Western Vitality

Hello, friends!

It’s been almost a full year since I’ve written anything, and for good reason, I suppose. Life has been busy. The mostly good kind of busy.

Life is beginning to take us down a new path, and I wanted to share a little bit of that journey with you.

Life is always throwing us curveballs. We think we have a plan, and then God swoops in with a very different one.

As some of you may know, my husband and I own and operate a dog training business. We are training nearly 25 dogs per day, and not only training them, but boarding, feeding, and caring for them as well. On top of that, we are training, riding, and competing on our own horses.

For a long time, we have been talking about having to choose between the horse life and the dog life. Our daily routine of waking up early, training all of the dogs, going home, switching gears, and riding all of our horses until sundown is just not sustainable long term.

Eventually, we would like to have kids. I dream of being a mom. And our daily life needs to support that, not hinder it.

After 10 years in the dog industry, we are starting to get burned out. The stress, the clients (dog people are completely different from horse people), and the constant, draining grind of it all. If you love training dogs enough, it makes all of those things worth it. But if you don’t, it slowly starts to wear you down.

So, one day after a long day of work, my husband said, “It’s time. We need to choose the life we want.”

And I responded with, “Well, getting rid of our horses is not an option for me, so I guess that’s our answer.”

It was time for us to take the scary jump.

Prior to us making this decision, my husband had signed me up for a clinic to ride with the famous Al Dunning. Al is a celebrity in my book, and I was both very nervous and excited to ride with him.

Up until this point, I had always thought I was average at most horse-related things. I knew I loved being on a horse, training, and riding, but I never thought I would be anything more than what I already was.

I walked into that clinic as a nervous, doubtful, fearful woman and walked out of that clinic a whole new person.

Al really took a liking to me as a rider. He talked about my timing and my rhythm, and he told me that he wanted my husband and me to come intern with him. Mind you, there were 14 other riders in this clinic, and no one else received an offer like that.

I was appalled.

I remember walking out of the arena for lunch break the first day. My husband was waiting for me, and he said, “Did you just hear what Al Dunning said to you?!”

I was awestruck by the fact that he noticed me.

And it wasn’t the kind of notice that gave off a simple, “Hey, you’re doing great” energy. It was pure. It was intentional.

I felt like he looked into my soul and saw the little girl who had always felt like she was never enough. And he looked at her and said, “Your hard work is paying off. Come ride with me. I’m going to make you great.”

It truly was a life-changing experience for both me and my husband.

Fast forward to the decision we finally made to change the course of our lives. We knew we needed to go to the internship with Al. We knew we wanted to do reined cow horse. We knew we loved nice horses, good people, and a life that we wanted to raise our children in.

So, we took the offer.

We are looking forward to spending that time with Al and learning everything we can.

As I write this today, we still have so much to do before this life change completely takes place. We are living on prayers and faith at this point.

So, as our lives make this drastic change, I hope to keep you guys updated with the life lessons, changes, and memories we experience along the way.

Best,
Karlee ❤