Surrounded by brown, tan and spotted giants weighing thousands of pounds of pure muscle, a petit woman guides the animals with a calm voice and gentle movements. Always wearing a baseball cap, peering up at each creature, Karen Topping brings a sense of welcoming to all around her.
Topping is the owner of Sonrisa Stables and trainer with the Sonrisa Equestrian Team for girls ages 8 to 18.
Atop these prancing beasts are young girls learning to captain each movement their horse makes. One horse may be shy and needing extra coaxing to move along; one might be excited and anxious to show off; and another might be timid and afraid. Like every person, each horse has its own personality.
“Everything we do in the arena is in preparation for the real world,” Topping said.
Topping instructs riders how to give the horses what they need to be successful in the arena and anywhere else they will ride; Perhaps the rider needs to relax the reins or hold tighter. Maybe the rider should allow the horse to “giddy-up out their jitters.” It all depends on the horses’ behavior—and Topping’s trained eye can see it all.
The training program at Sonrisa Stables at Red Fox Farm in Gilroy is a rigorous one.
When students show up Saturday mornings, they retrieve the horses from a pasture, groom and saddle them. Chores around the barn are divided and each girl has her own responsibilities and is expected to fulfill her obligations.
And the students are just fine with that.
“This is a really nice place,” said Jessica Beyer, 13 of Gilroy. “Karen is very passionate about teaching us about horses. I’ve learned so much.”
Parents, including Jessica’s mom Cheryl Beyer, appreciate the hands-on training the girls receive, which leads to practical knowledge and more experience.
“Other places it was more of: you come, you do a lot of groundwork, you play a lot of games and you didn’t spend a lot of time on the horse,” Cheryl said. “Here, you get a lot more practice. … What Karen teaches is very much applicable to life. She makes the extrapolation of ‘OK, when you are in a life situation you are going to come up against people who want to push your boundaries or ask you to do things that you shouldn’t do. But you can just set the boundaries and this is how you do it.’ Working with the horses is practice for that. That for me, as a mom, is the most powerful thing about this program.”
Crystel Mocek, an alumna of the Sonrisa Equestrian Team now studying animal science at UC Davis, rode with Topping beginning at 9 years old.
“At the barn everyone was like family,” Mocek said. “(Karen) also put together a lot of fun activities like drill team, team penning and little contests that kept everyone learning new things and having fun with each other. You could always count on her to be there to help you with anything and she genuinely cared for everyone and their horses.”
Another alumna, Madeline Cohen, is currently a sophomore at Cazenovia College in central New York and working toward a degree in business management with a specialization in equine studies, certifications in leadership and equine breeding and reproduction.
“I use Karen’s holistic approach to riding regularly,” Cohen said. “I like to think about the horse and rider as one functioning unit. If the horse or the rider were having any sort of problems, Karen knew right away and knew how to explain topics easily so the rider could then try to explain it to the horse through riding techniques.”
In 2010, Topping started the Mustang Makeover Program with her Sonrisa Equestrian Team. The team traveled to the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management Litchfield Wild Horse and Burro Facility near Susanville and hand-picked wild mustangs to train. These mustangs had never been handled, ridden or interacted with people before, but Topping’s team was up for the challenge. The girls had 60 days to make the yearlings halter-gentle and adoption ready—or the horses would return to the corral.
Every one of the wild mustangs was adopted. To date, the team has successfully adopted out 30 horses.
“I love what I do. I love teaching,” said Topping, who trains riders in everything from Western and bareback, to English, cross-country and jumping. “It’s important to me to figure out each individual person to help them excel to the best of their ability.”
