Our Trainer, Ann Kline

I was born with a love for animals and have spent my entire life caring for them in one way or another. As a child, I was always saving them. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a rural area that allowed me to have horses, pigs, steers, rabbits, chickens, ducks, and dogs. I even had an incubator in my bedroom as a kid. I used to bathe and blow-dry my chickens!

I was in 4-H and FFA, and I showed Quarter Horses as a kid and, as a teen, worked for several Quarter Horse trainers. At 16, I worked for Ian Jory and John Gosden at Hollywood Park as a groom. They were the top trainers at the time.

Horses were always my first love and I can’t remember life without them. I have always had a horse (as well as MANY other animals!!) and they have stayed with me their entire lives. I loved small animals, too, and at age 18, I started my first Veterinary Assistant job. I have left that field a few times in the past to pursue jobs with horses.

I worked for a cattle ranch in Utah and also one in Missouri. I got to take a horse to work every day–now that was fun! I worked for an Endurance trainer, riding and training Arabians, and for the largest American Saddlebred Farm in the country, Callaway Hills, in New Bloomfield, Missouri. To this day, I miss that job and those Missouri mornings. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

When I moved back to California in 1996, I caught up with my favorite horse from Missouri, named Callaway’s Oh Boy. He had been sold in Kentucky to someone in San Jose, California just before I moved. I loved that horse like I have never loved another one–although, my horse, Romeo, is catching up to him quickly. Romeo is Oh Boy’s nephew! His registered name is Wild Bill Weldon. I named him after Mr. William Weldon who, with his wife, Betty, started Callaway Hills over 50 years ago. I have such fond memories of them and they have both now passed on.

I worked the California show circuit with Oh Boy for two years, riding, driving, and training several Saddlebreds and Fresians. I also worked with a trainer of Andalusions and Luistanos at Medieval Times in Buena Park, California.

Then, in 1998, I became an assistant trainer for Douwe Blumberg, who has since moved to Kentucky. I was also an instructor for Douwe and had requests for riding lessons from ladies who had been riding longer than I had been alive. I also ran summer horse camps in Malibu, California, teaching kids to ride. My students were cleaning house at the shows! After my son was born in 2000, it was too difficult to continue in the horse show business because of the travel required and so I went back to Veterinary medicine. I have been at Tehachapi Veterinary Hospital since November 2008 and I love it.

In my teens, I rode with many girls that were foster children from a girl’s ranch and I witnessed how therapeutic horses were for them. I have always had a heart for foster children–it breaks my heart that so many do not have homes and, much like these rescued dogs and horses, they have been abused, neglected and abandoned through no fault of their own. They will relate to these animals like no other kids can. My forever dream has been to work with foster children