05/24/2026
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Almost a year ago, we brought home a horse that most people probably would have passed right by. She was unbalanced, tight and defensive, and if we're being honest, not much to look at. She'd spent years as a broodmare, and it showed. Out of shape doesn't quite cover it. But there was something in her, a kind of quiet stubbornness, a willingness to try, that felt familiar. It matched something we'd been watching grow in our daughter for years. So we took a chance. We weren't sure it was a good one.
We've shared a little about Regan and Maggie before, about that hot Sunday evening last June when they first met. But sitting here now, looking back at what these two have built together over the past eleven months, I'm honestly not sure how to explain it. I'm not sure I need to. Some things you just have to watch and be grateful for.
It's been a year of good hay and slow mornings and a lot of quiet, unglamorous work. Just showing up, day after day, and trusting that it was adding up to something. Maggie has put on close to 200 pounds of muscle. And somewhere along the way, without any of us really noticing, that awkward broodmare started turning heads. Judges have commented on her beauty at shows, which genuinely catches us off guard every single time. She and Regan have spent countless hours with their trainer Julia learning dressage, which, if you've never seen it, looks like ballet but works like Pilates. It builds the deep core strength that horses need to truly thrive. For Maggie, that work has been everything. When she arrived, her stifles, the knee joint of the horse surrounded by a muscle very much like our quadricep, were remarkably weak. We've done what we can, including trying a new medication we're cautiously hopeful about. But that strength is still coming. It takes time. You just keep showing up and trust that it will.
This past Sunday, Regan and Maggie competed at Portofino in Clayton in a combined test, dressage and show jumping together. Maggie did what she's been doing all year in the dressage phase, and they came out of it with a four-point lead. We still don't quite know how she does it, honestly. But the jumping was harder, and six penalty points brought them back to the field. Their first second place finish after a string of firsts.
I'd be lying if I said that didn't sting just a little. But only a little.
Because that's not really the story. The story is what I've watched happen in my daughter over the past year. The early mornings. The patience with a horse that didn't come easy. The trust she and Julia have built, the kind of trainer relationship where nothing is handed to you and everything has to be earned. Regan is figuring out something that takes most people a lifetime, that the work itself is the point. That hard things, done with care and consistency, have a way of quietly becoming something beautiful.
A year ago, this horse was an ugly, wobbly question mark. Now she walks into arenas and leaves judges reaching for kind words. My daughter did that. I don't take any credit for it.
But I get a front row seat. And some days that feels like more than enough.
