Located in Burlington in the heart of North Carolina between Greensboro and just 40 minutes from the Raleigh-Durham Area. We are a family-owned quiet outfit of just 8.5 acres and we pride ourselves on the quality of our facility. We offer excellent facilities for exclusive boarding with an emphasis on caring for breeding stock, young horses, and retirees. We offer to board compatible with our breeding and training program. The facility features a full-size outdoor arena and provides all-day turnout, solo or pairs of pasture buddies. Visit our Services page for more information.
Our mission is also to breed and develop quality Lusitanos of sound mind, body, and spirit for performance and pleasure. Our special focus is classical dressage with an emphasis on the French system of training.
Greymere Farm was established in 2023 due to a fondness for the Lusitano horse breed. The Lusitano, which originates from Portugal, has a past as a War Horse and was and still is used as a bullfighting horse in Portuguese bullfighting to this day. The breed has an unsurpassed natural degree of assembly which makes it sought after for the exercises in high dressage classes, Working Equitation, and Classical Academic Riding. Besides its proud and strong origins, what is it that has made us fall for this breed of horse?
Although it has been a long time since man used horses in war, many of the qualities that made the Lusitano a favorite war horse in the cavalry throughout the ages still exist in the Lusitano. Traits such as ‘brave’ and ‘calm’ are the most common descriptions of a Lusitano’s mind, along with intelligence, strength, and willingness to work. This is because it learns faster than most other horse breeds to use their thinking part of the brain rather than the reactive part of the brain (escape).
In fact, the fact that it uses its thinking part of the brain more quickly comes from the way it forms a bond with its rider. It does not bond with just anyone, but once you have won its trust and it has accepted you as a leader, it trusts you and will go through fire and water for you. This means that you can more easily teach it to stand still and remain calm, even if there is noise and moving objects around you, as it trusts blindly that you, as the leader, are looking after you and that it is safer to be close to you. It is an extremely easy-to-learn and intelligent breed that is very attached to its owner. You have a special bond for life.
Therefore, the Portuguese also found out that it is extremely good as a bullfighting horse. Portuguese bullfighting is quite different from the Spanish one and the horse is used throughout the show (and the bull is not killed). The Lusitano is bred and trained to be able to quickly turn elegantly around itself, make quick lateral movements, have a natural joy of work, be strong and be able to avoid lunges from the bull, but at the same time does not fear the bull or the noise in the arena.
Despite the Lusitano’s size and width, it moves with grace, elegance, and lightness in its movements and with a back turn that makes the breed extremely rideable and comfortable in all gaits.
The Lusitano makes up one of the branches of the traditional Iberian horse. Distinguished by its character and extreme beauty, the Lusitano was considered as “The Horse of the Kings” and was most commonly found in European royal courts.
It is a well-proportioned horse, relatively strong and fairly short-coupled. It has a very expressive head which is distinguished by its convex profile. Its neck is strong and arched with an abundant mane. The Lusitano is generally grey or bay, however, it can also be black, dun, palomino, or chestnut though these colors are less common.
Since the creation of the Stud Book around 30 years ago the Lusitano has become a recognized breed on its own which has resulted in more careful selection in the breeding plans.
Today’s Lusitano is an athlete that stands between 16.1 and 17 hh which, with its morphological characteristics and excellent conformation, gives it a natural ability for high-class dressage movements. Its superb intelligence and eagerness to please make the Lusitano a pleasure to train.
If you then think about the characteristics of the perfect dressage horse, you are not far from the above characteristics. This also shows in the results in the dressage world, where the Lusitano is quietly becoming more and more visible, with gradually quite telling and beautiful results.
