Sharon Angus Dodgen trained show horses and gave riding lessons to people of all ages in Southwestern Arizona for more than sixty-five years. Horses were an integral part of her life from the time she was five. As a teenager, in Southern California, Sharon showed horses owned by others-three-gaited, five-gaited, and every breed of horse except Tennessee walking horses and Paso Finos-hunters, jumpers, pleasure, trail, reining, and dressage horses. At sixteen, she became Silver Spur Rodeo Queen, in Yuma, Arizona, and as a part of her queenly duties, she roped a calf. No queen had done that before or since! Sharon taught horse science classes at Arizona Western College, wrote a column for the local newspaper, and spent forty-seven years as a 4-H horse club leader. She studied folk medicine, herbalism, and homeopathy and created a herbal liniment for lame horses. Sharon was well-known in horse show circuits and held memberships in professional associations throughout Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. "To me," she says, "equestrian skills should be refined so the horse and rider's movements are synchronized, just like classical ballet. This requires hours and hours of work and practice, whether riding English or Western." Sharon, now eighty, lives in a wheelchair, though she's as plucky as ever-"The last colt I broke, I was seventy-two years old." Dawson Farms: Ride to Win is her first work of fiction.
