Kailey was raised in southeastern Georgia and learned to ride from a family friend. By the time she was 7, she had a horse of her own and spent her childhood exploring the 400 acres of fields, orchards and riverbeds that made up her family’s farm.
As a teenager, she took hunter/jumper lessons and dabbled in reining before joining a mounted drill team. When she was working at an equine rescue, she adopted a 6-month-old filly. Although Kailey had been riding for years, she’d never trained a horse before and needed help. Her mentor Sharon followed the Method and gave Kailey a copy of Clinton’s first book, “Establishing Respect and Control for English and Western Riders.”
“That book was my world,” Kailey remembers. “Right from the start, I loved how structured the Method is with its Eight Steps to Success for each exercise. There’s no guessing with it. A lot of programs try to make training almost a magical process. Sharing a partnership with your horses and connecting with them can feel magical, but first you have to earn their respect and put a solid foundation on them. A lot of times that means going through some ugly stuff initially.”
To continue to add to her horsemanship knowledge, Kailey went to school to be a farrier. “I wanted a better and deeper understanding of equine anatomy and biomechanics,” Kailey says. “Knowing horses on that level is helpful as a trainer to see the broad spectrum when approaching a horse’s training.”
Before long, her farrier business took off and she began training horses for the public when she had time in her schedule. To keep her horsemanship skills sharpened, she participated in a Fundamentals Clinic with Clinton in 2016, and a few years later, rode in a Training-on-the-Trail Clinic with Professional Clinician Jeff Davis. “The horse training part of my life had taken a backseat as I built my farrier business. At the trail clinic, I felt my passion for training sparked again,” Kailey says.
She’d known of the Clinician Academy for years and started seriously considering enrolling in it. “There gets a point where you’ve got everything you can get out of the training kits and you want more information than what a clinic offers. That’s when the Academy becomes the answer,” Kailey says. “Aside from the knowledge you gain, becoming an ambassador and being a part of a company like Downunder Horsemanship with Clinton’s approval is a confidence boost and a way to stand out to prospective clients.”
As a Method Ambassador, Kailey loves training horses and helping people. “I like seeing horses and people experience those lightbulb moments where it all clicks. There’s nothing more rewarding than that,” she says.