Tanisha Ryan and Jembrae Rattle N Hum. Image by Amy-Sue Alston.
At 18 years old, Tanisha Ryan was told to walk away from Rixon. Now, at 24, she and Rixon have won two Medium Tour Championships and are knocking on the door of Grand Prix.
Having trained her own quarter horse, Northern Lights to Grand Prix at 18 and had the chance to compete a more educated horse at Small Tour, Tanisha felt ready to find a talented young horse with the hopes to take them through to Young Rider classes and beyond. With the search in Australia not proving fruitful, Tanisha went to New Zealand where she met Jembrae Rattle N Hum, fondly known as Rixon in 2019. He was eight years old and was the most talented horse Tanisha had ridden.
“He was extremely powerful in the most wonderful way,” Tanisha recalls. “From the first ride, I knew he had a strong personality – the kind you actually want for Grand Prix.”
A YOUNG RIDER AND A DREAM
“We were struggling to find anything that ticked all the boxes,” Tanisha says. “Affordable, talented, and something I could actually learn to train.”
As a then-seven-year-old, Rixon ticked all the boxes despite being a bit behind for his age.
“He was fun. He was powerful. There was so much scope there,” Tanisha smiles. “But we also knew he was going to be a long project.” That proved to be an understatement.
Tanisha Ryan and Rixon at trot up at Willinga Park. Image by Amy-Sue Alston.
WHEN THINGS FELL APART
In the early days, the combination looked promising. The pair won their first local start together with a 69% at Medium. But as the work became more demanding, cracks began to show.
“He’d get irritable during changes, unhappy during collected work,” Tanisha explains. “At first, it was subtle – then it wasn’t.”
What followed was a terrifying and confusing period. Rixon became increasingly unpredictable, rearing without warning, unhappy both under saddle and on the ground.
“We checked everything,” Tanisha says. “Ulcers, legs, x-rays, body work. We couldn’t find anything.”
The more they tried to develop him correctly though the levels, the worse his behaviour became. “I felt like I was doing the wrong thing by him,” Tanisha admits. “I didn’t have the experience to handle a horse like that, and I didn’t have consistent guidance.”
At times, it felt hopeless. “People told me to sell him. To give up. That he’d never be right,” she says. “I was terrified of failing him.”
A STEP FORWARD
Eventually, someone suggested contacting Riley Alexander – a rider who knew Rixon earlier in his career.
“He was the first bit of sunshine we’d had in months,” Tanisha smiles. “He didn’t judge. He didn’t dismiss us. He just said, ‘Bring him up. Let’s work it out.’”
After months of investigation and trial and error, Riley raised a possibility the vets had originally shot down: kissing spine. After x-rays had been taken, Rixon only showed moderate kissing spine, and a bute (Phenylbutazone, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) trial was administered, but little improvement was shown. The vets were not convinced injecting him with cortisone, as with the bute trial deemed inaffective there was little evidence to suggest that cortisone would help, but Tanisha wasn’t convinced it should not be dismissed.
“If there’s even a small chance he’s uncomfortable, isn’t it our responsibility to address it?” she argued.
They proceeded with injections – not expecting miracles but wanting to remove every possible source of pain. Rixon showed brief improvement. He was able to cope with more collected work and produced a strong performance at Sydney CDI in 2022 in the CDI Young Rider Individual Test, where he finished third with 68.33%. However, the issues soon returned.
“We went backwards again. The rearing came back, along with the irritability, unhappiness.”
That’s when Tanisha made the hardest decision of all.
Tanisha and Rixon competing at Willinga Park Dressage by the Sea. Image by Amy-Sue Alston.
A COMPLETE RESET
“I couldn’t push him anymore,” she says. “So, we stopped.”
Rixon was given another injection and turned out for six months. No pressure. No expectations. Just time.
When he came back into work early 2023, the transformation was immediate.
“He never reared again,” Tanisha says. “He was happy, willing, he want to work.”
The behind-the-leg horse disappeared, his weight improved, and the resistance vanished. “It was like he was finally comfortable in his own body. He was excited to come out of the paddock.”
The vets recommended that considering the massive change that six monthly injections may just be the treatment that Rixon needed – combined with the time to let his body reset.
REBUILDING TRUST
The physical improvement was only half the story. The real work was mental. He could now handle the work with ease and the Prix St Georges and Intermediate I lines at home were foot perfect – but at competitions it was a different story.
“He would get into the warm-up and get hotter and hotter and eventually just shut me out. In the test he was constantly on edge. He had so many negative competition memories,” Tanisha explains. “We had to rebuild his trust completely.”
Whilst most people would think more competitions and longer warm-ups would be the way forward for Rixon, it was about learning to take a breath.
“A close friend recommended that we try to teach him to decompress,” Tanisha shares. “We used the Hippo Health’s Spook Buster. I highly recommend their range, and my entire competition team uses their products. For Rixon, the Spook Buster was a way to help take the edge off.
“We also would lead him to and from the competition arenas to give him extra reassurance. We cut down the warm-up, so he didn’t have the time to stress himself out and after each test we do a really long cool down of stretchy trot and walk to allow him to fully relax before getting off.”
The plan started to speak for itself with Rixon getting more and more confident in the arena. He started to produce the quality of work he was showing at home, a highlight being Sydney CDI in 2025 where they finished second in the CDI1* Intermediate I behind Brett Parbery on 67.529%.
THE NEXT LEVEL
Growing in confidence in the arena and happy working at home, Tanisha started to think he was ready for a new challenge in his work.
“The only reason I decided to start chipping away at the Grand Prix work was I also was very lucky to have purchased Prequel off Vanessa Way, who is a Grand Prix horse. I ended up gaining a lot of experience in the Grand Prix movements, on how they’re trained and how they’re created, which gave me more experience in terms of timing and reassurance. After Rixon’s success at Sydney CDI, I thought to myself, he’s got so much more in there, he’s comfortable with the work, he enjoys his work, so why not give it a go?”
The plan was to never compete Grand Prix, just make training more interesting – as Rixon had a very active mind that needed to be occupied.
“I started with the ones; they were a mess! It was legs everywhere and chaos. Then out of pure patience and determination, Riley and I kept working on them and he started picking them up.”
The piaffe and passage was a bit of a concern with his kissing spine as Tanisha didn’t want to aggravate it. Even with starting slowly and carefully, Rixon wasn’t sure. Slowly he started to sit and then one day it began to click.
Tanisha Ryan and Prequel competing at Willinga Park Dressage by the Sea. Image by Simon Scully
“He was so difficult to begin to compress originally, if he did short steps. We kept reassuring him that he was capable and then when he realised he wasn’t going to be in pain from sitting and compressing, he was like ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been made to do.’ He loved it!”
In a four-month period, Rixon went from having no idea and no desire to even try the Grand Prix work to being happy to show it off any chance he got.
“It wasn’t just about him being able to be a great dressage horse. He was happy in every way and the more we developed him the more he improved. At one point Riley turned around to me and went, ‘You know, he’s actually kind of good!’” Tanisha laughs.
“After that we didn’t really talk about it and Rixon kept improving in leaps and bounds; he was happy to piaffe almost stationery, the ones were a party trick, and he could passage on any line anywhere I wanted. Riley then suggested maybe we should take him out.”
MEDIUM TOUR DEBUTS
Tanisha entered The Saddlefitter Brisbane CDI in September 2025 at Medium Tour level with Rixon with absolutely zero expectations – just the goal to keep the horse happy and healthy.
“I was very nervous about it,” she admits. “At this point Rixon had been with me for six years and I’d say more than 80% of that time he had been extremely difficult in every way. I was worried this could undo the hard work we’d done getting him here but on the other hand I knew he loves the work so much – that’s the one thing I hadn’t expected from him, that he would want to do the work.
“The first test [Intermediate A] I went in and I felt like I could do it all. He stayed with me and it was very good work for our first go and he came away with 65%. I couldn’t have been more thrilled!”
Rixon then backed it up with another rideable test in the Inter B for 63% and was officially a Medium Tour horse.
The plan was to take it week by week and Tanisha set her sights on the Carlton Performance Horses Dressage Extravaganza at Boneo in November 2025. In addition to doing the Inter A and B tests, Tanisha also entered an Inter II.
Rixon starting to show relaxation in the arena. Image by Amy-Sue Alston.
“Much to my surprise he ended up being just as amazing as my Grand Prix horse in terms of putting his best hood forward!”
They came away with third in their first Inter II with 65.588%. Then won the Intermediate A with 68.824%. “I cried when I found out he had won the Intermediate A. This is a horse I had struggled to ride and then struggled to get over 65% in the Prix St Georges and suddenly in his second ever Inter A, he’d won the class with almost 69%,” Tanisha smiles.
They backed up their win the next day with 65.5% in the Inter B for first again and the overall championship.
“It was astounding,” Tanisha says. “He was a good kid. In the Inter B there was some small mistakes. I was too relaxed to be honest. He did 11 ones instead of 7, being an overachiever. It was honestly such a surreal competition; we won our first rug together, which was a dream come true! It was one of the biggest moments of my entire career because he was a horse that everybody, and I mean literally everybody, had told me that I should get rid of, stop riding or that he’s not good enough… and now we were flourishing at Medium Tour and knocking on the door of Grand Prix.”
VICTORIAN DRESSAGE FESTIVAL
After their success, Tanisha made a plan – another Medium Tour competition and an Inter II test to qualify her for the Under 25 Grand Prix classes for 2026. They entered Rixon for the High Horse Ulcer Amour + Victorian Dressage Festival and he continued to shine.
Tanisha Ryan and her long time coach and mentor, Riley Alexander, celebrating their success at Sydney CDI 2024. Image by Rodney’s Photography
They had a hiccup in the Inter II with too many changes, but finished just out of the placings with 64.314, meaning they qualified for Grand Prix. They then shone again in the Inter A with first place and 67.304% and also won the Inter B with 66.081%.
The Freestyle was also another challenge for Rixon: “The Freestyle had never been our strong suit. Up until this point he always got too hot and we’d make mistakes or he’d get scared by the crowd. So it was a dream to ride into the indoor for the Freestyle and have him with me every step of the way. He was not stressed; he had his entire trust in me – even if he was still scared. He shied at the judges going around the arena and I turned the wrong way, but we still pulled out a brilliant Freestyle. When the score came up as 70% I couldn’t believe it! The cherry on top was just leaving the indoor on a long rein with a relaxed and happy horse.”
MORE THAN A DIAGNOSIS
For Tanisha, Rixon’s journey has become about far more than ribbons, scores or championships.
“Kissing spine is still often treated like the nail in the coffin,” she says. “People hear it and assume that’s it – the horse is done. But that just hasn’t been our experience at all.”
Rixon’s condition is now managed with routine injections every six months and careful, thoughtful training. There has been no surgery, no intensive rehabilitation, and no drastic intervention – just consistency, patience and a commitment to listening to what the horse was saying.
Central to the transformation was the unwavering support of coach Riley Alexander, whose willingness to keep searching for answers and adapting the plan never faltered. “He never gave up on us,” Tanisha smiles.
Today the once combative partnership now stands on the cusp of a new chapter, qualified for the Under 25 Grand Prix and brimming with possibility. More importantly, Rixon is happy, confident and eager for the work – the very qualities that once felt out of reach.EQ
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