From Passion to purpose

Laurie Branch grew up surrounded by farms in the horse community of Wilsonville, Oregon. She loved to go out to the fence lines and feed carrots to the neighboring ponies and dream of the day she would have one of her own. That dream came into fruition at 7 years old with a little pony named cricket. They spent hours together and finally her parents conceded and allowed her to take a few riding lessons and join pony club. Fast forward to 2003 and Laurie found herself teaching beginner English lessons at a barn in Beaverton, Oregon. There, she excelled at getting beginner riders to learn to trust their mount and how to effectively bridge the communication gap between horse and human. That led to a job offer in the Caribbean running a trail riding business for tourists and coaching their national youth team in jumpers and dressage. Coming back from the Caribbean, Laurie battled an auto-immune disease for a few years and struggled to keep up on her own horses, but as she healed, she set out to learn more and more from the equestrian world. She took up rodeo drill and ended up running her own team and teaching drill clinics. She took up team roping and training her own horses to rope. And currently learning more about the reining cow horse world while breeding some of the top lines in the industry. She believes there is always more to learn in everything that we do. But she truly enjoys sharing the knowledge and skills she has for horses.