Laura Koch & Bert Sanders, Published in March 2016 Arabian Horse Times

Featured In Arabian Horse Times, March 2016 Laura Koch & Bert Sanders

PR ES EN TI N

G TH E PE RS O N A LI

Laura Koch and B

TI ES

ert Sanders

The Attraction Of Oppos

by Ma ry Kir km an

ites

To say that Arabia n horse owners Lau ra Koch and Ber t Clydesdales are mis Sanders aren’t a tea matched—but to m would be like say think that their per delusional. ing the Budweise sonalities are alik r e, or even ver y sim ilar, would be

They’re opposites , say s trainer Jody Str and, who recent U.S. National Ch ly showed the cou ampionships in We ple ’s black stallio stern Pleasure ope n, Zefyr, to a record them, and even Ko n. He is echoed by three ch and Sanders the just about everyo mselves. ne else who knows “W hen the y got married, we all jus t sat bac k and tho “Laura’s pretty res ught, ‘Holy smoke erved, and she trie s, this is going to s to [guide] him—b be fun!’” Str and lau tor nado. They hav ut you can’t contro ghs. e a ton of fun tog l Ber t any more tha ether, and it’s bee n you can control n entertaining as a hel l for all of us to wat ch. ” While everyone not es the contrast of wh at’s on the sur face wit to life is the same— h Koch and Sander roc k solid, down s, the truth is tha the line. They are the y are seldom idle t their approach rarely bor ing, and . With more than although you would 25 years in the bre n’t cal l them fren credit, and althoug ed, Laura has a list of etic, h Ber t is new to the nat ional championshi game, he’s already work for opposites ps to her notched titles at to attr act? It doe Scottsdale and nat s here. ional shows. Does it Ar abia n Hor se Tim es | 106 | Vol ume 46, No. 10

PRESENTING THE PERSONALITIES

Laura Koch and Bert Sanders The Attraction Of Opposites

by Mary Kirkman

To say that Arabian horse owners Laura Koch and Bert Sanders aren’t a team would be like saying the Budweiser Clydesdales are mismatched—but to think that their personalities are alike, or even very similar, would be delusional.

They’re opposites, says trainer Jody Strand, who recently showed the couple’s black stallion, Zefyr, to a record three U.S. National Championships in Western Pleasure open. He is echoed by just about everyone else who knows them, and even Koch and Sanders themselves.

“When they got married, we all just sat back and thought, ‘Holy smokes, this is going to be fun!’” Strand laughs.

“Laura’s pretty reserved, and she tries to [guide] him—but you can’t control Bert anymore than you can control a tornado. They have a ton of fun together, and it’s been entertaining as hell for all of us to watch.”

While everyone notes the contrast of what’s on the surface with Koch and Sanders, the truth is that their approach to life is the same—rock solid, down the line. They are rarely boring, and although you wouldn’t call them frenetic, they are seldom idle. With more than 25 years in the breed, Laura has a list of national championships to her credit, and although Bert is new to the game, he’s already notched titles at Scottsdale and national shows. Does it work for opposites to attract? It does here.

Ar abian Horse Times | 106 | Volume 46, No. 10

PRESENTING THE PERSONALITIES

The difference in Laura Koch and Bert Sanders’ styles has been apparent since their childhoods. Laura, who grew up in Michigan, was a horse crazy kid, but family finances didn’t run to lessons and show mounts. Instead, she and her equally horse loving sister, Leslie, were given a series of inexpensive ponies, whom they schooled, improved and sold, until finally they were able to afford Morgans and competition at local events.

Early on, the horses led Laura to her career. “I remember in sixth grade, on career day, we were looking through microfiche—they didn’t have computers then—and I saw a listing for [dentists],” she recalls. “And I thought, ‘If I did this, I could afford to have more horses.’ When you’re a kid, what are you going to do? You have to figure it out. So I did.”

She earned her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, graduated from the dental program at the Medical College of Georgia in 1989, and set up her practice in Warner-Robins, an hour and a half south of Atlanta.

Bert, meanwhile, was born at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the son of a bomber pilot. The youngest child in his family, he was the only boy, and he was, he freely admits, spoiled. When he was 5, the family moved to the Atlanta area and except for years at college, he has lived there ever since. His plan was to follow in his father’s footsteps: graduate from The Citadel and become a military pilot, after which, he figured he’d sign on with a commercial airline. But an aptitude test for pilots revealed a disorder which would cause him to perceive things upside down (“That would be Bert!” Laura cracks), so he went into finance and business. Now he is the vice chairman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, a global commercial real estate firm.

What makes him so good at what he does? “How about fear of failure?” he counters, and given his ebullient style, at first he sounds like he’s joking. He’s not. “It’s very true. If you’re scared to fail, then you’ll do everything possible not to. You will fail the majority of the time, but when you win, it makes you try that much harder.”

“She was sitting at the bar, wearing a red dress, when I walked in,” he says. “She had her legs crossed, and she cocked her head and looked over at me, and I thought, ‘Wow!’ So, we went and sat down, and she made me feel so comfortable immediately that it was weird.”

It also doesn’t hurt that even in a free-ranging discussion of his life, he is unfailingly responsive and articulate—the kind of personality that quickly connects with others, an asset in any sales venture.

The feeling was mutual, although Laura approached it with a certain reticence. “I really liked him and liked his energy and all the good stuff,” she says. “But I had been single for a long time. We all put our best face forward; you have to take enough time to see what it’s like when it’s not ‘best face forward.’”

“Bert’s a talker,” Laura agrees. “In general, I’m the quiet one and Bert’s hanging off the ceilings. At a party, everybody’s, like, ‘Where’s Bert?’ They know if he’s not there, and it’s not as much fun.”

But as the months passed, their commitment only got stronger. “The biggest thing was that he was game to do anything,” she says, “and I’m all about going and doing.”

The two met six years ago when friends set them up on a blind date.

Each had been married before; Laura had been single for 20 years after ending a brief union with a fellow dental student, and Bert had three children.

They have several shared interests, but the one that is front and center is their involvement in Arabian horses—which, given Bert’s complete lack of any equine experience, might have been unexpected in the beginning. The way they made it work was typical: after consideration, Laura set up the situation most likely to acquaint Bert with the fun and satisfaction of showing horses, and Bert joined in with a boatload of enthusiasm.

Bert remembers the moment he first saw her, at Atlanta’s 4th & Swift restaurant, as if he has a high-res photograph in his mind.

Ar abian Horse Times | 107 | Volume 46, No. 10

By the time Bert came along, Laura had been in Arabians for nearly two decades. Her first thought when she’d gone into dental practice was ‘now I can have a horse again,’ but Georgia’s equine scene did not offer many Morgans. A Michigan friend in Arabians, Molly Purdy, suggested that she call Michael Byatt, who was then located near Newnan. Pretty soon, Laura was in the ring with halter horses and taking aim on English pleasure. When Byatt left the area, she turned to Vicki Humphrey and launched a career in amateur English pleasure that netted her a pair of national championships.

She still has a horse with Humphrey, but a few years ago, her involvement took an unexpected turn into western when her

sister began riding with Jody Strand. It wasn’t long before Laura gave it a whirl; in her first year of showing in the division—and on her first western horse, the Half-Arabian Victoriosa—she won the Canadian National Championship in Western Pleasure AAOTR. At the same show, she owned both the winner and reserve (Victoriosa, with Josh Quintus catch-riding, and Azavachae, with Strand up) in the Half-Arabian Western Pleasure Junior Championship.

“I was hooked on western horses,” she says is an understatement.

However, it was not the sudden onslaught of titles that was the draw.

Ar abian Horse Times | 108 | Volume 46, No. 10

PRESENTING THE PERSONALITIES

“Western goes so slow that everything is done to the minute detail,” Laura explains. “Being a dentist, I work in a minute space. If everything isn’t perfect, it affects everything else, and I like the challenge of getting it all exactly right (nothing is ever perfect, but as close as you can get it).” None of that, she adds, is to discount English in any way; it is simply a new type of challenge.

Learning western has been almost like starting over.

She bubbles with laughter at the memory of a show when she thought she finally had it all together, and Strand called out, “You look awesome!” She glowed until he added, in a voice that could have carried to the equator and was certainly a clue for the judges, “You’d look even more awesome if you were on the right lead!”

And then along came Bert, ready for anything, and Laura wanted to be sure that he’d enjoy horse shows. The easiest way, she reasoned, was for him to participate, so she targeted halter and acquired the previous year’s U.S. National Champion Futurity Gelding, Psuperstition, for him. (“What’s halter?” he asked when she brought it up. “Don’t worry,” she replied. “You just run around with a horse and everything’s good.”) Their goal was Scottsdale, and Bert began taking lessons from Mike Neal.

As he recalls it, they were flying to Arizona that February when he started to worry about his technique.

She reassured him, “Honey, this horse is so pretty and so good, if you just don’t fall down, you’ll win.”

Okay, he remembers thinking, I get it. But he wasn’t quite counting on how new it all was. “I didn’t know what ‘bagging’ horses was,” he says, “and all these guys are throwing around these bags in front of the horse.

And my horse jumps in my lap and steps on my foot, and I thought, ‘Holy s***, that hurt!’ So I run out there and I show this horse and I come in reserve. I was all smiling and everybody said, ‘Scottsdale is like winning the Super Bowl.’ I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. I was hooked.”

Next up was the western division, and the following year, with instruction from Jody Strand, Bert earned a top ten at Scottsdale. “He’s really just naturally good with horses,” Laura says, “and it’s fun watching him.”

Not that he isn’t still green, though. “He’ll say things like, ‘I’m getting hot’ and go to take his coat off and throw it—while he’s sitting on a horse!” She shakes her head. “It’s the things [new] people never think of …”

As the stories roll on, it becomes clear that when Sanders rushes in with the fools and the angels, the Ar abian Horse Times | 109 | Volume 46, No. 10

angels are all on his side. One early trail ride at Vicki Humphrey’s had him radiating confidence until his horse took off with him. “My horse knew he was going back to the barn,” Bert explains. “I’m sliding to the left and I’m sliding to the right, but I’m feeling pretty good about this because I know I can’t come off. My feet are stuck in the stirrups.”

When they got back, he had to tell Laura that he couldn’t get out of the saddle because his boots were too big for the stirrups. “She freaked out,” he remembers. “She was saying, ‘Bert, do you understand you could have been killed?”

You can hear it in his voice: he took what she said seriously, but it doesn’t slow him down. “You can’t be afraid to go forward,” he says. “You have to step out there and do it. If a horse throws you off and kicks you in the head, you have to get up there and do it again.”

Pretty soon Bert was an integral player in Laura’s Arabian commitment. It was he, she notes, who did the deal to purchase Zefyr.

And recently, he was her sage voice on the rail. Laura, whose halter career had lapsed over the years, took up handling again when they acquired RD Dynamo. Under Andy Sellman’s direction, she and Dynamo won the 2014 U.S. National Championship in Stallions AAOTH. “He was such a dork in the class,” she laughs. “I’m standing there telling Andy ‘I’m never going to do this again,’ and Bert walked over and said, ‘Um … I think you won.’”

Ar abian Horse Times | 110 | Volume 46, No. 10

PRESENTING THE PERSONALITIES

Koch and Sanders admit that between horses and their professional careers, there isn’t time for much else—but they do manage to cram in an ongoing list of “projects.” Usually that means they find an older residence and refresh (often redesign) its interior, while retaining its original charm. Some of their efforts have succeeded so well that they have appeared in national publications (where, in at least one, a large image of Laura’s horse Peron was prominent in the photographs). A common element in their style is a clean, usually white, background that speaks of serenity and simple elegance.

All that white? What about the companion animals that are so common among horse folk—do not have any? “We have a ‘family,’” Laura confirms, a beloved rescue mutt named Bentley.

As she speaks, a Roomba® purrs quietly in the background; the floors, at least, require no effort.

Sometimes they will go for new construction; their latest effort is in Alys Beach, Fla., and it offers a clue to understanding their business style. They hadn’t really planned on getting involved

there, but when they saw an opportunity, Laura says, it just made sense. And it was too good an investment: for all their just-do-it spirit, they rarely go full speed ahead until they have evaluated the possible downside of the destination. Even in the horses, they consider fallbacks if a particular individual doesn’t work out.

If it sounds like a charmed life, perhaps it is. But it has not come pain-free. While Bert may have unleashed a lot of inner laughter in Laura, she has returned the favor. The one person who knows him best, he says, she helped him through some very difficult times. “One thing that I love the most about Laura is her ability to understand life as life is, and not judge,” Bert says. “She’s really good about that; she has been since I met her. She’s a really grounded woman.

“If I had met her in my 20s, I probably would not have been interested,” he reflects. “A strong woman? No, I wanted somebody to listen to me. The older that you get, you realize you need your best friend, somebody you enjoy hanging out with, so she’s been the best for me.”

Ar abian Horse Times | 111 | Volume 46, No. 10

His gratitude goes beyond their personal bond. In introducing him to Arabians, he observes, she has brought his family joy. They had been somewhat fragmented for the past two decades, since his father’s death, and over the last couple of years they too have come to appreciate Arabians—more significantly, to value spending time together around the horses.

Last fall, when Zefyr won his third U.S. National Championship, all three of his children were there to watch, along with his two sisters, assorted nieces, and his mother. And they’ve been to Scottsdale.

Ar abian Horse Times | 112 | Volume 46, No. 10

PRESENTING THE PERSONALITIES

Perhaps most importantly for the breed is that in falling in love with Arabians, Bert embraced the whole experience. In Laura’s words, “he got it” about life with horses. “It’s not just about showing,” he says. “It’s about being around the horses. The ones that I have are very gentle and loving animals, whether they are stallions, mares, colts or fillies. When they look you in your eyes and they know that you care about them, and you know that they care about you, it’s just a great connection. You can never get that anywhere but around the horse, and that’s very special to me.”

Ask Laura to identify a high point in her life—a best time—and she is silent in thought. And then finally she replies, “I think I’m living the high point right now.” n

Ar abian Horse Times | 113 | Volume 46, No. 10