Parents Read and Essie Perkins owned Huntington Farm in South Strafford, Vermont,
from the mid 60’s to mid 80’s. There, they bred, trained and sold event horses, and also
ran the Huntington Farm Horse Trials.
Beth and her sister Bea grew up riding from a very early age. Their mother taught riding,
and Beth's parents both eventually competed at the Advanced level. Beth's beginnings were in
equitation, pony hunters and junior jumpers. Her mother would regularly take Beth and her
sister to George Morris for lessons. Through the Upper Valley Pony Club, the girls also got
lessons with Jessica Ranshausen, Michael Page, and other excellent teachers.
Beth received her A rating at age 16, and went to England to be a working student at
Lars Sederholm’s at age 17. She graduated from high school a year early because she was so
eager to do horses. When she returned from England, she was asked to a training session at
Gladstone, where the 3-day team was located (until they moved to Hamilton, MA). After the
training session, Beth was asked to stay on and train permanently for 3 years. She rode in
the 1974 World Games at age 18 and placed 6th individually. She also rode on the gold medal
team in the 1975 Pan American Games placing 5th individually. In 1976, Beth was
short-listed for the Montreal Games. She has been teaching and training horses since
leaving the team, except to take a few years off to finish college. She received a BA in
English from the University of Vermont, where she also played varsity Women’s ice hockey,
and an MFA Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC.
Jack le Goff and Lars Sederholm have been Beth's main influences, as well as George
Morris and Anne Kursinski, with whom she clinicked frequently with while living in California.
She has been taught by numerous dressage instructors over the years and has always tried to
stay abreast with some of the newer approaches to jumping and dressage. Beth also has had a
lot of cross-country clinics with Mark Phillips while in California. Beth takes pride in
how the excellent instruction she has received all her life has influenced her teaching.
She believes that her strengths as a teacher are both her ability to verbalize and her
focus on basic correct position of the rider as a way to fix many problems. She has ridden
hundreds of different and often difficult horses since she's never been able to ride a
"made" horse, so she has a lot of experience in fixing different problems.
