Richard van Dijk

Trainer  Teacher  Trimmer

Richard is a second generation horseman having lived and worked with horses his whole life. His father, Henk van Dijk, was a harness enthusiast and a true horse lover.  For him the horses’ health and happiness was priority.  He was also extremely safety conscious and always ensured that every one took utmost care to prevent injury to either horses or people.  Richard’s father sadly passed away 20 years ago but his influence in Richard’s life is still very strong today.

After years of input from many sources, Richard has developed his own methodology of horse training. He describes his training style in a nutshell as “safe, applicable horsemanship that everyone can use”.

Henk’s quote to teenage Richard was often “not getting out of bed to care for your horse is not letting me down but letting your horse down”. Henk had many such quotes that Richard often repeats to this day.

Richard had two older brothers who were already riding when he started at about age 5. He was a member at Pony club at age 6. Every weekend of Richard’s childhood, the family went to some kind of horse event.

During these years Richard was breaking in horses to harness and saddle with his father and broke his first horse in at the age of 12. He competed in Eventing, Novelties, Dressage, Show Jumping, etc. He travelled to Perth to represent South Australian in the National Tetrathalon Championships where he was given his competition horse 10 minutes before the event started! He also participated in musical square dance on horses at various festivals; many parades including through Adelaide city streets; picnic races; gymkhanas and show carriage driving.

Prior to getting his car driving license, Richard would use his pony and cart as his transport, driving to his job exercising racehorses; visiting friends and to the Nairne bakery for lunch!

After Richard finished school, he went to a Touch Training workshop which led to him going to Victoria to train horses to harness and deal with problem saddle horses.

He returned to Adelaide and was breaking Fjord horses to harness and saddle and also showing them.
Richard then got itchy feet and spent some time travelling across Australia on a unicycle and when in Perth he was employed to drive a stage coach for tourists. He spent a few months living in a tent on a property where he was contracted to start eight Connemara ponies under saddle.

He once again returned to South Australia and began successfully competing in Combined Driving Events with the Fjords, including the national championships. He also used the Fjord pair for weddings and parades. Throughout this time he continued to start a variety of horses (and donkeys) in saddle and harness. One particular highlight of this time was driving a team of four Clydesdales in a Royal Show presentation class.

There was a bit of a break from horses where Richard was busy raising his young family and running his own building business. He is a qualified welder and builder. Richard is also a very experienced steel fabricator and is presently rebuilding some horse drawn vehicles for his own use and clients as well as carrying out horse float rebuilds and repairs.

In a return back to working with horses, Richard was employed to manage, care and train a team of 11 Clydesdales for a tourist operation.  He successfully trained several horses to work calmly, with a variety of novice drivers and cope with the many challenges that go with working horses in a public environment.


In recent years Richard competed in the Section Fours at Royal show, show jumping and is currently Hunting with Fleurieu Hunt Club.


Richard believes in expanding his knowledge with ongoing education, by attending workshops, clinics, etc. He is open minded enough to investigate and research other techniques and options to be able to improve on his already broad horse knowledge.


Currently there are 5 horses on the property consisting of 2 Norwegian Fjord horses, Jenny's ArabxWelsh, a Warmblood mare, and a pinto Arab x gelding.