Suzanne grew up in Bedford County, PA on a family farm that raised primarily cattle. Her family focused a great deal on facilitating the interests of their children and for Suzanne this was an intense interest in horses. When she was 7 her parents gave her her first pony and she began showing successfully in 4-H and open shows and later in AQHA competitions with other horses she purchased. Throughout these experiences Suzanne developed a fascination with training and began training horses locally for others in addition to the foals she and her sister raised on the family farm.

In 1985 she attended the Pennsylvania State University and majored in Animal Production with the Department of Dairy and Animal Science. During this time she took many courses in animal nutrition, reproduction, and management as well as pre-veterinary courses in infectious diseases, physiology, and chemistry. She also continued to train horses in State College, PA for patrons at local boarding stables and would travel to people’s homes to help them problem solve issues with their horses.

During a break from college she moved to VA with her sister and worked as an exercise rider and trainer for a 40-head thoroughbred farm and eventually became track-licensed there. Upon returning to college she continued exercising thoroughbreds at a local thoroughbred farm and completed her Bachelor’s degree 1990. Afterwards she worked as a veterinary technician for a year in Maryland before returning to Penn State to complete a Master’s degree in Pathobiology from the Department of Veterinary Science in 1995.

That year she began working for the University’s Animal Diagnostic Laboratory as a research support associate and gained valuable experience in diagnostics, infectious disease dynamics and agriculturally applied research. She currently holds a Doctorate degree from Penn State and is now faculty and section head of the molecular diagnostic division at the laboratory where she also conducts non-invasive research on horses aimed at evaluating their immune responses to vaccines against viral pathogens.

In 1996 Suzanne was married and began training professionally at her facility in Port Matilda, Pennsylvania. In 2002 ‘Myers Stables’ was incorporated and Suzanne began formalizing her Next Level Horsemanship™ equine training program. Since 1996 she has trained several hundred horses and has developed a specialty in colt starting and horsemanship training. In addition to the horses she has trained she has helped many people, including those with no prior experience with horses, understand how to interact with and develop better communication skills with their horses. She also helps people to interpret and understand often confusing management and scientific information they need to know as responsible horse owners through various seminar series and from instructional material put forth on her website.

Most recently in 2008 Suzanne won the prestigious Midwest Mustang Challenge at Madison WI against 55 of the nation’s top trainers becoming the first woman to win the Mustang Heritage Foundation sponsored event in which trainers had just 100 days to gentle, start and prepare a wild mustang for competition and freestyle performances. Currently her training facility in Port Matilda houses 20-25 horses and is routinely booked for training 8 months in advance. Suzanne is a member of AQHA, NRHA and the American Society for Virology (ASV).

“While most of my friends were sending their horses to trainers, I refused to do so. Something innate within me insisted that I learn to do it myself and so the journey began. My desire to be an effective trainer necessitated that I go to every clinic, pick the brains of every respected horseperson I knew, read every book and watch every pertinent DVD I feasibly could – and so I did. And this pursuit of knowledge continues to this day. This was a journey about learning what makes horses tick, about demystifying what so many seemed to keep elusive and about unlocking the “secrets” of building a wonderful partnership with a creature so magnificent and noble. As it turned out it’s also been a journey of discovery about me and about how to help others accomplish their goals. Each horse and every person has been uniquely different in some way and where I’ve had successes I relished, and where I’ve had failures, I delved into trying to find out why.” ~~Suzanne Myers