No horsing around at Laguna Woods Equestrian Center

In 2020, when the world was deep in COVID isolation, the Laguna Woods Village Equestrian Center hired a new director — via Zoom.

Members of the Golden Rain Foundation board, recreation managers and horse boarders weighed in on the review and evaluation of Laura Cobarruviaz's impressive resume. It was centered on her extensive work with horses and the facilities that care for them, but also her work in marketing and event planning.

"They focused on the right fit and my previous experiences. My experience and partnership with horses, my range of knowledge and, above all, my lifelong love for horses was what GRF had been looking for," said Cobarruviaz, 49.

"The position lets me combine my love for horses and event planning," she added. "I had never even been here before, but once I got to see the facility, I saw nothing but potential."

Laura Cobarruviaz, with her buddy Cesar, a Norwegian Fjord gelding, is the director of the Laguna Woods Equestrian Center. Cobarruviaz, whose love for horses began at age 3, rides both English and Western.(Courtesy of Laura Cobarruviaz)

Laguna Woods Equestrian Center director Laura Cobarruviaz sits in her office. The center has cowboy boots of all sizes that riders can borrow.(Photo by Daniella Walsh)

One event that Laura Cobarruviaz planned at the Laguna Woods Equestrian Center was the recent Renaissance Faire. Here she is in full medieval dress and miniature horse Sebastian.(Photo by Daniella Walsh)

Among fundraising events put on by Laguna Woods Equestrian Center director Laura Cobarruviaz was a silent art auction, held in conjunction with the Village Art Association. A painter herself, Cobarruviaz said she enjoys incorporating art into events.(Photo by Daniella Walsh)

The Laguna Woods Equestrian Center held a fashion show for donors to see the fly sheets and other items their donations helped secure.(Photo by Mark Rabinowitch)

Angel leads a horse to a walking machine at the Laguna Woods Equestrian Center. One of the first things Laura Cobarruviaz did when she took over as director of the center was to make sure the horses there got more outdoor exercise. "A lot of horses were having stable-vices, meaning anxiety," she said.(Photo by Mark Rabinowitch)

A horse at the Laguna Woods Equestrian Center has a little fun.(Photo by Mark Rabinowitch)

Horse Shelly enjoys a cooldown after a trail ride, while Pam Caskey keeps cool under her hat, at the Laguna Woods Equestrian Center, as the heat bore down on the region. The Equestrian Center, under new director Laura Cobarruviaz, has seen a resurgence in popularity among Village residents.(Photo by Mark Rabinowitch)

Cobarruviaz went right to work to improve the lives of the 36 horses, eight of which belong to GRF. The rest are boarded by Village residents and sponsored non-residents.

"When I arrived, the outdoor horse arenas needed firmer footing and increased shade areas. That was done in 2021. Stalls needed renovation, and day-to-day standards needed changing," she said.

What caught Cobarruviaz's attention quickly were the horses’ feeding schedules, which she increased from two to three times a day – 5:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

"Horse systems need a schedule to simulate natural grazing, which keeps them physically and emotionally healthy," she said. In addition, she made sure the horses were taken outdoors more often for exercise.

"A lot of horses were having stable-vices, meaning anxiety," she said. "Now, all horses are turned out daily, including those of boarders who might be away or unable to take them out. Staff will step up."

Cobarruviaz also added English riding at the center, alongside Western riding.

"My own background is English riding," she said. "Now our clientele is mixed."

(The Equestrian Center has an impressive collection of cowboy boots in all sizes, which can be borrowed free.)

"Laura has truly lived up to our expectations," GRF board President Bunny Carpenter said in an email. "She is a great barn supervisor and she has GRF's full support."

Carpenter credits Cobarruviaz, among others, with helping to return the Equestrian Center "back to its glory."

"Without Laura, her assistant and group of volunteers, we would have not been able to be so successful," Carpenter said.

The Equestrian Center has become a popular Village amenity over the past couple of years.

"I decided to live here in large part because of the center," resident Ellen Diana said at a recent fundraising event. "I rode for six years in New York and rode here for two and a half years."

Richard Sandler has boarded his horse at the center since last November. An Aliso Viejo resident, he got a stall through a resident sponsor, he said.

"It took me four months to get a stall. Laura was a big help," he said.

He also credits Cobarruviaz for advising him on buying a horse. "First I leased a horse, but then I really wanted to own a horse again," he said. Now he rides five to six times a week.

But perhaps there's no better indication as to how popular the Equestrian Center is than the long waitlist for those who want to ride – with at times more than 200 people signed up.

Cobarruviaz said that may be a result of COVID. After all, riding is an outdoor activity and thus considered safe and it's easy to keep socially distanced, she said.

While they wait, prospective riders can enroll in unmounted, drop-in classes to learn about riding safety, horses’ idiosyncrasies and how to communicate with a horse, among other subjects.

To accommodate residents’ interest in riding, Cobarruviaz hopes to bring more horses to the Equestrian Center. She hopes funding for the herd's care and feeding will come with the help of donations to the Village Community Fund (villagecommunityfund.org). Last year, the Help the Herd campaign raised $10,000 to help care for the center's horses.

The center also holds fundraising and social events, such as Easter egg hunts, Saddle Club barbecues, Happy Hour With the Herd, and the recent Renaissance Faire, which Cobarruviaz hopes to turn into a yearly event.

The Village Art Association also stepped in and held a silent auction of artworks, with the proceeds earmarked for the center.

"I like including the arts into events," Cobarruviaz said. "I used to paint large images on recycled wood and corrugated metal, of horses, mostly."

Equestrian Center volunteer Sandy Reis praised Cobarruviaz for her imaginative fundraising ideas and for her accomplishments in helping to improve the lives of horses.

"Laura is very personable and full of good ideas when it comes to solving problems with the horses. She has done so much," Reis said. "I am particularly impressed that Laura added more shade areas to the horses’ turn-out enclosures and that she is working on getting more trees planted in the area."

Also among Cobarruviaz's ideas was to give guided tours of the Equestrian Center, an idea that Reis jumped on, given her 47-year history working for Disney.

The Equestrian Center also recently acquired the miniature horse Sebastian, the center's tiny goodwill ambassador.

"He came from a family that really did not know how to properly care for horses, and we were able to get him for the price of $1," Cobarruviaz said.

Cobarruviaz's love for horses began at age 3, in then rural Cupertino, when her dad enrolled her in Shetland pony riding lessons at a local farm. She continued the lessons there until age 11.

At 13, she fell in love with a mare named Serafina, stabled at a neighboring farm.

"I am going to own you someday," she said she told her new friend. Her parents stepped up and bought the horse for her.

As a late teen, she sold Serafina and bought Rocky Road, a tall horse measuring 17.3 hands (at 4 inches per hand, that's around 5 feet 7). By then, Cobarruviaz rode both English and Western and gave riding lessons.

Her teen years and early 20s included retraining retired race horses into jumpers.

"Thoroughbred horses are extremely talented for jumping," Cobarruviaz said.

In her mid-20s, she got into dressage, training horses to do precise movements in response to barely perceptible signals from the rider.

She then embarked on a career in marketing and eventually bought an equestrian estate where she managed the business aspects and hands-on care of 30 horses, including broodmares, foals and young stallions.

She also bred a strain of horses known as warmbloods, from the crossbreeding of large coldblood draft horses and smaller, faster hotbloods. The warmbloods are prized for their calm from the large horses and their athleticism from the smaller ones.

She also oversaw the rehabilitation of horses with soft-tissue injuries.

"No, they no longer put down horses automatically after injuries," she said. "Now veterinarian care is so advanced that more than 80% survive surgeries."

In 2015, Cobarruviaz moved to Washington state, where she raised her children, now 29 and 13, and volunteered her time to help people this time: She brought food to hungry children as a member of the nonprofit Backpack Brigade and helped at a Kirkland food pantry serving more than 300 families.

It was there that she heard about the Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center in Redmond, Washington. After volunteering at the 15-acre Center, she was hired and worked her way up to the facility's equine service director and schooling coordinator.

Her duties included care, training and exercise programs for 31 horses. She managed a staff of 46 and kept the center's budget, worked with the board of directors, veterinarians and farriers, and was responsible for horse purchases and sales.

The center's therapeutic riding program, which she describes as one of the largest and longest-running in the United States, has shaped her aspirations. The program works with people with disabilities ranging from cognitive issues to PTSD.

"I am hoping to establish a similar therapeutic riding program here in Laguna Woods," she said.

When she left Little Bit to come to Laguna Woods and also to join her father in Southern California, she was sad to leave behind her favorite horse, Cesar, 14, a Norwegian Fjord gelding.

"I got to know him at Little Bit as a real gentleman," she said. So when she asked to purchase him, the center agreed. However, she had to leave him for a time because he was recovering from colic surgery.

"Instead of preparing to leave, I spent my last days at the hospital with him," she recalled.

In 2021, he finally recovered and was transported to Laguna Woods. "My guy was finally here," she said.

Now she tries to ride every day. She is on call 24/7 for emergencies but works a regular week otherwise.

A Happy Hour With the Herd fundraising event is schedules for Thursday, Sept. 22, from 6 to 8 p.m.at the Equestrian Center. For the $20 entrance fee, enjoy two drinks, appetizers, a raffle ticket and music by the Bluegrass Outlaws. Proceeds go to Help the Herd 2, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit fund. For more information on the Equestrian Center, go to the Village website at lagunawoodsvillage.com, and look under Amenities, then Activities.

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