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About Us
We are currently five grown adults all working towards a common goal, to create lives centered around herdsmanship and respect for the Lord's creation. We take our individual stewardship seriously, and live relatively simple, non-commercial, non-chemical ways. Choosing old fashioned values, we are horse and buggy and are blessed to be able to take a horse into town for dentist appointments.
Valuing like minded community, each one has their special talents and areas of interest, and everyone benefits when each can excercise those. Mom loves plants and painting, so landscape, gardening and maintaining "the look" is her forte. Dad fills the role of handy-man and grunt labor, running the tractors, mower and power tools.
Once "baby-of-the-family," Abigail is now head of the horse program, and she partners with office personel Elizabeth (that's me! also on the phone) on the blue roan mares and the fledgling program to produce "Born Broke ~ No Vices" trustworthy ranch horses, beautiful inside and out.
Roy (2nd born & only boy) has battled severe health issues for the past decade, so he's been forced to drop out of full time invovlement. He does still get out whenever he's feeling well enough, and he enjoys working with the Spanish style horses his interests have added to the ranch operation.
A Little Bit of Background
Double K Ranch started as a family horse training operation about 1995. Mom and Dad raised their kids in a consistant ranching/farm/country lifestyle through many changes and challenges; some things were always the same: treat animals the way you'd want to be treated, always give respect and also require it back from them, too. Coupled with a "tech-free" youth and plenty of opportunity to learn from making poor decisions smartened the younger generation up fairly quick, and access to major inovators in the Natural Horsemanship school of thought put a finer point on to the focus. At first folks brought their "problem horses" for the energetic youngsters to challenge themselves with, and with each success the reputation grew.
Life had bumps in the road, and some of the siblings went their own way, but today three of us are still here with the program.
The core group has changed, but now and we only take horses that want to be in the same round pen as us; though any norse can be reached, some are just safer than others and there's no reason why those ones shouldn't have precedence over risky factors.
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Double K Ranch, |
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Ranch Horses, |
Horse Training |
hour north-west of Springfield, Missouri |
Word of Mouth Success
We start on the ground, laying a foundation of mutual respect and attention in the round pen, then that carries over onto their back.
As we've worked on the many 'training horses', (as well as those of our own,) we've adjusted our way of working with each individual horse we meet, to best suit the individual's personality, previous history and learning style. There is as much diversity within equines as there is among people, and we have always found it is fastest to figure the horse out and then show the horse how to figure you out.
What you see in our finished horses speaks for itself, we've never advertised our training services, and we have not had any lack of horses! We take great satisfaction in knowing that a job well done, and done well, is the reason behind every new horse that comes to our program.
A Few Words About The Trainers
As the family has changed, so has the numbers of horses Double K Ranch is able to bring in. Abi (one time "little kid") has grown to be head wrangler, and while she enjoys working the ranches own horses, she finds special satisfaction in training horses for other people, too... she's always enjoyed that aspect of helping accomplish folks' dreams for thier equine. She also works with people to teach them about horses, no matter where they are in the spectrum of excperience; from "never ridden" to "picking up a few tricks".
Abigail Abi grew from the youngest of the crew to lead wrangler, and is now head trainer here at Double K Ranch. Surrounded by horses and training her whole life, she started learning the ropes while she was "knee high to a short sheep". Her first fall was off a mini pony in for training, and from there she stepped up to Shetlands, then on to bigger ponies, and along the way learned how to avoid the ground landings. She learned the value of training in anticipation of problems, or, taking care of the problem before it has opportunity to happen. She joined the full time crew at seventeen, and with her light touch and understanding is much appreciated by horse training clients as well as riding students she teaches. Abi values good dispositions as well as cow savvy; only one of the things she loves about the Frosty mare. She always comes back grinning over Frosty's performance working cows, in the pens or in the woods. (And the woods are thorny here in Mo.!) She always grabs Frosty for an emergency, and then to be able to turn around and put brand new riders on her... makes us very in love with the blue mares!!!
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Roy Roy grew up working around horses, but severe health issues as a young adult have hampered his full time career. He manages the two as best he can, and loves to get out and work with Abi whenever his health allows. As a boy he learned to ride on a young Thoroughbred mare, the next year he started his training career with a highly spirited Arab mare, and has had a special place in his heart for hotbloods ever since. Lately he has dabbled in mules, and the results of that can be seen on the video channel. He also enjoyed trick training, as well as getting equine critters started in harness. A breif foray into mules enlightened us all, and we're glad to report that a "surprise" Azteca filly (out of his mare) is keeping him busy these days. |
Roy (2nd born and only boy) has battled severe health issues for the past decade, so he's been forced to drop out of full time invovlement. He does still get out whenever he's feeling well enough, and he enjoys working with the Spanish style horses his interests have added to the ranch operation. |
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