My name is Missy Roth and I’m so excited to have y’all read my blogs! Yes, I’m from Fort Worth, Texas and learned to ride when I was 3 years old on Shetland ponies. Some of the meanest and orneriest little critters put on God’s green earth! Why they advertise them as being gentle I’ll never know. It wasn’t until I was 8 or 9 years old that I actually got a “real” horse. About a year later my family moved to Southern California which is where I grew up. Course I couldn’t have looked more like a fish out of water when I showed up the first day of my new school wearing my cowboy boots, jeans and western shirt. To this day I still remember the kids making fun of my Texas accent! By several years later though, I had learned to surf, say, “Totally dude” and ride horses English style. That was my first introduction to Thoroughbreds and I instantly fell in love with these beautiful, long-legged creatures. And riding English was a whole new discipline that I had to learn. I learned that lacking a saddle horn; you had to hold on with your knees and thighs; you didn’t sit a trot; and you had to count the steps your horse took in between jumps. Whew! But I quickly learned to love it and rode that way for many years to come. Even after moving back to Texas 30 years ago for my airline career I continued to ride English. I ended up buying a Thoroughbred hunter-jumper that was burned out as a lesson horse and learned a different type of English riding called dressage. For anyone who has ever ridden dressage, you know that it puts a capital “D” in the word discipline! With my instructor riding her in a local dressage show, she actually won best of show. She was a great mare that unfortunately due to health issues we eventually had to put her down last year. Enter Shonee, my 29 year old Appaloosa gelding rescue. See my previous blog to find out how we acquired him. Hope you ride along with us as we reenter the Western show world on our big adventures!