I decided to try out this blogging thing a bit. So to start off with I will give you a little info about me and my horses.


I am 19 years old and was raised all over the state of Texas but call a tiny spot on the map in West Texas my hometown. I actually spent a year (I think) in Alaska when I was a baby/toddler.
I grew up around my grandparent farm and ranch. I have always had a love for animals and the outdoors.


(That's me feeding an orphan goat in case you did not know that fuzzy thing was a goat)


When I was three weeks shy of my 5th birthday my sisters and I got our first horse which we named Dusty Rose. It was my poetic older sisters idea to name him Rose but I insisted that a boy horse could not have such a girly name (I have always been a practical kind of person) so she added the Dusty part and said we could each call him what we wanted to call him. Dusty stuck and few people actually know his full name.


(That's me on Dusty the Christmas Santa brought him to us! Gotta love Santa! lol)

I was pretty much fearless from the get go and Dusty was an AWESOME horse. He was the type to refuse to walk under low hanging branches or through tight places. He was 16 and died less than a year later. We were once again moving back to my grandparents tiny town and my granddad moved him to the pasture by the house. He died the day before I arrived and was burried near the pound (or so I was told ). My dad told me not too long ago that he thought he had been struck by lightning.

After Dusty, I moved on to Pale Face, my great grandfathers old roping horse (who was rather small... probably only a pony technically).


(That's me and Pale Face)

I soon out grew his slow speeds (it was tricky to get him to trot much less lope). I have always been a speed demon!

Next we enlisted the help of Butch (my uncles horse who once "helped" my cousin at a playday by grabbing the flag in his teeth!) and Paint (my granddad's ranch horse who was bred, born, trained, and raised on my granddad's ranch).
Paint was the first horse I fell off of at the age of six because I got him loping and could not quit bouncing and kicking him in the side. But hey, it probably just made me a better rider for it.... or at the least a better flyer!
When I was seven we traveled around the state with my dad's job but every time we went home I rode none stop all weekend and quit just in time to unsaddle the horse and jump in the car. That is also the time frame when we remet an old family friend who traded horses and whose daughter did playdays. She started us on barrels, poles and taught me alot about horses because you never knew what horse you would ride since she was always trading around. She taught me alot about being a fearless rider.

(Don't bother telling me the 90's were scary for the fashion world!)

When we finally stopped traveling, I continued to ride Paint but we also added Gray and Piero to our herd. Gray was owned by my granddad and Piero was a friend of the family's pony who was 28 and had been passed around the whole town for years.

(Katie, sister and best friend, on Piero and me on Paint)


(Me on the silly pony... I think I was probably 9ish and had been loving bareback since I was eight... shortly after I started riding Paint.)


(Here is a picture of my brother, sisters and cousin riding Piero, Gray and Paint in the rodeo parade with the 4-H group)

The next step up was when I was 11 and we bought Jayhawker Chic (Daisy) and Smokey Bar Five. They were owned by another friend of the family who had them sitting in a pasture for the past few years as the couple was older and had quit competing. Daisy was trained in barrel racing and got given to my older sister and Smokey was trained in roping and some barrel racing. He was mine! He was big and scared me just a little but not as much as Daisy. Gosh Daisy was a spazz but oh was she pretty!


(That is Daisy in her later, mellowed out years)


(This is me and Smokey in 2002)

We competed on our horses at the county level in 2001. I got third out of four. I started the first week on Paint then got Smokey and messed up the pattern every time because the footing was too hard and I didn't have a ton of control over his speed so we slid all over the place and never made it to the third barrel. Though we did AWESOME at flags one time! It was the perfect flag run!



Part 2 of my life will have to wait until another day as it is late.