Liane is a Canadian who relocated to England in her 20s, carrying her passion for horses with her when she moved.
Despite growing up in a not particularly horsey family, her love of horses manifested early, culminating in every available hour spent at a city yard in the middle of Toronto’s park system in the Don Valley, where she found a stable to take lessons and hang around as a non-paid “stable bum”, mucking out, leading trail rides and doing in-hand pony rides for youngsters; anything that meant she could be near a horse.
She also watched eagerly as the horses of the Metropolitan Toronto Mounted Police division had a stable next door and practiced their “musical rides” in the big outdoor school which was shared between the riding horses and the police horses.
Whilst other stable bums were begging for the next chance to ride a horse, she was at the office desk begging for a horse she could take out in hand to graze because she liked to spend time observing them, even when they weren’t doing much at all.
Liane found Masterson when a friend was doing the advanced course and asked if she could use her horse, Max, for practice. Watching that session, she was hooked and soon after signed up for a weekend seminar with Jim at Horse World in Bristol.
She didn’t look back, next signing up for the Advanced course with Jim in Gloucester in December 2012, knowing she’d found her long-sought path to work with horses in a way that was horse led and learning to work with the subtle signals to help release tension in a relaxed state, with an alert and careful eye on the responses from the horse to guide the session.