Green Hunters. “We imported him the end of December, and he's been a jumper his whole life so he's very new to the hunters. But he's super brave and has an incredible jump and is a great mover,” she said.
She’s also competing sales horse Luck Be A Lady, a warmblood mare, in the 1.30m jumpers. “She's not everyone's ride, but she's quite fun. She's pretty game. She likes to go fast,” Max said.
For her personal riding goals, Max would love to own her own jumper again someday and make it to the Grand Prix level, but right now she’s enjoying not having any bills.
In the age of social media, where there’s always someone younger and more successful, jumping bigger jumps or riding a more expensive horse, it can sometimes feel like you’re behind in your career, and Max acknowledges that but has realized that the path she’s taken working for others and gathering as much knowledge as she can about training and horsemanship is serving her well. She enjoys the training aspect the most and seeing the young horses she works with learn and succeed.
“It's interesting working for other people because you see how everyone does their own things, and you pick out what you like about it,” she said. “Training has always just been fulfilling for me. I really do enjoy riding the young ones. Sometimes they're so challenging, and it's so frustrating; but when it clicks, it's so rewarding. Greg has a lot of sale horses, and the hope is you find the person that wants to keep them. You want them to find good homes with good people and their person.”
Will added that Max’s intuitive hands-on nature with the horses she works with means each horse has its own program tailored toward its individual needs. “Max recognizes that every horse doesn't fit in the same box, and she's very good at figuring that out and tailoring every program to every horse—whether it's hunters, jumpers, young horses, client horses or sale horses,” he said. “I enjoy being able to watch as she's taken some of the horses through the levels. I'm very proud of everything she's done. She's come a very long way.”
Follow Max on Instagram @maxsuffy1
Photos by Kacy Brown, kacybrownphotography.com
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