The Galloping Snapper is a vivid memoir in which you transform loss, addiction, and restless drift into a life of craft, horsemanship, sobriety, and hard-earned meaning. Why was this an important book for you to write? 

This book mattered because it forced me to tell the truth about a chapter of my life I could have easily softened or skipped. Losing the pony act wasn’t just a career shift—it was the collapse of an identity I had built my world around. What followed was drift, addiction, and a kind of quiet unraveling. Writing The Galloping Snapper became a way to face that honestly and show how meaning isn’t something you find once—it’s something you rebuild, often from wreckage. I needed to document that transformation, not just for others, but to understand it myself.

How did painting scrollwork and restoring showpieces change the way you understood performance, beauty, and your own identity?

Painting taught me that performance doesn’t end in the ring—it lives in the details people almost overlook. Scrollwork, line, balance, color—those became a different kind of choreography. Instead of movement through space, I was creating movement for the eye. I began to understand beauty as something intentional, something built through discipline and patience, not just flair. That shift grounded me. It took me from being someone who performed identity to someone who crafted it. The work slowed me down, demanded precision, and in doing so, reshaped how I saw myself—not just as an entertainer, but as an artisan.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

I wanted to show that reinvention isn’t glamorous—it’s gritty, uncertain, and often lonely. I wanted to talk about addiction without dressing it up, about loss without rushing to resolution, and about the slow, deliberate process of rebuilding a life with integrity. Another key idea was that creativity can be a lifeline—not just expression, but survival. And underneath all of it, there’s the idea that purpose isn’t handed to you. You earn it through showing up, through doing the work, even when no one is watching.

Bingo feels like more than a horse in the book. How would you describe that partnership in your own words?

Bingo wasn’t just a partner—he was a mirror and a stabilizer. Horses don’t respond to who you pretend to be; they respond to who you actually are in the moment. With Bingo, there was no hiding. If I was scattered, he felt it. If I was grounded, he met me there. That relationship demanded honesty and presence in a way nothing else did at the time. He gave me something steady to build on when everything else felt uncertain. In many ways, he carried me—not just physically, but emotionally—through a period where I was learning how to stand on my own again.

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