If you ask any equestrian who has been fortunate enough to grow up and grow old in the company of horses, she’ll tell you what you may already know: Horses can enrich a woman’s existence at every stage of her life.

Having shared my entire life with horses, I have no doubt they’ve made me a better, stronger person than I might have been otherwise. When I was a girl, horses gave me a reason to dream and a passion to pursue. Along with my parents, they were my earliest teachers, and from them I learned important lessons about love and loyalty, respect and responsibility. Horses enticed me to spend time outside and instilled in me a deep appreciation for the beauty and wonder of nature.

Growing up with horses, I learned that excuses never substitute for earnest effort and hard work and that practice and repetition of any skill lead to competence and confidence. Although I was bolstered by my successes and humbled by my failures, I came to realize that both are temporary and tomorrow is another day.

During my teenage years, horses gave me a direction in life. They helped me realize that having a purpose was more important than being popular and that true beauty was more about attitude than appearance. Having learned to hold my ground with thousand-pound horses, I never had any problems handling 150-pound adolescent boys, no matter how irresistible they fancied themselves