Natural Horsemanship

Biography

Growing up in a 'non horsey' family Jerusha’s love of horses began as renting horses for hour trail rides on weekends in the summer. In 1990, her father bought Brandy, a welsh cross gelding, for Jerusha’s 10th birthday. In the first few months Brandy initiated Jerusha into the joys of horse ownership, by running away from her, refusing to go out alone and dumping her all over the ranch. After that period of growing pains Jerusha spent her preteen years riding bareback with her friends over the 645 acres that belonged to the dude ranch. During that time she developed a great seat and a no fear of riding, jumping racing and swimming with the horses all summer long.

It wasn’t long before Jerusha developed an interest in showing and wanting to do more with her horses. This led into the involvement of Little Birches Rodeo, a national youth rodeo organization. Jerusha showed her horses all across the country and attended and placed at the Little Birches National Finals several years in a row in a speed trail course event. She also showed well in barrels, pole bending, and goat tying winning at the state level. In the Midwest Jerusha showed in the WSCA speed events and placed many times at the state champ show in events such as barrel racing, pole weaving, keyhole, speed dash and pennant race.

Thinking ahead to her college career and of training horses for a living Jerusha purchased a 3 year old gelding off the track named “8 Seconds” (Ace), in the hopes of training him for college rodeo competition. However Ace had something else in mind. When every traditional method she knew of failed in controlling him, Jerusha began to look for alternative horse training ideas. It was during this time that Jerusha read Pat Parelli's book 'Natural Horsemanship' and decided to write him a letter concerning her 'problems' with Ace. Pat's office responded by wanting to use Ace for the demonstration at the 1997 Minnesota Horse Expo. It was with that experience that Jerusha’s ideas of horsemanship changed forever.

After six years of hard work, dedication and various clinic experiences at Pat Parelli’s ranch in Colorado, Jerusha obtained her level 3 in the Parelli Levels Program. Somewhere along the way the relationship that she had always dreamed about having with a horse, riding bridleless along the beach, black stallion style, was something that she and Ace had achieved together. Jerusha has continued her education through Parelli by attending several University Modules for level 3 graduates which focus on colt starting, foundation and performance. She has also been invited by Parelli to be a part of the savvy team demonstrating her horsemanship on their national tour.

Jerusha feels that her experiences in showing, natural horsemanship, and the challenges of developing a relationship with a horse give her a solid background to help anyone become confident with their horses achieve their goals. She also enjoys helping horses develop a solid foundation or rebuild confidence so they can enjoy being with their humans.

To read more about Jerusha’s horsemanship education visit: www.equiphany.com and click on horsemanship