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Grab Life by the Reins

Ashley Travis shows no fear when training horses

Grab Life by the Reins

Ashley saddles a horse at Imperial Ranch before practicing her riding skills



May 2008

Just one student in a class full of overachievers, Ashley Travis, at first glance, might not stand out. In many ways, she’s a lot like the other top-notch students in the prestigious North High agriculture program in Bakersfield, Calif., – smart, ambitious and, most of all, tireless.

But according to her FFA advisor, Chris Dickson, she’s also a bit understated. Or, that is, she was.

“I remember Ashley as a freshman,” Dickson recalls. “She was this very quiet girl. She was focused, but I guess I really didn’t notice it right away. She just quietly kept a 4.0 GPA and quietly took the rigorous advanced placement courses.”

Dickson adds, “But now she’s really come alive. She’s a lot more confident than she was as a freshman. These days, anytime we need something, Ashley jumps at the chance.”

Afraid of Nothing
When you talk to Ashley about her high school career, one thing is obvious: She’s afraid of nothing. And while she may have kept a low profile in her early days in FFA, behind the scenes Ashley took life by the reins – literally.

“I love rodeo,” Ashley says, “and I’ve been riding horses since I was a kid. When we moved here to Bakersfield before my freshman year, everyone was telling me to enter the local rodeo, so I did. But before I could compete, I needed to train my horse.”

With that in mind, Ashley talked to a professional trainer at Imperial Ranch, a horse training, breeding and boarding facility in nearby Shafter.

“I brought in my horse, but she couldn’t do what I needed her to do,” Ashley says. “So I used one of his, and things went well.”

Spending all that time around a professional horseman, Ashley eventually got to thinking – this work was pretty cool.

“So one day I just asked him if he could use some help, and he gave me a job,” she explains. “He put me to work cleaning stalls, saddling, washing and brushing the horses. And I eventually progressed to riding the colts, starting the 2-year-olds, and showing. I basically became an assistant trainer – his right-hand ‘man.’ Whatever needed to be done, I did it.”

Not Quite Hard Work
While there’s no doubt her job, which she juggles with school and FFA, takes a considerable amount of time and effort, Ashley refuses to call it hard work.

“It’s a passion I have,” she says. “So yes, it’s work, but it isn’t hard – it’s fun. When I go to work, I have fun. I’m doing what I love to do.”

Fortunately for Ashley, she’s been able to apply her time at Imperial Ranch to her supervised agricultural experience program (SAE) in equine science.

“There’s a lot of hands-on breeding work,” Ashley says. “It’s a huge process prepping the mare, getting the stallion ready and doing the artificial insemination. And then there’s the foaling, which we also do. Plus I’m riding and working the horses, training them to cut.”

Cutting, explains Ashley, involves using a horse to get one cow to part from its herd – a handy skill to have on a cattle ranch.

“We use buffalo for the training,” she explains. “The cattle figure out your game so fast that within three weeks they won’t do it anymore. The buffalo don’t figure it out. They think it’s fun. So we teach horses cow sense with buffalo.”

If the buffalo are slow, Ashley is anything but. In 2006, she was recognized at the 79th National FFA Convention as one of four national finalists for the equine science placement proficiency award.

Meanwhile, says Ashley, she used one of her classes – agricultural biotechnology – to study endome­triosis, a condition which afflicted some of Imperial Ranch’s mares.

“They weren’t getting pregnant,” she says. “It turns out, they had this bacteria inside the uterus that would basically kill the fetus. I went out and cultured the horses, sent the cultures to a lab, collected data, and wrote a paper about it.”

A true scholar, Ashley enjoyed her agricultural business management class and represented her chapter as its FFA sentinel.

“She’s been a great role model,” says Dickson. “She’s not only been a leader in FFA, but she’s also shown how it’s possible to take your passion to the next level. She could have just learned to train horses, and that would have been great. But she chose to go further than that. That’s not something you see very often. She took that next step.”

A Well-Rounded Education
These days, Ashley attends California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo. There, she is studying equine reproduction while majoring in animal science with an agricultural business minor.

“I want to open up a breeding barn,” says Ashley, “maybe here in California. That’s my goal – to have my own ranch.”

Story by Chris Hayhurst
Photography by Brian McCord


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