Thunderbird Equine

10/31/2026

Learn the lessons from that hard season, because they are about to help you handle something you could not have handled before it.

I do not think every hard thing happens because we needed a lesson, and I have never found “everything happens for a reason” particularly comforting while standing in the middle of something painful.

But I do believe we are responsible for what we carry out of it.

Some seasons teach us what we can survive. Others show us what we will no longer tolerate, what deserves our attention, who can be trusted, and how much strength we were wasting trying to control things that were never ours to control.

10/29/2026

10/28/2026

The American dream is alive and well, and if you don’t believe me, girl, go outside.

I do not mean that everything is fair, that hard work always receives its proper reward, or that every person begins with the same opportunity. That would be a comfortable story, but it would not be an honest one.

I mean there are still people building useful lives with their own hands, helping neighbors without needing an audience, raising animals, learning trades, starting businesses, keeping old equipment running and getting up again after plans that looked considerably better on paper.

Most of it will never become impressive enough for the internet. It is dusty, expensive, occasionally held together with baling wire and generally requires someone to do the next necessary thing whether they feel inspired or not.

But it is still out here.

10/25/2026

I was raised around some pretty fine horsemen, men who had spent the better part of their lives horseback and had a way of knowing what they were looking at without having to say much about it. I still get to see a handful of them a couple times a year, along with a few good friends whose opinions I've come to value just as much.

And there's something about the culture of cowboys that I've always respected, a sentiment that's been around a whole lot longer than I have. If you think you've got a damn fine horse, you take him to town.

Not necessarily to prove he's better than the next one, but because there's a certain pride in bringing something you've spent countless hours making, knowing every little place you've struggled and every piece you've worked to put together, and being willing to let somebody else look at it.

There's a vulnerability in that too, I suppose. Because the same people whose approval means the most are often the ones who can see right through what you've tried to dress up. They know what a good horse looks like, and they know the difference between one that's talented and one that's had the time put into him.

And there's just about nothing better than sitting on a horse you're proud to have made and hearing a few kind words from somebody you've respected since you were young. Not because you needed their permission to be proud of him, but because they understand what it took to get there.

I don't think I'll ever outgrow that. The satisfaction of doing good work is one thing, but having it recognized by somebody who knows the difference is something else entirely.

10/24/2026

Between horse shows, I get the opportunity to put my horses to work in the real world, and I don't know that there's a better place to find out what you've actually accomplished with one than out in the pasture with a job that needs doing.

I was visiting with a mentor recently about rate, and somewhere in that conversation, I felt that familiar spark for training come back around. It's a peculiar thing, how one little morsel of knowledge can change the way you look at a hundred things you've done before, and suddenly you're itching to get horseback and see where else that understanding might prove useful. The more I learn, the more opportunities I find to put that knowledge to work, and God's honest truth, a broke horse makes ranch work a hell of a lot easier.

I was visiting with a prospective client not long after, a gentleman who knew plenty about getting a c**t started, and he mentioned that teaching one to open a gate often involved banging the gate against the horse's side. Now, I'm not going to tell another man how to do his business, and I certainly don't presume to know everything there is to know about starting a horse, but I couldn't help thinking about how much trouble a little preparation might save.

Because a gate isn't really about a gate. It's about whether you can put a horse's feet where they belong, whether he'll stay there when something moves beside him, whether he understands how to yield without becoming worried about what you're asking. And if you've taken the time to establish those things beforehand, the gate becomes just another place to use what he already knows.

I suppose that's what has me so taken with this work. The realization that all these little things we're particular about in the arena aren't little things at all once you get outside of it. They're the difference between getting a job done and having to fight your way through it.

And the more I learn, the more convinced I become that good horsemanship ought to make the hard work easier, not give a horse more hardship to endure.

10/22/2026

I've become a little addicted to being better than I was before. Not necessarily better than the next person or the next horse, but better than the version of myself that showed up yesterday, and I've found that the more I learn, the more painfully aware I become of just how much I still don't know.

This year has been an incredible challenge, bringing a young horse along in a discipline that asks for so many different things from the same animal. To be quiet and deliberate one moment, quick and capable the next, to have enough confidence to make a decision and enough understanding to wait for one. And somewhere in the middle of trying to develop all those qualities in him, I've been forced to take a pretty hard look at the qualities I still need to develop in myself.

There's something humbling about realizing that the horse standing underneath you can only be as good as the understanding you've managed to give him, and that sometimes the thing standing between where you are and where you want to be ain't the horse at all.

I don't reckon I'll ever get tired of chasing that standard. The trouble with getting better is that you start to see just how much better you could be.

10/20/2026

There is a version of ranch life that photographs beautifully, and then there is the version where you are changing shoes in the barn aisle with three dogs underfoot and a tractor parked behind you, which I personally think, also photographs beautifully.

10/20/2026

I've always found it interesting that some of the same people who wouldn't dream of turning a calf out without its vaccinations are also some of the most skeptical people you'll meet when it comes to vaccinating themselves.

And I don't bring that up to make a judgment about anybody's convictions, because I think there's a whole lot more to that contradiction than meets the eye.

Ranchers spend their lives making decisions about risk. They weigh the cost of prevention against the cost of losing an animal, they trust what they've seen work, they remember what hasn't, and they develop a pretty healthy suspicion of anyone who claims to know their business better than they do.

Maybe it's a question of trust. Maybe it's the difference between having a relationship with the veterinarian who's been coming to your place for twenty years and trying to make sense of advice coming from an institution you've never had much reason to trust. Or maybe we're simply more willing to take preventive measures when the responsibility for another living thing rests squarely on our shoulders.

I don't pretend to know the answer, but I think it's worth considering how differently we approach the same idea of prevention depending on who we're trying to protect.

There's a lot to admire about the responsibility ranch people take for the animals entrusted to them. I just wonder sometimes why that same sense of stewardship can become so complicated when we turn it toward ourselves.

09/14/2026

Sometimes you come home with the award you were hoping for, and sometimes you come home with the *Hard Luck Award.*

Colorado Top Hand Cowgirl was a little bit of the latter for Bet He's Rebellious and me this year.

I walked out of the house without my hat one morning and had to borrow one from a mentor, which probably should have been my first indication of how things were going to go, and then proceeded to give a cow flight lessons during the ranch cutting. Later during the one woman sort we had what felt like the start of one of our best runs of the weekend. We sorted our first cow in *16 seconds,* and I had the option to sit there, hold that cow and take the time, or go back into the herd and see if we could get two more.

I went back.

In hindsight, I wish I'd stayed safe and taken the time, because our steer eventually made it back through to the herd and turned a really promising run into a no time. But I also know myself well enough to know why I made the choice I did. This year has been so much about learning to expect more from my horses and, probably just as importantly, learning when they're ready for me to ask for it. Sometimes that means you find out exactly how much is there, and sometimes you find out where the edge still is.

We also managed a *23-second barrel pattern with no penalties and, perhaps more importantly, no bruised shins,* so I'm counting that one as a win.

And underneath all the hard luck, I came away really proud of Bet He's Rebellious.

This horse is becoming more capable and more versatile every time I take him somewhere. We're asking him to ranch ride, trail, rein, cut cattle, work cattle and then turn around and do the kind of things a top hand competition asks of one, and I think sometimes I get so focused on everything I still want to improve that I forget how much horse he has already become. There were plenty of things this weekend I would do differently if I could run them again, but there were also moments where I could feel how far we've come, and that's worth something too.

But the part of this weekend that will probably stick with me the longest really doesn't have much to do with my horse.

I've been fortunate enough to watch Mikah Wysocki and Stephanie Ewoldt-Bacca build Colorado Top Hand Cowgirl over the last few years into something incredibly special. I respect both of these women immensely, and every year this event gives me the opportunity not only to compete, but to meet more women and girls who remind me just how many incredible cowgirls there are in this industry. It is competitive without losing its sense of community, challenging without becoming intimidating, and genuinely welcoming to the women and girls who show up willing to try.

So when Mikah started describing the Hard Luck Award and said something along the lines of, "this goes to someone who we know is very good, but who just had a run of tough luck, and we want her to know that she is seen," I don't know that I was prepared for how much that would mean to me.

Because being seen is a funny thing.

We spend so much of our time in this industry looking at what went wrong, the cow we should have held, the decision we wish we could make again, the half point we left somewhere in a maneuver, the things we're going home to fix on Monday, that sometimes it takes somebody else reminding you that they can see the work underneath all of it.

And I am incredibly grateful to be surrounded by women who do exactly that.

Women who compete hard and still build each other up, who recognize good horsemanship even when the score sheet may not, who make room for the next generation of girls coming behind us, and who have created an environment where you can have a weekend full of hard luck and somehow still drive home feeling encouraged, albeit tired.

I don't know that I can adequately explain what Mikah, Stephanie and all of the women behind Colorado Top Hand Cowgirl are building, but I know our industry is better because they're building it.

So I'll take my Hard Luck Award, laugh about the forgotten hat that will now forever live in the trailer(sorry Travis Hamblen,) think about that 16-second cow for probably longer than I should, and go home grateful for another opportunity to expect a little more from my horse and a little more from myself.

09/12/2026

What clients rarely see when they pay for training.

The ride is the easiest part to recognize as training because it has a beginning and an end, and usually there is something visible being asked of the horse, but I think much of the responsibility exists around the ride, in noticing how the horse walks out, what their expression looks like, whether their body feels the same as it did yesterday, and whether the plan I made before entering the barn is still the right plan once the horse is standing in front of me.

Training is asking questions, but it is also deciding which question is appropriate today, how clearly it needs to be explained, how much improvement is enough, and whether another repetition will help the horse understand or only satisfy my desire to finish something.

Sometimes the right decision is to expect more. Sometimes it is to simplify the work, return to a foundation I thought was already solid, or quit when the improvement is still small. Occasionally the best decision I make for a horse is deciding not to ride them at all.

Then there is the work that comes afterward, cooling them out, checking their legs, caring for the equipment, putting them away comfortable, and carrying what they told me today into what I ask tomorrow.

A client may never see every one of those moments, and I do not think they should have to manage them from a distance. The horse experiences them, though, and the horse eventually reflects the quality and consistency of the decisions being made when no one else is watching.