Marian and Morgans

     For Katie Ballard, her career started in her early years near her home on Keuka Lake. A teenage rider with a modest budget, she planned on buying a small quarter horse—which was a common and affordable purchase for new horse owners. Just a quick walk down the street was Marian Wright, a good friend and neighbor, a retired schoolteacher who spent summers on the lake and winters in Florida with her husband. On a brief trip over, Marian listened to the numbers and the timeline, then proposed one step before Katie made any purchase: a trip to the New York Morgan Horse Show, where Marian had box seats right on the rail.

     The show offered more than spectacle: rows of tack with a working shine, horses moving with balance and precision under experienced riders. From those box seats, Katie watched as the stallion Saddleback Supreme high-stepped into the ring with a group of bright, talented horses and felt goosebumps race up her arms. Marian caught the moment with a wry smile. Katie paid attention to their behavior and beauty, to recovery between movements, to how handlers set boundaries without noise. Preference followed observation. While it may not have pleased her father, who joked that Marian had raised the stakes, since this would cost more than a run-of-the-mill Quarter Horse, Katie had found the kind of horse she wanted—a Morgan horse. She worked for it, hoeing cabbage and putting in hours as a kennel girl at a local vet’s office to help pay for lessons and the show clothes that signaled she belonged at the in-gate. Years later, two names from ringside are still fresh in her mind: BL Revolution and the driving mare HD Valhalla.

     College decisions arrived soon after. The University of Vermont was known for its Morgan Horse Farm, and she couldn’t turn down the chance to work directly with the animals she loved. Animal science supplied a structure that complemented both her passion for horses and her talent for close observation. In choosing UVM, Katie chose hands-on work alongside the classroom, using skills shaped since childhood on her family’s farm to move toward a career in animal sciences.

     When Katie came to the Miner Institute in 1983, President Harry Randy noticed her horse experience and asked her to oversee the Institute’s horses while she pursued graduate work; he also allowed her to bring her own Morgan to the farm. What she found confirmed the need for change: students were riding after a single brief introduction, and some were even putting bits in backward before galloping off. Katie told Harry the setup wasn’t fair to horses or students and that if this was the model, she wanted no part in it. Harry’s response was decisive: replace the existing string and find him a horse he could safely drive.

​     Katie sourced a Morgan mare she knew would meet that bar. She chose a horse that would stand while Harry, a large man, hitched and drove on his own across the grounds in all seasons. That mare became the proof everyone could see, the moment that “sold the whole horse program” to leadership and visitors alike. Two more Morgans followed from Harry’s New Hampshire dairy friends who bred the horses. Miner purchased them, and Katie, with another graduate student, started the training that set a new baseline. From there, the herd grew via targeted purchases, donations, and breeding services, establishing a sustainable path for the program while Katie continued her master’s work.

     Responsibility kept pace with results. Katie formalized what she’d built, becoming Equine Program Coordinator in 1987. After Harry’s sudden passing, Dr. Charlie Sniffen took leadership and asked her to run research. Katie agreed while making sure daily equine management would remain stable. In 1995, Karen Lassell, fresh from a year-long internship, stepped into the full-time equine manager role. The program’s culture held through those transitions because the standards were already living on the farm.

     What began as five grade horses for general riding matured into a Morgan-centered herd sized for instruction, outreach, and early training, assembled through purchases, donations, and selective breeding that kept temperament front and center. Internships expanded access: a summer experience that immerses undergraduates in daily work and a year-long equine management track that gives recent graduates supervised responsibility across care, teaching, and program logistics. Equine research and education continue within a shared frame: projects tied to real barn needs, findings shared when they prove durable, and a collaboration with the UVM Morgan Horse Farm that links reproduction work, selection, and student learning across both campuses.

     The line back to Marian is easy to trace. A friendly and knowledgeable neighbor widened a teenager’s options before a first purchase, handed her ringside seats, and watched the hook set when Saddleback Supreme floated past. A student learned to trust observation and instinct over impulse. At Miner, those instincts became policy: choose horses whose minds and bodies serve teaching and care; set standards anyone on staff can teach; hold the line long enough for horses, students, and visitors to trust what they see. The Morgan mare who made it possible for Harry to hitch and drive on his own still echoes in the program’s design. She wasn’t only a good horse for a president, she was the practical argument for everything that followed—and none of it would have been possible if Katie hadn’t taken that walk down the street.