01/04/2026
As a horse girl that didn’t grow up in a horse family. Maintaining staying with the sport and furthering my knowledge was difficult. I bought my first horse with my own money on a payment plan at the age of 16. Still by far the best horse I have ever had the pleasure of owning. She passed this fall around the age of her 30s. I am very thankful that my mom had a friend who basically adopted me and became my horse mom. Because of her, I had somewhere to keep my horse at the age of 16 and didn’t have to worry about much after that financially.
At the age of 19 I got pregnant. I still lived with my parents and didn’t get a job until my daughter was about 6 months of age. I stopped riding for a long time because i didn’t have the money or the time and I had a new life that came before everything. Once I started working and had a job for 8 months and moved out of my parents at the age of 20 (moved out a couple of weeks before my 21st), and around the time my daughter turned 1. I used part of my tax return and bought a horse and boarded it at a super cool facility that quite literally had anything and everything. I started that horse and then sold her so that I could gradually increase my budget for a new horse. Then I bought another, and another, and another to get to the point where i’m at now.
I now own a registered Fjord that I hope to be my kids horse one day. I have Ghost, i could never sell him because he’s a child only a mother could love because of his quirks. I have June who is the fanciest horse i have ever owned and im still learning all of her buttons. She is the one that I pray can take me the farthest in barrel racing. All of these horses were possible because I entertained the world of horse trading while I was being a SAHM. I got attached to all of them. There are a couple who I regret selling but I still keep up with all of the horses I have sold. I have even kept up with the ones I sold and then their new homes have sold 😂
I was renting property to keep all my horses on because it was cheaper than what boarding would have been. A few months later me and my fiance bought a house that supposedly wasn’t lived in for 5 years until we bought it. The yard was overgrown. We found 2 rattlesnakes on the property so I was scared to go anywhere that wasn’t easily exposed to the eye and didn’t even want my daughter to go outside lol. Our water pump went out, we had to get a new fridge, our heat has gone out, we had to replace a faucet, paid for thousands in dirt work, we had to call the fire department, there was a plethora of trash everywhere. We are STILL finding random s**t in the yard.
The horse work is never ending, we’ve had to fix the fence 3 times. Took out a loan for the barn, to finish the arena, put the second pasture up, buy grass seed to reseed the pastures. I have learned the way I want to do things from doing things wrong the first time. My place isn’t the most ideal place now but in the next couple years I plan to have 3 luscious pastures, a covered arena, a nice barn and tack room, every tractor attachment you can imagine. I am praying for it all. I want to buy the 6 acres next to us and expand even more in the future. I am thankful for everyone who has helped put fourth the effort, for everyone who believed in me, and most important for Bryan. He doesn’t care one bit if we own horses but if i have a project i want to come to life, he makes it happen.
Although it doesn’t look like much now I have big plans for 2026 and all the years to come it takes to make my vision come to life. I just have to remind myself that i’m only 23 and having what I have in this economy is something else to be thankful for.
