Dustin Goodwin
Erin Christie
Morning Star Staff
Dustin Goodwin never saw himself as an athlete, much less a thriving professional equestrian and trainer.
After nearly 20 years in the saddle, five national derby championship wins and three international championships, the 32-year-old Portland resident feels fairly certain about the future of his life in horses.
But he admits, it wasn’t always that way.
“As a kid, I was always more indoorsy,” laughed the Fulton grad. “I was an artist. I liked to draw.”
Growing up in Vernon, surrounded by family members who raised, trained and loved horses, he acknowledged, made it somewhat inevitable that he would eventually ride one of his own.
“My grandfather had a farm and my mother (Jackie Reimer) was a rider and an instructor, and she was always trying to get me to ride, but I really wasn’t very interested. Then one day I just said,‘Fine, I’ll take some lessons.’ and I just fell in love with it.”
By the time he turned 12, he had begun riding and competing on his own horse. By the time he was 16 he had won the regional Canadian Equestrian Team medal (CET—athletes that represent Canada at the highest levels of international equestrian competition), and was tapped to compete in the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto for the finals, where he won the gymnastics phase and ended up second overall.
At 17, he was offered a job riding for Oz Inc., an equestrian training centre in Canby, Ore., where he would routinely ride, train and compete.
“I was having a lot of fun, and I tried to earn my keep,” he recalled humbly, in reference to his impressive list of achievements.
Success aside, Goodwin said he still wasn’t convinced he would continue to pursue a career as a professional rider, and even took time off to pursue another passion.
“Mid-season I put together a portfolio and I applied, and was accepted to Ryerson University’s school of fashion design in Toronto. And yeah, it was intense, but I had so much fun — I loved it.”
For the next eight years, Goodwin did a complete 180 while he put horses aside and pursued his education at one of the world’s top undergraduate fashion schools. Upon graduation, he was hired by a company in Vancouver, where he worked in the fashion and design industry full-time for four years, but he says eight years away from the barn began to feel like too long.
“I loved design, but I just couldn’t stay away (from riding)” he added. “The thing about working with horses is, it’s a creative sport, but it is also a very mentally stimulating sport. You’re constantly learning and changing and growing. Even the way you ride evolves as you do — and I just love that.”
As luck would have it, Goodwin ran into a “friend from back home,” and fellow show jumper who invited him to Florida to “make some connections to do horses more as a full-time thing.”
In 2012, Goodwin quit his job, packed his belongings and moved to Florida to pursue riding again. He quickly reconnected with his Oz Inc. family, who offered to help find him a job —and the rest, he says, “is history.”
While his role at Oz is varied—it includes teaching, training, riding, competing and coordinating the prize list for the Team Northwest Equestrian Sports horse show series, among others— and he loves it all.
And while the accolades are nice, Goodwin said he feels grateful and humbled by the opportunities life has afforded him, and the people who have helped him along the way.
