Barbara Filippelli, the head trainer at Valley Pond Farm, has had an extensive and successful career in the horse show world. She teaches beginner through advanced riders and loves to work with equitation students on problem solving. She spends countless hours teaching each day and often wakes up and goes home in the dark. Her efforts have been well worth it as many of her students have qualified for the prestigious Capitol Challenge Horse Show at Washington, the Medal and Maclay Finals, the State Line Medal Finals and the Zone 2 Hunter Finals.

Barbara is a USEF "R" judge in hunter/jumper/equitation. Among the east coast shows she has been invited to judge have been HITS Catskills, Culpeper, Ocala, Garden State, Fieldstone, GMHA, the Massachusetts Medal Finals and the Seacoast Classic plus scads of other horse shows in CT, RI , MA, NJ, NY, PA, VT.

She also judges many intercollegiate shows such as Cornell, Mount Holyoke, Hartwick, Skidmore, Pace, Fairfield U, Sacred Heart,
University of Montana, Vassar College, Drew, Columbia University, Cazenovia College and the University of Vermont.

Barbara is very involved in serving the horse industry from a political standpoint as well, and is an officer for the local Fairfield-Westchester Professional Horsemen's Association and the National PHA.

When not at the barn, Barbara enjoys cooking and baking, and it has been said that she makes the meanest sticky roll anywhere!

Besides being passionate about horses, Barbara also adores her menagerie of pets which include two guinea pigs (named Della and Reese), and an 'altitudinally challenged' mutt with a fondness for rocks, known as Shelby.