Danielle has been drawn to horses her whole life — the kind of kid who grew up thinking horses were a perfectly reasonable life plan. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong. She went on to study equine science, become an FEI groom, earn an MBA, work in equine insurance, manage horse shows, teach college courses on equine business, and spend several years as the Director of Driving at U.S. Equestrian — where she led the U.S. Driving teams to some pretty exciting places, including a team gold medal at the 2018 World Equestrian Games. Horses have taken her a lot of places.
But mustangs? Mustangs took her somewhere different.
It started, of all places, in a classroom. When her students began diving into research on wild horse management or training, Danielle got pulled in right alongside them. What she thought she knew about mustangs turned out to be just the surface. The more she learned, the more she wanted to know — about the horses, the land, the people who manage them, the gentling process, and everything in between.
Today, Danielle lives on a small farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky, with her terriers, a bunch of cats, a couple of donkeys, a warmblood, and a mustang from Antelope Valley, Nevada — who, for the record, has been the smartest horse she’s ever met.