s_vallentin 's Home Page

This is the "unofficial page" of Silke Vallentin and her beautiful horse BIKO .
Nothing special you think? WELL - SHE is sitting in a wheelchair and has trained this horse to do amazing things. By herself.

This page is designed by me, Katrin Feldmann, and although I try to be as objective as I can be, this is nevertheless a subjective page of a woman I very much admire.

I met her almost two years ago on a fair, the Equitana Germany. She impressed me sooo much that I waited until she was through with her show and went to talk to her. Imagine, talking with this wonderful woman for almost an hour, in the middle of a busy fair, with people running and shoving around, and there she was, totally quiet, like her horse on just a halter and a looong rope (who always brought me my bag which I had put aside - I learned later that Silke had a bag just like that in which she stored carrots and he brought this bag to me thinking there were carrots in it, too, and, not like any other horse I know did he try to open the bag, no, he just brought it to me and waited if I would get a carrot out of it).

I found out that she had an accident when she was a young girl, and never had much to do with horses. But she did not want to give up her dreams, although she sat in a wheelchair.

I do consider her the most amazing horse(wo)man I know, because she does all that DESPITE her sitting in the wheelchair. And NO, she did not choose a small pony, but a HUGE Frisian. Of course, the horse was not wild when she got it, but it was pretty little trained. The ideas of PNH helped her a lot, but I consider her to have come far and farther on her own way. How can any of us without her handicap even imagine how much ideas, innovation, flexibility, thought, timing and courage is necessary to achieve what she achieved.

IMHO, she is already now a brilliant horse trainer in her own rights. She used her handicap - rather than taking it as an excuse - to surpass the normal, the schemes, the fixed plans. Just think how good she would be if she did not have the handicap - can she be better? She would have a lot of things easier, but I am very sure she will achieve what she wants to.

What makes Silke and Bico especially precious to me is that they don´t just function. They both have live and spirit, they both learn along the way, get better constantly and don´t even pretend to be perfect, all-knowing. So many horse-gurus I observed, but hardly ever did I see a person who left the horse with that much spirit and self-confidence. If you ever have the chance to see both of them together, you will see a Partner-performance rather than a dominance performance. Now and then Bico will run an extra circle, I swear he is grinning and enjoying himself, before he returns to Silke to follow whatever she wants of him. He KNOWS she has no way to catch him if he chooses to be naughty, but he loves to work for and with her, and that´s why I love them. You won´t see a YESSIR-HOW-FAR-HOW-FAST, you will see joy and spirit and life and love. She started now to show others how to achieve that .

She is my inspiration. How can I say I-cannot-do-this - if she can? How can I give up if she doesn´t?

Last year I saw her on a clinic with Ray Hunt in Germany, and even Ray was very much impressed. He even drew his hat a couple of times in admiration, people who know him know he does this extremely rarely. Well, Silkes dream always was to ride Biko, to mount by herself, and though she could get Bico to lie down, she could not keep him reliably down on her own so that she crawl on his back. My friend Gail Ivey, hundreds of other spectators and me were witnesses when Ray helped her and - there she was - with a huge grin on her face - riding around in the arena, with a VERY proud horse. Believe it or not - there was hardly a dry eye left.

I will support her every step of the way and hope she will get a world-wide carreer - there is sooo much she can teach us, we, that we move around to much and still not get the results she gets - ON HER OWN - there is nobody helping her when she trains Biko.

As she has not yet net-access - I am doing this page for her - and also forwarding all mail send to her under: s_vallentin@geocities.com to her.
Watch this page grow and if you ever get the chance to see her in real life - GO!