Page 20 - AEF-AlbertaBits_Summer-2025

Miller says. “In Spain and Portugal, they
use the same horse for everything from
dressage to cow work. They created this
discipline around their ability to do this.”
Working equitation competitions
feature four disciplines — dressage, ease of
handling trial, speed test and cattle trial —
that each test aspects of horsemanship.
“Working equitation is a breath of fresh
air for the horsemanship and the equestrian
community in Canada,” Miller explains.
“It’s allowing people to participate in a
sport that is very much multi-faceted with
respect to what we do with our horses.
“The fact that we go from a dressage test
through an ease of handling of obstacles
into a speed round and then work cattle
takes us through virtually all the gamuts of
riding or equestrian horsemanship that we
involve ourselves in in Canada.”
Growing up in the small hamlet of
Carvel, just west of Stony Plain, Darcy
Henkel has fond memories of horseback
riding in the mountains near Rocky
Mountain House in addition to competing
at gymkhana shows (timed racing games
around obstacles). Now living in Kelowna,
B.C., Henkel conducts clinics to prepare
riders for working equitation competitions.
“It’s starting to be a sport that draws
people from the dressage world, from
the eventing world,” says Henkel, who
competes in the discipline in addition to
serving as president of WECan. “We’re
starting to get a lot of riders who are
interested coming from that background
… some jumpers that don’t want to
jump anymore. Maybe they’ve lost their
confidence or their horse isn’t physically
capable of that type of work and they see
this sport, which offers enough challenges
throughout a two-day or three-day weekend
that it intrigues people.”
Kendra Martland
Kerry Marit, who owns and operates
Marit Stables north of Cochrane, learned
about working equitation six years ago and
she’s been hooked ever since.
“I come from a high dressage
background and I saw the sport in Utah
for the first time and I loved it,” says
Marit, who will also head to Armstrong,
B.C., for the World Association of Working
Equitation (WAWE) Qualifiers in late June
to attempt to earn a spot to compete for
Team Canada. “I came home and went,
okay, that’s what I’m going to be doing.
I understand now that it’s (one of) the
fastest growing equestrian sports in North
America. It’s a very new sport, even in
Europe where it originated.”
Growing the sport at the grassroots
level is a priority for WECan, which is in
the process of entering into an agreement
with the Alberta Equestrian Federation
(AEF) with the goal of creating a Wild Rose
Working Equitation Provincial Circuit.
“We have an agreement with AEF
that we have our own set of rules and
officials, but that’s as far as it goes right
now,” says Kendra Martland, who’s one
of two regional directors for Working
Equitation Alberta (WEALTA), a grassroots
organization that promotes the sport in
“We’re already on track to get more this year. We’ve had huge
growth in Alberta and we’ve been filling our shows for the last
couple of years now and have had huge wait-lists.”
—Kendra Martland
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Alberta Bits Summer 2025