To her mother's horror, Melanie Blanding actually was raised in a barn. She spent at least 6 days a week at the stable, foxhunting and doing hunter paces around the emerald Virginia countryside on a Welsh pony named "Munchie" who was known to drag absent-minded kids under low-hanging branches before making a break for the sweetest apples. Melanie volunteered for her local Pony Club in high school, then started eventing on her own in college. She traveled extensively for her work as a photojournalist before landing in West Texas.

The skills she learned spending hundreds of hours with horses opened opportunities for her to work as an exercise rider everywhere she's since lived: fox hunting in England, endurance and polo in Sudan, upper-level eventers in Florida, and grande prix jumpers in San Antonio. She could not be more excited to share her enthusiasm and knowledge of horses with the kids at the newly formed West Texas Pony Club Riding Center with Castillo Equestrian at Skyline Farm.