“ It was going to be a real big horse, so I trained tricks by the time it was two, and I took it to a sale. I really got a lot of money for it, and I bought back another horse and a saddle and had money left over. And from there on, I just kept doing that, always buying a better horse and making a nice profit,” said Sharon.
Sharon learned how to train and raise horses through reading about other horse trainers’ experiences, instinct, practice and trial and error.
Diva is Sharon ' s 10-year-old bay Rocky Mountain Trail Horse.
“ Some people just think like a horse, and that’ s how I did.” said Sharon.
“ And I read books, anything I could get a hold of in the library about horses. In school, when I had to make a book report, they knew what mine was going to be about. It was always‘ Black Beauty’ or‘ My Friend Flicka,’ all of them horse stories.”
Sharon was working part-time, so she had a little money to buy horses. Then, she would bring them home, train them, make them better and take them back to the sale, doubling or even tripling her money.
Shortly after graduating high school, Sharon got married and had three children in quick succession. Later on, they moved to a cattle ranch called Crystal Springs Ranch in Clear Lake, where there was a professional rodeo held in the pasture.
That’ s where Sharon became interested in rodeo and her children learned to ride. When her children were little, they were all in horse 4H, and Sharon was the 4H leader. Meanwhile, Sharon spent every day on a horse moving cattle on the ranch for work.
“ It was just me and my husband to take 100 head of steers at a time out to certain pastures. And you had to be on the sides of them, and then he had to go around behind too and keep them going. So it was pretty tricky to take 100 head of yearling steers out to a pasture they don’ t know, and at the time, we had 1,500 head of them,” said Sharon.
Until her youngest daughter, Kim, was old enough to go to school, Sharon would put her on the horse behind her, and they would ride together all day.
“ There were no babysitters around, so she just went wherever I did, and we moved the cattle. One time, we had a little wreck. We stepped in a hole, and we both fell off. We didn’ t get hurt. We just got back on,” said Sharon. Her daughter Kim went on to be a barrel racer, her daughter Tammy married a rancher and her son Todd became a welder.
In 1979, Sharon’ s life changed when she got divorced, moved to Rapid City, started a horse training business, worked as a home health caregiver, continued buying and selling horses and started competing in rodeos and shows.
For rodeos, Sharon primarily competed in barrel racing and breakaway roping, earning several buckles, belts and cash prizes for her efforts.
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