Aspiring Equestrian Center in Rainier is the culmination of two of Cheryl Cottine’s biggest passions: horses and teaching.
The new equestrian center, located at 12440 Koeppen Road SE, opened in September after Cottine moved to the area from northeast Ohio. She offers boarding, private lessons and training, along with an introduction to horses and riding program and pony club. The 35-acre, fully fenced property includes an indoor arena, stalls and fields for riding.
Cottine comes from the hunter/jumper world, competing on the A circuit while also serving as the lead instructor at a large show barn in central Indiana. She began offering lessons in horse riding at the age of 16, and she continued to teach later in life but on a different path.
She earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in religious studies from Indiana University Bloomington, and she worked as an assistant professor at Oberlin College in Ohio in the religion department for nearly a decade.
But the horse world kept calling Cottine’s name, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when classes became virtual. She began traveling around Ohio to offer services, and she came to Rainier from Ohio to find a property that could house everything she hoped to offer.
“COVID hit, and education where I was went online, which interestingly freed up some time because we weren’t allowed to go back to campus,” she said. “Around that time, I got pulled back into horses because I had given it up. I got a horse, I got a request to train a horse and I got a request to teach a lesson at the same time, completely unrelated. It went from that to me traveling 2,000 miles a month to places throughout northeast Ohio to work with riders on their property to work with problematic horses. It just organically grew.”
Cottine eyed the Rainier property in February of 2024 and took a couple of visits before making an offer and purchasing it in the summer. She took the four-day, 2,500-mile drive with eight horses in August and opened the more consolidated business in September. She allows riders to bring their horses, but she also has horses with which they can learn.
Her biggest priority when training a rider, regardless of their experience or skill level, is to meet them where they are in terms of ability and proceed from there. Cottine spends time observing the rider and the horse before the lesson begins, and she asks the rider what they hope to learn and what challenges they’ve faced with their horse or horses in general.
“I always spend the first few minutes watching. I can get a sense by watching how the horse and owner or rider interact to get a sense of what their relationship might look like,” she said. “I get a sense of their ability pretty quickly just by watching how a person rides. Another way I can get a really good sense of them is by sitting on a horse. I can feel what people do.”
Cottine was drawn to the Pacific Northwest because of the horse community, as well as her enthusiasm for the outdoors. She is a passionate mountaineer, and she named her business in part after Mount Aspiring in New Zealand, which was the first major mountain that she summited.
Cottine, originally from Southern California, felt the Pacific Northwest needed high-quality, affordable training and instruction. She is currently working with more than a dozen riders and hopes to continue expanding her offerings, including potentially an outdoor arena.
“It’s still a learning process. I’ve been incredibly impressed with how welcoming the community has been. It’s a very friendly and knowledgeable community,” she said. “One of the things that became clear early on was the need for quality program lessons. It’s quite an expensive undertaking on barns. It’s something I’m passionate about. I recognize that there is a lot of desire for people to experience horses who don’t want to or can’t have a horse, so I’m hoping to serve that.”
Cottine aims to put horses in a program that has them engaged five to six days per week, gradually building their education base and fitness. Each lesson is about 30 to 45 minutes of ride time, and she also offers ground lessons to teach individuals horse care.
To learn more about Aspiring Equestrian Center, visit its website at https://www.aspiringequestrian.com/.
