I WAS RAISED ON ROY ROGERS MOVIES, SUMMER SQUASH, dairy goats, rural cornfields, golden retrievers, and big, blue North Texas skies. My quintessential farm upbringing fell short of the ranch life picture that B westerns painted, and I wanted nothing more than to move to the mountains with my horse. My parents, being more akin to farmers than anything else, had accepted multiple “free” horses during my childhood with varying result; I could be counted on to love the thing immensely and without reserve, frequently to my detriment. Around my eleventh birthday, my parents purchased a filly for an extraordinary $1500, and I knew true love for the first time. Tagging along close behind my Salvation, marriage and children, Trigger is the greatest gift I’ve ever received. She was golden and kind and brave and I loved her dearly. It was because of her that I knew I would train horses some day. Thankfully eleven year old me and two year old Trigger had the expert guidance and oversight of local gaited horse trainer, Kelvin Key. We flourished, and my dreams grew.
As the years skittered by, my mother invested deeply into my horsemanship journey, providing me with many opportunities to learn from various natural horsemanship trainers. I began with Parelli; Teri Gordon and Jerilyn Caldwell invested into my early teenage years, saturating me with training principles and patience. And then things drastically changed when I began as a stall cleaner for Chad Brinlee of Bombproof Horsemanship. Much of my understanding and experience came from Mr. Brinlee, and much of it learned by simply watching. Brinlee was watchful, patient and kind, with a humble and quiet manner I admired. And, his horses were exceptionally balanced with a fantastic handle and a college education in obstacle work, and his obstacle work is still a large part of my training philosophies today. Brinlee shared arena space with reining trainer Judith Stillson, whom I also appreciated my time around, and who showed me what a “nice turnaround” on a horse was. The first time I’d ever been on a reining horse, I thought one of her reject Reiners would sling me across the arena!
World champion cowboy mounted shooter Curt Moore, cowboy and remarkable horseman Dan Corr, and muleman extraordinaire Paul Garrison III, also shaped the way I viewed horses and mules, and I owe even more of my equestrian growth to them. Around eighteen years old I decided to branch out on my own with Mikki’s Equestrian Training, riding horses and putting miles on them down the North Texas bar ditches. I’ve taken many a horse through Whataburger drive-thrus, and even packed them to Target a time or two.
I worked tirelessly on talking my then-fiancé into leaving Texas for Luna, New Mexico, and finally, the summer before our wedding, he acquiesced on one condition: I had to prove that I could book a full year’s worth of horses at the new mountain place. Brody and I then created CowPunch Ponies LLC as a merger of both of our styles, principles and philosophy, and, even though we didn’t so much as have a round pen, fences or stalls, we indeed had horses on the books for the next twelve months. Some of you took a chance on us back then…thank you.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I traveled frequently to perform Cowboy and Western Music all over the North Americas, and published a book, and won dozens of awards for both music and novel. Getting married gave me the opportunity to make my dream of becoming a full-time horse-trainer come true, so I took it. I thank the Lord that Brody jumped on board, too.
Not much teaches you like the real world, and moving hundreds of miles to a foreign county where we hardly knew a soul, taught us tough and valuable lessons. It was amplified by us moving to a place without cellular service, power, and running water, which took us several months to rectify. (Ask about this story sometime. We love to tell it.) While we have limited power and ample water these days, the cellular service remains elusive at best…
It also graciously provided us with some of the most meaningful friendships one could hope for. Tracey and Chuck Heller were some of those clients-turned-family, and what started as a trainer/client relationship grew into a friendship we have gratefully relied upon.
After being told that we couldn’t have children, in 2021 we welcomed our first daughter, followed in subsequent years by our son, and one surviving twin daughter. What a blessing our children are! We’ve happily discovered that training children up for the Lord uses remarkably similar principles as training horses up for ranch work! In 2024, we inherited Arctic Morgans (www.ArcticMorgans.com) from Tracey and Chuck Heller; a horse breeding program of endangered foundation Morgan horses that we profoundly love. Growing Arctic Morgans has been a new passion for me, and a rewarding one. It is quite the opportunity to not only breed and raise a horse that you love, but to be able to provide it with a quality training foundation. My life is now filled with children and horses and gardens and looking for ways to serve individuals in our community. My life today was once my wildest dream! Under the heaviness of running several businesses, corralling children, and working with horses, sometimes we forget that. But, thankfully, James 1:17 reminds us, “Every good and perfect thing comes from Above.”
We’ve never looked back.
I still envision writing again, and think a beautifully illustrated ranching children’s series sounds like a good idea…maybe one day I will have the time to return to that dream. But for now, I remain overwhelmed by gratitude and under a precious mound of feral ranch kids. I wouldn’t change a thing.
“My cup runneth over, and surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…” (Psalm 23:6)
