Every stage of a sporthorse's life is fundamentally of value. Planning a breeding lays the genetic elements of what we may start with. Properly raising and working with young horses lays a foundation for a successful future sport career. During the competitive life, the equine athlete is built, crafted, and proudly shown in the competition arena. In their older age we maintain and give them our gratitude by supplying them with a peaceful, relaxing, comfortable, and supportive retirement. We have to nurture and treasure our equine partners through each one of these wonderful phases and go full-circle with them. ~Flannery Banks 

Flannery Banks

Hello there! I am Flannery Banks and lead the Flannery Equine and Flannery Farm teams. I have over 20 years of extensive equestrian experience from breeding, raising and training young horses, successful competition career, to maintaining and managing retired sporthorses. I'm a United States Dressage Federation Bronze and Silver medal dressage rider as well as an experienced former Pony Club member having also competed in Combined Training and Show Jumping.
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I bring my professional attitude and experience from my Civil Engineering business background to a fun and professional attitude in my equine businesses. I primarily train with PanAm rider Tanya Vik and have cliniced with Jan Ebeling, Heather Blitz, Mary Wanless, Christian Schacht DVM, David Hunt, and Michael Bragdell (In-hand Sport Horse Showing). It is always good to keep learning!

Notable Achievements

2013 CDS Championship Show Horse of the Year Open 4th Level Freestyle Reserve Champion
2013 USDF Region 7 Dressage Championship Open 4th Level Freestyle Fifth Place
2013 Diamond Queen gains title of Special Premium Mare
2013 Oldenburg Horse Breeders' Society Foal of Distinction and Premium Foal
2010 Oldenburg Horse Breeders' Society Overall High Score Mare Performance Test Champion
2010 Oldenburg Horse Breeders' Society Horse Show Mature Horse Champion

Our Philosophy

Breeding

Before choosing a mare to become one of our broodmares, we first analyze their suitability of what we want in a riding sporthorse and if it is truly a mare  we would like a "second edition" of. The mare must meet what we want to see in conformation and what we like to work with as far as athleticism, train-ability, work ethic, and general attitude. We then choose a stallion that complements the mare's conformation weaknesses, athletic capabilities, and bloodlines as well as having good general known train-ability, proven competitive career, and prodigy on the ground.

Young Horses

Getting to work with young horses from day 1 is one of our favorite things! You have the opportunity to work with and nurture their basic foundation of manners, inquisitiveness, boldness, confidence, and work ethic. We've often found that some of the easiest horses we've worked and trained were those that we had the chance to partner with from the very beginning. They have respectful ground manners as well as faith and confidence in their riders and handlers.

Competition Horses

Years of hard work and planning a sporthorse's future will often culminate in a successful competition career. Our competing, mature sporthorses have many intensive requirements including high nutritional demands, proper electrolyte and mineral balancing, a healthy and sustainable balance between training, or building, and recovery periods. We are careful to not overwork or over-stress our horses. The training must remain fun and interesting for the horses and, exactly like a healthy human training plan, include time for cross-training activities and relaxing recovery time. Injury prevention and keeping a happy, enthusiastic horse is key!!

 Retirement Horses

It is amazing these large animals give us the privilege to work with them and try very hard for us!! Horses are loving and playful and work so very hard in training when, let's be honest, they could just completely dump the best riders on their bums. The least we could do for these wonderful partners is to be kind and sympathetic guardians of them, especially in their older age. Older horses, just like humans, often have varying amounts of special nutritional and health needs. These horses might generally be fine other than their more "mature" age or can have an assortment of old injury, lameness, specialized farrier needs, maintenance medication, or very specific maintenance daily care needs. Either way, these horses deserve to have daily one-on-one care, wide open areas to self exercise as they feel, and to pleasantly live out the remainder of their lives in peace and as comfortably as possible in maintained, extra large grass paddocks with attached stalls or run-in shelters, and turnouts to maintained pastures. We love showing our gratitude and shower attention on our aged equines. It is a full-circle of the same level of care and attention from foal to retiree.