Alyssa Pitts Dressage

04/22/2026

Since my update from November, I have been conspicuously quiet, and I have not seen many of you, so here is the scoop. Most of you know that I had a very successful cervical disc replacement surgery last October. The amazing thing was that my neck issues resolved nearly instantly. When I woke up from anesthesia, the surgeon came to check on me, and he asked how I was doing. I was elated because the neck pain was gone, but I commented that my right shoulder hurt. His eyes widened, and I could see the gears running as fast as possible in his mind–the “Oh, s**t, what did I hit by accident,” moment. I quickly assured him that it felt like it was musculoskeletal. I figured that my right shoulder hurt from compensating from the neck pain and the fact that I had only been able to lie on my right side while the neck pain was so intense. I started PT 6 weeks post op, and my neck was a breeze, but the shoulder was still bothering me. We ended up focusing on the shoulder in PT for months.

The PTs suspected rotator cuff impingement, so I diligently worked away at my rehab. As the months dragged on, the shoulder improved a little, and then, it started to ache all of the time, keeping me up at night, and certain movements were extremely painful. Nothing seemed to be helping, so I reached out to the shoulder and elbow specialty clinic at the UW. An MRI was ordered, and the results came back showing a tear in the supraspinatus, a possible labral tear, and bursitis. I responded to the clinic via MyChart immediately, and asked to set up an appointment. The clinic responded that the PA could see me in a month. I wrote back that based on the MRI, it seemed like a consult with a surgeon was merited. They responded that they would forward the MRI to a surgeon, and I could expect a reply sometime in the next week. 45 minutes later, I got a reply that the surgeon would see me the following week. When a surgeon is eager to see you, that usually means only one thing….

I had surgery to repair my right shoulder last week. During surgery, they found that the upper border of the subscapularis had a tear and that there was a high-grade partial-thickness articular sided rotator cuff tear of the supraspinatus. They also found bursitis. All of these they were able to repair and clean up, and the prognosis is very good.

I had heard a lot of warnings about rotator cuff surgery, so I approached it with some trepidation and nervousness. I had just had cervical surgery 6 months prior, and I had sailed through it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The weirdest thing was the nerve block where my arm felt like a co**se arm attached to my body for about 24 hours post op. Once the nerve block wore off, the shoulder was definitely angry. I took acetaminophen and ibuprofen around the clock for a couple of days, and I was able to stop taking them on the 4th day post op, so hopefully, I’m on the mend already. I was also able to take a walk the afternoon after surgery, and I’ve been able to walk daily, which I credit with getting me feeling better quickly.

The injuries and their surgeries and recoveries bestowed the blessing and the curse of time on me–lots of time spent working to restore my body to a pain free and healthy state and lots of time to reflect. Sitting still and idleness do not mesh well with my personality, so early on after neck surgery, I determined that I would return to running. As a child, I ran for joy and with exuberance. I don’t think that I learned how to walk until I was a teenager, as running was my preferred mode. I burned out hard on running when I ran collegiately. With joy, I have returned to running, and I am frustrated to have to take a break, but hopefully, it will be short lived. It feels amazing to be taking care of my health, as I watch my metrics improve and the feeling in my body improve.

With time to reflect, I realize how much I love adventure and all of the people whom I’ve met over the years from so many different walks of life. As I recover physically, I hope to travel to see old friends, new places, and to meet new people and make new friends.

I have remained absent from the horse world while I recover from my surgeries. I miss all of my friends from far and wide. I miss horses, but I don’t miss riding, which is a strange thing to hear myself say. To those who have reached out to me for lessons, clinics, and consulting, I still absolutely plan to teach and consult. I have to take the time to recover from my surgeries, and I am also balancing being a mother to 3 kids. I am also a volunteer coach for youth soccer and basketball, and I just got roped into coaching track as well, so I’m still utilizing my coaching skills. I have started some writing projects as well, but time has not been on my side when it comes to writing–for someone used to getting things done quickly, writing is a lesson in patience!

Please stay in touch, and please reach out if you want to get onto my lesson or clinic waiting list for when I’m recovered. Extra credit to those of you who want me to visit new and/or interesting places! I am committed to helping horses more than ever. I am also hoping that through sharing my experiences, I can help trainers, who are some of the hardest working people out there.

Pro tip: if you're going to have multiple surgeries, be sure that you have an awesome mom to help. Pictured here is my amazing mom who has been there for all of my surgeries and the recoveries.

11/03/2025

Many of you have heard or seen through the grapevine that I sold my farm and all of my horses. I had started drafting this post in May, but I just couldn’t post it. Since then, my outlook has changed from a depressing one to much more positive.

In early October of 2024, I woke up one morning with a lot of pain in my left shoulder blade. It felt like someone had stuck a knife near my shoulder blade. I assumed that I had tweaked a muscle lifting weights the day before and didn't think much of it. Long story condensed, the pain didn't go away, and after slogging through our health care system for months, it turns out that I was born with a congenitally fused C3/C4 (those are vertebrae in my upper neck). This fusion pushed the load and wear and tear on my neck down the neck, and my C5/C6 space was a mess. I had severe degenerative disc disease at C5/C6 along with foraminal stenosis at C5/C6. I experienced some nerve symptoms and weakness in my left arm and hand as a result. I had already lived with chronic pain in my neck for years.The doctors that I saw told me to stop the things that were aggravating my neck, namely riding. I had two different steroid injections done, one in December of 2024 and another in February of 2025, that seemed to relieve my nerve symptoms, although I still had neck pain. They told me to keep managing things with steroid injections, and to come back if something changed.

In August of this year, I woke up one morning with excruciating pain and could no longer function. I ended up in the ER that night. A week later, I got another steroid injection, and it took my pain from excruciating to a place where I could somewhat function. The doctors here had originally told me that when my pain wasn’t managed by steroids, they would do surgery. That turned out to not be the case. I had an appointment with the same surgeon who I had seen nearly a year earlier, and he said that he couldn’t help me, and he was going to refer me to a pain doctor. At this point, I had been basically living my life on the couch for about a month, and pain meds didn’t do anything for the pain. In the ER, I was on hydrocodone, va**um, and oxycodone, and it barely touched the pain. To have the steroid injection done, they gave me fentanyl, and I still could barely lie on the table to have the injection done even with fentanyl. There was a period of about a week where I literally could not sleep; no matter how tired I was, I could not fall asleep because the pain was so intense. After that, sleep came in only segments before the pain would wake me up again.

I left my appointment with the surgeon sobbing. I couldn’t imagine living my life like this. In desperation, I reached out to Stanford, and literally within about 15 minutes of reviewing my case, a surgeon offered me an appointment the next day. I flew down to see him, and he said that my primary problem had not been diagnosed. He believed that I had a herniated disc at C6/C7 that was causing my symptoms all along. He recommended a cervical disc replacement and he said that I could return to an active life again. He said that he wished that I hadn’t retired and sold my farm before I saw him. I walked out of that appointment crying tears of relief and hope. I’m not a crier, so that was a lot of tears in two days for me, going from soul crushing despair to elated hope.

I had surgery shortly after that, ironically one year to the day after my severe symptoms started. Dr Mok and his team were amazing. They performed a two level disc replacement (C5/C6 and C6/C7). I woke up from anesthesia with the stabbing nerve pain gone. I didn’t take a single pain med post op (not even anything over the counter), as the pain from surgery was nothing compared to the nerve pain that I had experienced. The day after surgery, I walked 5 miles, and I have been up and active ever since. Before surgery, Dr Mok had asked me my two goals for surgery, and I had said: 1) To be able to play with my 3 year old child again, and 2) To be able to lead an active life. I’m about 3 weeks post-op now, and I am really hopeful that I will be able to continue living these goals.

Last year, when I was in the throes of all of this, with the guidance of the doctors up here, I made the decision that riding horses, especially riding dressage horses, wasn’t a good idea. I want my neck to last another 55 years, and it only held up to 20+ years of dressage. I made the decision to sell my farm, which was crushing. I put my heart and soul into making the farm the best possible place for horses and humans that I could, and it choked me up to think of my future without horses and their wonderful human attendants in my backyard. For all of my dear friends at the farm, they know that this is not goodbye. I will still stay connected.

I sold all of my riding horses, which again, was a bit surreal for me. I reflect back on the wild ride that has been my journey as a professional trainer, and I'm flooded with so many emotions. I have loved horses all of my life, and that hasn't changed. It's funny, when I think of my best memories of riding and horses, they honestly come from my childhood and from my college days. I will always cherish the days that I spent with my childhood horses--hours spent grooming and caring for them, riding them alone on the wild trails behind my house, Pony Club camp and other antics (Katy, Jonathan, Brian, William, and Jen I'm sure that you will always remember those days as well). When I became a trainer, it forced me to regularly sell my beloved horses in order to have an income, which was always hard, but I viewed my time with them to be a gift, and I always hoped to find them a loving forever home.

I have made so many amazing friends through the horse world, and I would like to especially shout out to my PNW and CA horse friends. I was always under pressure to move to Florida or somewhere else to be closer to the high performance scene. I could never do it, in large part because of all of you. The PNW and CA are full of so many great people--I can't name you all, it would take pages. I have loved my experiences meeting so many people, and in the end, staying here and forgoing a career in high performance dressage was unequivocally worth it. The community that I have through the PNW is absolutely amazing. This is not a goodbye, dear friends, it is simply a new chapter. I hope to remain connected to all of you.

This isn't goodbye, and it's not the end. It's a new chapter, and that brings exciting new possibilities too. I'm a big believer in fixing the things that I can and moving on and around the things that I cannot change. I cannot change that I was born fused at C3/C4, so I can only make choices that work around that reality. I will stay connected with the horse world. I will still teach and clinic, and I am now able to prioritize teaching, as I won’t have my own riding taking precedence. I've dropped the threat to my husband that I might start an animal rescue, but he asked me to wait on that one, and it was serendipitous when an amazing horse rescue, SAFE, bought my farm. I hope to volunteer there and help take care of horses when I am able. I was an English major, so it might be time to put that to use. I am passionate about continuing education to provide better care and management of our beloved horses, and I am also passionate about sharing insights with professionals in the equine industry, as trainers are some of the hardest working people I know who give everything they have to often barely scrape by. I am working on developing a consulting service to industry professionals (and amateurs who want it too). I haven’t closed the door on riding again, but I need to take the time to heal and recover from surgery at this time.

With love and gratitude for all of my friends,
Alyssa

Photo is two days post op with my wonderful mom, who helped me while I was recovering from surgery.

04/15/2025

This amazing facility is available, and it was improved and designed to be a haven for horses and humans:

Maria Danieli – Windermere agent – Washington Stateactive featuredCedar Meadow FarmSnohomish, Washington 98296 $3,450,000 Bed3Baths2.5 Sq Ft3061Lot Size10.29 AcresMLS # to Cedar Meadow Farm. Stellar location near Echo Lake golf course on over 10 cleared acres on two tax lots. Main...

03/27/2025

Huge congratulations to my good friend Elizabeth Youatt on her purchase of Selden TF. Selling Selden is one of the hardest things that I've done--I was so excited to ride him, and I really thought hard about trying to ride again after seeing his most recent videos!

3 year old Dark Pleasure x Sir Donnerhall x Rhodes Scholar c**t. www.alyssapitts.com

03/27/2025

Congratulations to the new owners of Dark Nobless. Thank you to Caroline Roffman to help her find a wonderful home for Dark Nobless.

03/27/2025

Love seeing this update on Osaka! He is now doing tempis through 2s! This amazing horse is already solidly schooling PSG and I1, and he shows all of the talent and temperament and rideability to make an amazing Grand Prix horse. Whoever gets this horse will be so lucky--he is truly one of the nicest horses to ride and be around. Aaron Janicki Dressage thank you so much for doing such am amazing job with Osaka.

6 year old KWPN gelding by Just Whimphof x Krack C. www.alyssapitts.com, www.janickidressage.com

03/14/2025

Congratulations to the new owner of Dark Phoenix TF! He is the sweetest horse in the world, which when combined with his beauty and talent makes him a wonderful unicorn. He has found the best home, and I couldn't be happier for him and for his new owner.

03/10/2025

Congratulations to the new owner of this spectacular c**t! I am so excited to see what the future brings for them both. Ultimate Dream, 2024 c**t by Opoque out of the full sister to Vitalis! Bred by Canadream Farm.

02/27/2025

Osaka just keeps getting more impressive! Thank you Janicki Dressage for doing such an amazing job with him. This handsome, lovely horse is one of, if not my most favorite horse to train of all time. He is available because of my injury.

02/14/2025

Very affordable opportunity to own a quality warmblood!

Santanara SSM is a 2022 KWPN 1st premium c**t, with endless potential to be a top dressage horse. Sired by the sensational rising star, Jameson RS2, and out of the keur mare, Angel Utopia. All star performance on both sides of his pedigree!

Damline has several top sport horses (7 at 4th to GP), including top stallion Olivi. The sister of Angel Utopia also produced licensing champion Livius, who in turn has young sons selected for the 2nd round of KWPN stallion approvals this year. “Santa” will undoubtedly follow in the hoof steps of the phenomenal horses who have come before him. He is an extremely bold young horse, with light, uphill gaits sure to impress.

Sire, Jameson RS2, is a great success story. From the moment he appeared at the KWPN Stallion Show, he made a huge impression on the public. He has already won everything: Performance Test, Pavo Cup, and twice the Stallion Competition. At the World Championships, he impressed the judges with his strength, power, charisma and mega canter.

His first foals were born in 2020 and seem to have inherited their sire’s strength. Many foals were sold privately for breeding and dressage sport, which indicates a high degree of confidence in Jameson RS2’s inheritability.

https://youtu.be/QbkLh65E5PE