Minnesota professional trainer Lainie DeBoer keeps a 4-H trophy she won at the 1978 Ramsey County Fair with her pony, Piglet in her barn right alongside all her World Show globes.

“It’s there to remind me where I came from and how far I’ve come,” she said.

And it’s been a journey. Since launching her own training operation shortly after getting married in 1993, DeBoer has trained over 50 American Quarter Horse Association World Champions. She has had two All-Around Amateur Champions at the AQHA World Show and four Reserve All-Around Amateur and Amateur Select Champions at the World Show. Many of her youth and amateur clients have captured All-Around honors at the Quarter Horse Congress.

Like most trainers, success didn’t come all at once. DeBoer’s mother had a horse and always took her young daughter to the barn with her.

“I was literally a barn rat,” she admitted. “I loved it there and eventually started riding.”

But as a youngster she also enjoyed speed skating. A two-time National Speed Skating Champion, she was the youngest skater to compete at the Olympic Trials at age 14.

After high school Lainie started working for her trainer, Cody Williams, as a groom and a braider as she continued to show her Amateur horse. At the end of the year, as she promised her parents, Lainie went to college.

“I spent a year riding and commuting to school in Minnesota, but another riding opportunity came up in Wisconsin,” she explained. “I packed my bags and transferred to Carroll University and had a full-time riding job for Donald Cheska. I exercised all the horses that came home that were not on the road, and helped with sale horses.”

She finished her studies in 1992, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Business with an emphasis in Management.

It was there that she met her husband, Karl, at a pep rally.

“I was doing a homecoming skit with my sorority and he was on the football team,” she said. “When they announced the team players, I basically picked him out of a line-up.”

They were married the next year and just a few months later she decided to start her own training operation because “I wanted to be in charge of everything and have total control,” she explained. “I had worked for several people out of multiple facilities and felt like it was my time to go out on my own and take that responsibility on. I wanted to get everyone under my own roof instead of being all over the place.”

The 22-stall heated barn, Lainie owns along with her parents, is located on 46 acres in Forest Lake, Minnesota. The full-service facility includes a 72-by-200-foot indoor arena, an outdoor arena and nine pastures.

DeBoer specializes in Working Hunter, Equitation Over Fences, Equitation and Hunter Hack. She competes both on the USEF/ USHJA circuit and the AQHA circuit and has a mix of Quarter Horses and Warmbloods in her barn.

Lainie also has a handful of riders that she trains. Several of them don’t live in Minnesota, but either keep their horses with her or have them at home and meet her at the show. DeBoer coaches Amateur and Youth riders and teaches clinics in Europe. She describes her training philosophy as “simple.”

“My job is to listen to each horse and train them as individuals with different needs, or point out weaknesses in my riders and help them strengthen their riding to be the best horseman they can become,” she explained.

Over the years, she has had the opportunity to train and/or show such decorated horses as Skips Eagle Scout, Regal Intentions, GI Jazz, A Chanceof Blueskies, Royality In Blue, Larks Happy Days, Flamingo Bay, Larks Big Leaguer, Naturally Broke, What I Know Now, Whenitallgoesouth, PS Rusty Bay Doc, Regal Tequila, DGS Don’t Tell Tails, Into The Blue, Imasgoodasitgets, Only Royal Blue, Dive, Exclusively URS QRHC and Believe In Me.

She has many credits to her name but says the one that means the most to her is the very first AQHA World Championship she earned on Regal Intentions.

“That was a mare I had trained as a 3- year-old and my mom picked out,” she explained. “When she was 4, she won the Junior Hunter Hack. I had worked really hard to for many years, and finally won a World Championship on a horse I cultivated. It was a big goal of mine, and what better way than to do it with my mom.”

When she is not riding, Lainie enjoys spending time with her family, including daughters, Grace and Emma, and doing yoga.

“There are so many things that relate to riding through my yoga practice. I love it,” she said. “For example, my yoga mat is split down the middle with a straight line, one side dark brown, the other cream colored. After my practice, I would pull the yoga mat as tight as I could to make it straight when I rolled it up. It would always list off to the side and at the end be totally crooked and it made me nuts. With each try I pulled tighter it got worse. One day after an especially hard class I was so tired I just rolled it up without thinking or forcing it. It was perfectly straight. When I sat there with astonishment, I realized I didn’t force it or pull it tight I gave it room. So, I thought that was a perfect way to think about how I train horses. You have to give these horses or even clients for that matter, room to move. They cannot be forced or have a lot of restriction. Yoga can teach you many things about life, you just have to listen.”

Open Profiles are part of InStride Edition’s editorial content. If you know someone who would make a good subject for a professional profile email Corrine Borton, Editor, at: CorrineBorton@InStrideEdition.com.