Tango trotted boldly around the arena, mane flying, head upright and regal, like a chessboard knight come to life. The chestnut-colored gelding, an American saddlebred, circled the ring pulling a two-wheeled buggy, his high-stepping legs pumping like pistons.

"Steady! Watch your speed!" shouted Jaisen von Ballmoos, head trainer of Fairview Stable in Granville, N.Y., from the center of the ring. "Get more horse without going fast."

Meghan von Ballmoos, Jaisen's wife, translated the command for her guest: Show off the horse's brilliance and height of motion while containing his exuberance. Horses are acutely sensitive to the driver's emotions, especially in the excitement of a show, she explained, and they can feel nervousness though the reins like electricity.

Seated in the buggy was Lynn Schweikert, who'd never driven a horse under harness until a few years ago, when Jaisen and Meghan found her Tango on a Kentucky horse farm. The 74-year-old now makes the three-hour drive from her farm in Skaneateles, N.Y., to train at Fairview Stable once a week. It's a long haul from the Finger Lakes, Schweikert said, but worth it.

"I've been showing Tango for two years. Last year he was undefeated at all the shows," she boasted. In August, Schweikert will compete in the World's Championship Horse Show in Louisville, Ky. "I wouldn't bring my horses to anyone but Jaisen," she said.

The name von Ballmoos has an impressive national reputation in the world of elite show horses, especially American saddlebreds and Morgan horses —Vermont's official state animal. Jaisen, 44, and Meghan, 41, have years of experience rearing world champions and training top-notch equestrians, amateur and professional alike.

Jaisen, in particular, has an uncanny ability to recognize what a young horse will excel at, then match it with the right rider. Long before a competitor enters the ring in show attire — usually the formal jacket, derby, jodhpurs and riding boots that make horse shows look like black-tie affairs — Jaisen has spent countless hours conditioning the animal into top physical and mental form. In a profession where clients can spend considerable sums on their blue-ribbon dreams, he knows how to deliver optimal performances.

Two of the von Ballmooses' most accomplished students are their daughters, Emma and Madeline, or Maddie. Because the girls grew up in horse barns, they've mastered many different "seats," or riding disciplines — saddle seat, western, hunt, jumper, equitation. Their versatility has made them very successful competitors on the national circuit.

At 16, Maddie has already won 20 national and world titles. Recently, she was one of 12 riders chosen for the U.S. team that will compete in December at the 2024 International Saddle Seat Equitation World Cup in Parys, South Africa. For Jaisen, a native of Capetown, the event will be a homecoming of sorts.

Emma, 18, who's finishing her first year at Cornell University, has won 34 world titles and is in high demand as an amateur rider, meaning that she cannot get paid for training and showing. Some of the country's top breeders and trainers of Morgans and saddlebreds regularly fly her around the U.S. to compete on their million-dollar horses. Known as "catch riding," this practice can challenge even the most experienced equestrian, who may get little or no training time on the animal before showing it.

"Some of the horses that Emma catch rides are not that great, but she gets them to win," said Bonnie Sogoloff, 80, a retired professional horse trainer from South Burlington and a three-time world champion in another riding discipline, English pleasure. "She has that ... fierce competitiveness, and she's as smart as a whip. So you want her on your horse."

In 2021, when Sogoloff retired and sold her horse barn, Cedar Spring Farm in Charlotte, she referred her longtime clients to Fairview Stable. She knew that the von Ballmooses would take good care of their horses, she said, and that her clients would have fun and do well with them in competition.

"Not everyone has the feel for it that Jaisen and Meghan do," Sogoloff added. "It takes a certain dedication and grit to handle it well, and they certainly have that."

Competitive Fire

On a gray April morning, Meghan took a break from her chores in the 20-stall horse barn to show a reporter around. At her heels were two dogs: Morgan, a boxer; and Dolly, a wheezy, ottoman-shaped bulldog.

The von Ballmooses live 30 minutes away in Manchester Center and don't own the 80-acre horse farm, which sits on a grassy hillside just across the New York state line near Whitehall. It belongs to Al Garner, a retired investment banker from New York City. In 2017, the von Ballmooses moved their business from Manchester Center to Fairview Stable, where Jaisen also runs Garner's breeding operation.

In a paddock behind the training arena, a mare named Equinox Premonition stood watch over her week-old foal, which was napping in the grass. When the von Ballmooses moved to Vermont from Connecticut in 2007, they worked at Ivan Beattie's East of Equinox Farm in Manchester Center, one of Vermont's oldest breeding barns — hence the mare's name and lineage.

"Morgan, I would not do that if I were you," Meghan warned her dog, who'd crept into the paddock to sniff the foal curiously.

"She's a very sweet mare, and I would trust her around anybody," Meghan explained of the watchful mother. "But she definitely takes her job very seriously."

As does Jaisen. When the mare appeared ready to give birth, he slept in the barn for several nights in a row to make sure he would be there to help her deliver the foal. "Too risky to leave it to nature and chance," he said.

"We live for doing horse things. That's all we ever do," Meghan added, not as a complaint but as a statement of fact. "It's a nice way to live and all that, but there's no rest for the weary."

During a break from his training, Jaisen talked about the commitment required for his family's success. At horse shows, it's not unusual for them to work from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Emma, who's been showing horses since she was 6, spent her spring break at the barn putting them through their paces for hours each day.

"We've sacrificed a lot, and it's hard work," Jaisen said. "If I win a class, I never come out thinking, That was good enough. I'm always thinking, I can do better. That's what drives me to come here and do this every single day."

But Jaisen's most dramatic display of determination occurred well outside the show arena. On October 2, 2018, he was driving to the Grand National & World Championship Morgan Horse Show in Oklahoma City, Okla., towing a trailer with six horses. On Interstate 44 near Joplin, Mo., one of the trailer's tires started to fray. Its metal thread hit the wheel well, heating it up.

Once Jaisen noticed the problem, he pulled over. The hay inside the trailer burst into flames, trapping the horses inside. "It was horrific," he said.

With cars speeding by at 75 miles per hour, Jaisen stopped traffic, flung open the trailer doors and ran inside to rescue the animals. To free them, he had to jump onto their backs and unclip metal clasps that scorched his hands. But because Jaisen had trained five of the six horses, they waited as he worked frantically to free them from the smoke and flames.

As Jaisen struggled to release the only horse he didn't know well, a mare named Spirit, she "double-barreled" him, kicking him in the chest with both hind legs. The blow would leave him seriously bruised and barely able to walk for a week.

"There are determined people — and then there's Jaisen," Meghan recalled. "There was no answer but getting those horses off."

Working through his injuries, Jaisen freed all six horses from the trailer. As he led each horse out of danger, drivers pulled over to help. Meghan distinctly remembers a small elderly man walking up to Black Dragon, a world champion Morgan that Emma was scheduled to show that year. The man removed his belt, casually looped it around the horse's neck and gently led him to safety.

One colt was so badly burned that Jaisen had to beg a highway patrolman to euthanize him on the spot. "I felt terrible," he said. Afterward, he knelt by the roadside and wept.

The von Ballmooses still get choked up recounting the story, and not just because of the horse they lost. As news of the disaster spread, the national horse community rallied to their aid. Veterinarians were waiting for the horses in Oklahoma City. In the days to come, packages of medication, creams and nutritional supplements for the wounded animals arrived from Vermont and elsewhere.

Because Jaisen and the surviving horses were too badly injured and traumatized to show that year, a little girl messaged Maddie, who had also planned to compete, and offered to let her show her own horse instead.

"This was for the world title. It's not like there's another one next week," Meghan said. "Everyone just came together and wanted the girls to have some silver lining. The Morgan people are like a family."

A Breed Apart

From the time he was old enough to walk, riding horses was all Jaisen wanted to do.

"I would ride anything that even looked like a horse," he said. "Finally, my parents said, 'Enough is enough. You're going for lessons.'"

From age 8 on, horses became Jaisen's life. He started with show jumpers, then progressed to saddle seat, an English riding discipline that showcases a horse's extravagant gaits.

As a teen, he made South Africa's national team for equitation, a discipline that focuses on the rider's ability to execute specific tasks elegantly. The selector told Jaisen afterward that he owed his spot to the need for a boy on the team — a remark that only pushed him to work harder.

In England, Jaisen was introduced to Morgans, a breed developed by Justin Morgan, an 18th-century schoolmaster from Randolph, Vt. Jaisen fell in love with Morgans and continued working with them after his move to the U.S. in 1999.

"What makes the Morgan so unique is its ability to be so versatile," he explained. At shows, Morgans can do jumping, carriage, western or saddle seat. "That's what makes the Morgan such a desirable horse for so many people. No matter what you get when you breed one, there will always be a job for them."

Meghan grew up in Rhode Island and also started riding when she was 8, mostly her mother's saddlebreds and Morgans. As a teen, she rode competitively and trained at a barn in Portsmouth, R.I., where Jaisen was working. The couple started dating and married in 2003.

Katie Olson, 31, is an amateur rider from Burlington who's won two national titles and a world title on Spirit, the Morgan horse that kicked Jaisen in the chest during the trailer fire.

"Jaisen risked everything to save my horse," said Olson, who until recently worked as events and ticketing manager at Seven Days. "So I was like, Oh, you're an incredible human, more than I even realized." When Spirit had an offspring, Olson named it Phoenix.

Olson used to stable her horses at Sogoloff's Cedar Spring Farm in Charlotte, but now she makes the two-hour drive from her home in Burlington to Fairview Stable twice a week to train her horses with Jaisen and Meghan.

"Originally I thought maybe I'd try to move them closer," she said. "But I have so much fun with the von Ballmoos family and I've learned so much in the last four years that it's worth it for me. I can't get that quality of instruction closer by, or know that my horses are being taken care of so well."

What sets the von Ballmooses apart from other trainers?

Olson said one difference lies in their ability to recommend subtle changes that a rider should make in, say, body weight or hand position. For example, Jaisen might tell her to soften her wrist to get the horse to do precisely what she wants.

"To see it from the ground and articulate it clearly to the rider ... is a really special gift," she added.

Though the von Ballmooses regularly compete at a world-class level with very expensive steeds, Jaisen said he's always specialized in putting juvenile and amateur riders in the ring. He and Meghan have built a good family business breeding and training horses, as well as teaching riding to people who have no interest in ever going pro.

"It costs the same to keep a bad horse as a good horse," Meghan said. "So you might as well have a good one."

Correction, April 24, 2024: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Emma von Ballmoos’ status as an equestrian. She competes an amateur rider.