By Tafra Donberger
Portraits by Susan McClafferty
When Sandra Beaulieu was a child, her daycare went on a day trip to a local farm. Seeing a horse cantering up the driveway of the farm was enough for Sandra to insist on returning. Now, Sandra is accomplished in training and dressage, and she’s even published a guide to creating freestyles. But what makes Sandra’s equestrian career unique is how she combines her riding and trick training with the creative arts: She creates paintings not just of horses but with horses—teaching horses to paint, or putting brush to canvas herself as she literally canters by. She helps others tap into their creative spirit and have more fun with their horses, too, with her business Begin The Dance, and people line up to meet and snap a photo with her at events like BreyerFest. And it all started—and continues—with the love of horses inspired by that childhood daytrip. 
Sandra’s mother, Peggy Beaulieu, agreed to riding lessons after that first fateful meeting, which began with Western and transitioned to Pony Club and dressage. Sandra joined the Isaac Royal Academy of Classical Dressage in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, which had an immersive program for aspiring Olympians that gave students the opportunity to ride and train multiple horses and compete. Rather than having to purchase and develop a single horse, Sandra had as many as 10 horses available to her. “I rode obsessively through my teenage years and into my 20s,” Sandra said. “I was a very serious competitor!”
That devotion earned Sandra her USDF Bronze and Silver medals and numerous other distinctions as she shaped the beginnings of a career dedicated to training and competing. Then an accident changed her trajectory. “I was on a big warmblood, and I took my jacket off and handed it to someone,” Sandra recalled. “It must have been the way he saw it, because it scared him and he leapt straight into the air and launched me up. I landed on my tailbone so hard, it broke my tailbone, I couldn’t move my left leg and I suffered a concussion.”
Her injuries took a long time to heal, and though it certainly wasn’t the first time she’d come off a horse, her body combatted her desire to ride. To add insult to injury, two of the horses Sandra had been competing with had died, making the summer of 2008 a challenging time for her. Her ensuing recovery process, however, was what helped her to connect to her artistic side and follow a new life path.
An Island Friesian
Inspired by Sabine Shut-Kery, who at the time was performing with Friesians, Sandra fittingly found her very own Friesian only a few weeks after deciding that artistic riding was more important to her than competition. Her grandparents had a summer home on Vinalhaven Island, a small island off the coast of Maine where her family would spend summers, and that is where she first met Douwe.
“He was there only three weeks and they had to get rid of him,” Sandra recalled. “I was able to go see him. He was a little crazy, but I had a feeling it was environmental for him.” Sandra took the Friesian gelding on trial, and as soon as he was in a normal barn, surrounded by other horses, it became clear that while the horse, Douwe, had a multitude of issues from his solitary time on the island and a troubled history, he was not truly dangerous. Sandra committed herself to rehabilitating Douwe, teaching him basic dressage and discovering that the gelding loved trick training.
As Douwe came out of his shell, Sandra used three basic tricks—how to smile, how to pick up an object and how to touch on command—to teach him to use paintbrushes and create his own art. “I taught Douwe to touch a ball on a stick,” Sandra explained. “Then I taught him how to hold a brush that had a rope on it. Then he needed to lift his head on command, like a smile or a yes. With positive association, it eventually clicked!”
The trick training went hand in hand with the liberty training that Sandra used to develop her relationship with him. “He wasn’t a people-oriented horse,” she said. “It took thousands of hours to unlock his personality!” Over the years, Douwe improved under saddle and truly took a shine to performing with Sandra.
“He loved the Spanish walk,” Sandra continued. “And he really liked to wiggle his lips and make people laugh!” Douwe also enjoyed the painting process and had begun painting using an oversized easel before he passed away unexpectedly in 2020.
Art on Horseback
Though Douwe was Sandra’s main partner for many years, she acquired a second partner named Rovandio, known as Rovy, a Lippizaner-Andalusian-Thoroughbred cross that she had known since his birth at Isaac Royal. Sandra had helped to raise and start him under saddle; he belonged to her former mother-in-law, Bethanne Ragaglia, and joined Sandra’s performative program in 2010, where he quickly took to the freedom and fun that liberty and trick training provided.
Rovy initially wasn’t as interested in the painting process as Douwe was, but that led Sandra to wonder if anyone had ever painted while riding a horse. Knowing that Rovy’s strong dressage background would allow her to complete the movements she uses to put paint on canvas while actively riding, she created “Art on Horseback,” riding Rovy through advanced dressage movements while creating art on a giant canvas.
The paintings they create together fit fluidly into Sandra’s artistic style, which is a minimal and abstract, a sort of “Zen” style. “I don’t do realistic details,” she explained. “I paint the flow of the mane, the flow of the horse, while cantering on a horse. There are so many variables. I don’t always land the brush where I want, or we’re moving too fast or too slow. Because there is so much variety, it keeps it interesting!”
Though she lost Douwe unexpectedly, Sandra and Rovy continue to make art and perform. The years she spent developing her relationship with both her horses—she became Rovy’s official owner in 2018—continue to be the basis on which she operates her business, Begin The Dance, which is designed to help anyone get in touch with their creative side with their horses.
“My goal is to help my students end their ride feeling like they had a good connection with their horse,” Sandra said. “Most people I teach are not competitive; they crave improvement and they want to have fun with their horse!”
Riding to Music
Sandra’s creativity extends beyond the unique art she’s done with her horses: Performing dressage to music has been a passion of hers since her time at Isaac Royal, where she had been involved in an equestrian theater that performed shows in costume to music.
She saw a need in the dressage community for knowledge and help in creating freestyle dressage programs, so she began writing a blog to help her fellow riders, then created an e-book on freestyle choreography. Working on her blog and e-book inspired her to contact Trafalgar Publishers, subsequently going through all the steps of shaping her knowledge into a hardback book. “I tried to put everything I knew into the book,” Sandra said. “I touched on riding to music for training, exhibition riding and how to create a musical freestyle for competition.”
“Freestyle: The Ultimate Guide to Riding, Training and Competing to Music” addresses the technicalities such as music copyright and finding a horse’s BPM (beats per minute), but the book is a physical representation of Sandra’s desire to see more people ride to music and bond with their horses in dynamic new ways.
“I find that riding to music helps the rider feel the rhythm of the horse,” she explained. “A lot of horses love music and get into the rhythm as well. They understand performing!”
Sandra had spent years moving between her base in Maine and the warmth of winters in Florida, but made the move in 2019 to Florida permanently as the head trainer at Little River Friesians in Havana, Florida, before moving to Dover Farm, a private facility. She also became a mobile trainer, traveling to her clients and sharing her knowledge with those who might otherwise be unable to train at a dressage barn.
Without her own facility to maintain, Sandra thrives in what she calls the “entrepreneurial minimalist lifestyle,” focused on what’s important to her. “It took me a long time to learn that if you can be in tune with your inner child with happy, playful energy, the horses love it,” she said. “It’s so easy to get caught up in things that aren’t important or helpful. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, do what you need for yourself and follow your own dreams!”
For more information, visit beginthedance.com
Photos by Susan McClafferty, www.mareishmedia.com
