My name is Katie and my love for horses started, like most equestrians I know, at a very young age. I was fortunate enough to start showing competitively at age nine and started as a working student around age thirteen. I owe my early years of horsemanship not just to my wonderful trainers, but to the grooms that took the time to show me their secret tips and tricks.

In high school, I continued to immerse myself in horses and bought my first off the track thoroughbred— safe to say I was hooked. I continued to ride competitively, but moved from the jumpers into the equitation and hunter rings.

When college came around, I had the privilege of boarding and riding under a trainer who expanded my knowledge of high level preventative care and maintenance. During college, I spent several years working closely with customers at a local tack shop to help them find exactly what they needed to best care for their horses.

Between 2018 and 2022, I took a break from horses, explored California and Tennessee before returning to Tampa Bay. I had just started my search for a new horse and when this big, lanky, but kind-eyed bay came up on my feed, I couldn’t say no.

The horse you see in this picture is Jersey, also known by the American Jockey Club as “Tony’s Gold”. Jersey was to be my horse that I restarted the “right” way- having been raised in what we call the “traditional” English Hunter/Jumper world, I wanted to do something slightly different.

I read Tik Maynard’s In the Middle Are the Horsemen and knew there was a way to balance the traditional feel with ethical and forgiving practices. Needless to say, Jersey’s wonderfully confident brain should be attributed to our success with our ground work following Tik’s methods.

However, something wasn’t right and after two short years of trying, I finally found the answer to our under saddle issues. Thanks to Brandon Equine and Equus-Soma for their help, we discovered Jersey has several severe points of degeneration and some fusion in his cervical spine. In November of 2024, Jersey and I traveled for his dissection under the attentive and caring hands of Dr. Sharon May-Davis and the Equus-Soma Team.

The devastating diagnosis that Jersey received, the catastrophic anomalies we found in dissection and the pain and solitude I went through to reach this point was what got me thinking about not just how we care for our horses but how we care for our fellow equestrians. We need to do better, for our horses sake— and that’s why I’m here.