About Me
I fell in love with horses when I was four years old after watching the Black Beauty movie released that year. I thought what the children in the movie did (riding) was incredible and I wanted to do it too. And I remember thinking that the horses were the most beautiful animals I had ever seen. I told my mother how much I loved horses and she and my grandmother started taking me to the pony rides at our City Park every weekend. Over the years I read every book about horses, or with horses in it, that I could get my hands on, and watched every horse movie ever made. I had a huge collection of My Little Pony figures and quite a few Barbie horses. When I was eight, my father gave me riding lessons at City Park's riding stables. I started out riding western pleasure and started showing after only a short while. However, my father was not exactly a model parent and he soon used my riding lessons as a way to control me to do what he wanted. After about a year, he finally decided he didn't want to pay for my lessons anymore because he didn't feel I was living up to his standards. Needless to say, I was crushed. But I was a Girl Scout, and my mother sent me to summer camp for the horse programs. It was only a few weeks out of the year, but I lived for it. During the rest of my time, I continued to read everything about horses that I could. The summer I before I started high school, I started working for lessons at the stable. I worked so much that I was able to ride every day. The horse I chose as my horse to care for became my favorite mount. Despite never having ridden English before, by the end of the summer I was jumping 3' fences. I rode with the head trainer who loved me for my dedication to the horses and my devotion to being the best rider I could. I also followed the vet often, helping him worm the horses and sometimes walking and trotting horses being examined for sale. He was a very gruff man but he answered any questions I put to him and I learned a tremendous amount from him. All through my childhood, I had one dream: to go to school for equine science and make my way in the horse world. As I attended high school, my dream was always on my mind. I had grand visions of winning a scholarship, so I kept my grades up. I worked babysitting to pay for my lessons since I didn't have the time to work at the stable for my lessons anymore. But in the middle of my sophomore year, my mother accepted a new job in Alabama and we moved. There were only a few stables in the area wee moved too, and they either taught western or saddle seat. As I was now focused on my jumping, I was very upset by this. I chose not to start lessons and soon turned my focus to normal teenage things. A year and a half later, we moved back to Louisiana and I began riding back at the stable. I picked everything back up immediately, as if I had never been away from riding. Within a year, I was focussed on showing, but at my second show I made a dreadful mistake with my tack and my horse nearly ran away with me. I was so upset and embarrassed by the incident, that when I was offered a chance to fix my tack a redo my round, I refused. That is one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life. I stopped riding for a while after that, and then I started college. Unfortunately, I didn't get any scholarships and didn't have the chance or the means to go away to school for equine science. After a while, I started riding again sporadically and after three years of living back in the city, I went to my former trainer and asked her to see if the owners might be willing to let me teach and put in a good word for me. The summer of 2005 I began teaching the "baby beginners", ages 4-7, and I was in heaven. Combined with my good fortune in school, I felt my life was just about perfect. Then Hurricane Katrina hit. In the blink of an eye, I lost everything in my life. I now was faced with starting over and I had no idea what to do. By chance, my mother had evacuated with her long time friend to Monroe in north Louisiana, a place I had never been and I had no idea what I could possibly find there to help me rebuild, but I figured it was as good a place as any to start. I knew I had to enroll in whatever local college I could find, since student loans were the only reliable source of income I knew of at the time. Initially, I applied at Louisiana Tech in Ruston since I knew they had an equine program. But while the dean of the agriculture department was enthusiastic to welcome me, the university's administration hassled me over my transcripts, even knowing what had just happened with the hurricane. They refused me admission, so I turned to my only alternative: University of Louisiana at Monroe, or ULM. Upset at being so close to being able to have a small part of my lifelong dream and being thwarted by administration, I resigned myself to enrolling in whatever classes I could find suitable at ULM. There were very few suited to my history of degree concentrations, and the counselor started questioning me about my interest to find any classes that might fill in the gaps in my schedule. To this day, I can't remember the exact conversation or circumstances, but I mentioned that I rode horses. I do remember the glowing enthusiasm of the counselor as she informed me that ULM had a course of study in equine science. I was stunned. I couldn't believe that after everything I had been through that I would be handed an opportunity to live my dream without any hassle. She enrolled me in all the available equine classes and I received a ray of sunshine in the darkness of the tragedy surrounding me after the hurricane. Not only was there a riding class, but also a training class where, for the first time in my life, I got the chance to not just see a foal in the flesh, but got to train the weanlings as well. I was the oldest student in the classes which put me fairly close in age to my professor. She would eventually become a friend and very dear to my heart, helping me through the rough time I experienced with the aftermath of Katrina. Because I had been involved with and riding horses for so long, she mounted me on as many of the school riding horses as she could. I had never before had the opportunity to ride such a wide variety of horses or experience such a variety of activities on horseback. We tried our hand at barrels and poles (though only at a trot), took trail rides across the pasturelands, and even went after some calves for fun. I was also in a reproduction class and got to experience mare care and breeding hands on. After the fall semester, I enrolled in all the equine classes available for the spring and also applied for a work study position on the farm. ULM used to breed Thoroughbreds for the racetrack. All the mares and stallions were donated to the university, as were the riding horses, so all the proceeds from the sale of the yearlings went to the university. When the spring semester started, my professor assigned me a green broke horse from the fall training class as a project horse for me, since I had gone through all the other riding horses. When I first saw the mare, I thought she was the ugliest horse I had ever seen. I was still used to the lean lines of Thoroughbreds in the Hunter/Jumper world, and this solid Paint-bred horse was far from my image of an ideal horse. Not to mention she was chestnut with a ton of white marks, and my preference had always been for bays with very little white. But after that first ride, she had me. I had always disliked being mounted on horses with mouths so dulled they yanked your arms out of their sockets, or so dulled to leg cues you had to kick and kick and kick just to get a trot or use spurs and a crop. But that mare was green, fresh, and unspoiled by years of poor riders and misguided training methods. She was sensitive and responsive, mine to train as I wanted into the horse I had always wanted to ride. On top of that, she was extremely intelligent and exceedingly level headed. My feelings for her only grew as time went on. Combined with this joy was the extraordinary experience of working on an actual breeding farm. We the student workers were responsible for all aspects of the herd's care. We feed, hayed, watered, cleaned stalls, repaired fences, rotated pastures, and did all the other chores associated with daily horse care. But we were also taught basic first aid and vetting. We learned how to worm and give vaccinations and there were plenty of horses to practice on. I was also in the reproduction class again and we were assigned mares to look after until they foaled. We were required to do overnight foal watch for class, but I also had several stints because I was a worker. I actually volunteered often because I loved it. But it was a night when I wasn't assigned for foal watch when I actually got to witness my first birth. I will never forget that night, but there were many more to come, including being on hand as my assigned mare sprang a surprise foaling on us in the middle of the morning with no one around but a few students. That mare gave birth to my absolute ideal horse, a beautiful bay colt with only a small perfect star and long strong legs made to run. Part of our duties as students was to gentle the foals of our mares. I can't describe the incredible joy of the bond that developed day by day. I was even allowed to name him. He was born on Palm Sunday, so I dubbed him Sunday Best. From the moment I set eyes on him, my goal in life was to buy him the following year when he went to sale. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the wonderful experiences I had at ULM those nine months. I never could have ever had the opportunity to experience any of those things living in the city. But for reasons unknown to me, it was not God's plan for me to stay there. At the end of the spring semester, the university cut the equine program and set about disbanding the herd. I returned to southeastern Louisiana to live with my family. In the fall, the university started putting horses up for sale at auction. All but a few of the riding horses were put up for sale, including my mare. So I wired my professor some money and, acting as my agent, she bid on my mare and bought her for me. I remember the call as if it was yesterday. I had waited my entire life to own "my" horse and now I finally had her. She was no longer ugly to me; she was the most beautiful horse in the world. I began to look forward to the following year when I could buy my baby Sunday and my little herd would be perfectly complete. When I called my professor a year later to get information about the upcoming sale, she finally broke the news to me. My baby had had an accident during halter breaking the year before and had to be put down. She hadn't had the heart to tell me at the time. But God has a plan for all His creatures, and I had my Sunday for the brief time that he was on this Earth. I keep his picture on my shelf and I know he's somewhere in the Great Golden Pasture beyond. I am thankful for all the gifts I have been given, but mostly for my Missy. Everyday is a joy when she greets me with a neigh and shares her generous spirit with me and everyday I thank God for the incredible joy given to me to help me cope with the incredible tragedy of Katrina. My story is not yet completed, but here it must stop as the future is still unknown to me...
English
Hunter / Jumper
Western
Pleasure
Trail
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