Walking On Volume 4, Issue 8, August 2017 | Page 20

A Conversation with Tevis Cup Competitor and
Tennessee Walking Horse Owner
Brenna Reese Sullivan
Where do you live?
Lake County in rural Northern California
How long have you been riding horses and
how were you introduced to horses?
I was put on my first pony at age 5 and haven’t looked
back since. I did my first limited distance endurance
ride at age 8 and my first 50 mile ride when I was 9. I
rode endurance here and there until my teenage years
and found it again after college. Horses are in the fabric
of my being; it’s hard to imagine life without them.
20 • Walking On
Have you always had
Tennessee Walking Horses?
No, I grew up with Arabs and half-Arabs. When
I was a kid, my mom was into endurance and Arabs
were the obvious choice for that. She had a brief foray
into gaited horses in the early 1990s after she saw a pair
of really nice Walking Horses at Pt. Reyes. She bought
a Foxtrotter who unfortunately was a bad tripper. On
a ride, the mare tripped, went down and broke my
mother’s nose. That was the end of her ‘gaited horse’
experiment for about 10 years.