About Janet

“I used to get up at four in the morning in order to be one of the first in line, so that I could saddle and have
morning rides on my favorite pony, Marble (shown above.)

It was ‘first come, first served’, so there were a few of us who were really dedicated and crazy. We couldn't get into the zoo to start our morning routine of cleaning the yard and such until seven a.m.”

The zoo provided Janet’s only access to horses until she got a horse of her own when she was twelve. She kept Brandy (shown here) in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, and traveled by bus to see her, sometimes leaving the house at five or six in the morning and not returning until evening. “I didn’t own a saddle, so all of my riding was bareback,” she says. “My mother used to give me massages because my muscles were so sore from riding all day.”

As a young adult, Janet set her sights on dressage riding. She believed the discipline would help her attain a feeling of being at one with her horse. She aspired to ride Grand Prix Musical Freestyle, thinking that a true partnership must exist to achieve that level of performance.

“The first horse I ever feared”

“But then I came across a very troubled Thoroughbred named Mixer, and I realized my relationships with my horses were far from that,”  she says. In other words, like a lot of experienced riders, she found holes or gaps in her horsemanship that she didn’t know how to fill on  her own.

“Mixer was the first horse I ever feared might cause me to get hurt.,” says Janet. “I had ridden many horses who had issues, yet he was the reason I bought my first helmet. He didn't even like to be touched. I have to confess that I honestly thought that love would bring  this horse around,” she says, comparing him to other horses she felt she had changed through sheer kindness. “But that was not at all the  situation here.”

“I learned to love a challenge”

As a young adult, Janet attended Western Washington University where she received a degree in Accounting combined with Computer Science. “I developed a passion for software development -- it gave the opportunity to solve problems and feel a sense of accomplishment,” she says. “This is where I learned to love a challenge, and to work with a team of dedicated individuals to create something bigger than myself.” As her career developed, it was leading teams and creating opportunities for others to achieve their goals that really inspired her.

But while Janet found the personal relationships in her career to be very rewarding, this opinion did not hold true for “corporate America,” which she viewed as too restrictive. “ I felt that it wasn’t a place that encouraged the development of deeper talent, for myself and others” she says.

“A new and exciting door opened”

Over the course of her search to learn ways to develop a trusting relationship with her horse Mixer, Janet began receiving instruction from a Washington State clinician name Greg Eliel. She says during this time a “new and exciting door opened where I discovered my skills could blossom to a level where there were no limitations.”

Janet eventually made great strides with Mixer (that’s a photo of her roping (with him on the right) under the guidance of Eliel and later, clinician Buck Brannaman). She says that over time it became apparent to her that this type of horsemanship has no boundaries: “That’s because it’s not discipline specific. This can be rewarding for any type of rider because it’s about the way you look at things. It becomes a way of life.”

This certainly held true for Janet, who eventually left the corporate life for a while and bought a 5-acre property so that she could begin to teach the type of horsemanship that she first learned from Eliel.

“He was very supportive,” she says, “yet I found myself still lacking the courage and partnership to become successful.”