Onwards Equine is run by both Sara and Chanel Shaffer. Chanel began riding English when she was 4 years old. She joined pony club and stayed extremely active through the C2 level before focusing solely on Three Day Eventing. Through her teenage years, Chanel was a working student for David and Lauren O’Brien and then spent four summers training under Pan American Gold Medalist, USDF Gold medalist, and R Judge Nanci Lindroth. Chanel Competed all over the east coast at the Preliminary level and was schooling Intermediate when she lost her event horse. She then went on to ride Steeplechase and retrain OTTB’s for the legendary D.M. Smithwhick. Today, Chanel is competing in Open Jumpers, with multiple championships under her belt in the last year alone.  Chanel is available for lessons, coaching, and training.

Sara will continue to start colts, train gaited horses and finish out show prospects. We are located just outside of Three Forks, MT, about 35 miles from Bozeman. We are dedicated to training and selling some of the best quality horses one can hope for. Due to our diversity we often have all types of performance horses available along with family trail horses and gaited horses.

We love competing and show in the local area in Western Pleasure, Hunt Seat, Showmanship, Trail, jumping, dressage, 3 day eventing, omoksees, barrel racing, Pole bending, ranch versatility, extreme trail, ranch sorting, working equitation, and mounted shooting. We like to train all our horses to be happy not only in the show ring but also on the trails and have great country around our area for trail riding.

Competing is a great way to socialize the horses and in 2010 Sara was the Ladies level one Montana Sate Mounted shooting champ.  In Feb 2012 one of our project horses took first at the Extreme Trail horse Challenge at the Gallatin Valley Winterfest and another took second in July 2012 at the Gallatin county fair trail horse battle. In 2015 another of our horses took a second at the extreme trail horse battle at the Gallatin winterfest. In 2013 Sara qualified for the Worlds in Mounted shooting and also took an overall championship in Pole Bending in the SMBRA, and an overall ladies Omoksee in the Three Forks Saddle Club. In 2014 she was one of 15 Trainers chosen nationwide to compete in the Ultimate X Showdown.  In 2015 our 3 year old Futurity colt won the all around green division and reserve 18 and over at the summit show series.

Sara has backed almost 1,000 horses in her training career, and have been at this as a professional for 26 years. In 2004 Sara had the opportunity to expand into gaited horses. She has since trained over 400 gaited horses, given lessons, done clinics and still enjoys training and riding them. She showed several Rocky Mountain horses at the International in Kentucky in 2005. Sara uses as natural of a training technique in all disciplines as possible and believes in natural trimming and not changing angles on a horse to change movement. She believe less is better until it isn't. We specialize in training colts and fine tuning competition horses, and horse/people training issues. Chanel specializes in English and riding lessons for English disciplines. Feel free to call or email us anytime.