30/11/2025
‘If you want to be here, this industry is for you’
We could stand to see this attitude more in racing. To the ones who help, who make me and others feel welcome, who are kind and supportive, thank you, I appreciate you more than you’ll ever know.
It’s damn hard being the first generation in racing and people are not always kind, many going out of their way to make new people not want to continue. I’ve been laughed at for pulling into the track with an old, used truck and trailer, I’ve heard the whispers and the name calling and plenty about how I’m a ‘bush track hick who doesn’t deserve to be here’, i’ve heard the rumours people have started about me when they could’ve just asked me and I’d have told them what’s really going on, I’ve gotten nasty messages when my horses don’t run well about how I should just quit, I’ve had myself my friends and my family harassed when I’m just trying to go out run my horses and do my job, and many people go out of their way to make bringing my horses into town to run an incredibly unpleasant and uncomfortable experience. We wonder why our numbers of young people getting into this are going down, and we wonder why nobody wants to stick with this anymore, and this is exactly why- how do you sell an experience like that to anyone? When people ask why I took time off racing, this is why. It’s not the long miles hauling in and out, or long days, or balancing work with horses, it’s the people who at best make me feel like I don’t belong there and at worst make me feel unsafe having my horses in town, and that I should quit trying.
If you are here, and supporting our tracks, and trying to learn, and helping each other, and being good to other people and your horses, there is a place for you in this industry. If you are in it for the right reasons, you belong here and I see you trying. Keep at it and don’t let the sh*tty people push you out of it. Find a solution that works for you, for me that’s shipping in and doing my own thing, and I look forward to getting back at it in a year or two on my own terms.
There is a place for everybody here if you’re in it for the right reasons, regardless of your background, and if we want this industry to survive we could stand to be less sh*tty to each other.
The horse industry is for anyone who wants to be in it. Period.
I came from a tiny community of about 100 people, with a K–8 school even smaller. I was the clear outcast in my grade — most kids came from horse families or at least had horses. And trust me, they made sure I knew it.
I still remember one moment crystal clear: someone was writing “categories” on the board in class. One color was “people who have a horse,” the other was “people who don’t.”
Take a wild guess which one I was placed under.
I went home that day, made a dog-walking poster, and hung it up at the store. I was told, “No one needs that in a town this small.”
I hung it anyway.
Two people called.
I walked dogs five days a week — sometimes at 5 AM before school — because I wanted a horse that badly.
Eventually I bought my first horse. I had zero help, so of course I had no idea what I was doing. I would ask friends or their parents for advice, and one parent literally told me:
“Why don’t you just sell her and actually buy something good?”
I was crushed. I worked so hard, and my options were limited. My parents didn’t even have a horse trailer, so I bought the one horse that was close enough for me to get. They didn’t understand, and I was constantly reminded that I didn’t “fit in.”
I even got cussed out in my own house for watching the NFR — anything cowboy-related was basically banned on TV.
So I made a decision early on:
Just because I didn’t come from this world didn’t mean I wasn’t going to become wildly successful in it.
I’m here to fight the narrative that you have to look a certain way, come from a certain family, or have the “right” background to belong in the western industry.
If you want to be here, this industry is for you.
