S3 E1: OTTB on Tap Returns: Burnout, Balance & the Year of the Horse

Wrap Up 2025 ver 1
[00:00:00] All right. You ready to get this show on the road? We don't even have an intro or an outro. I don't even know what we're gonna do. We're just gonna wing it. This is our year end wrap up and it's like a, is this thing on?
Is anyone still out there? I think they are. I think we're the ones that weren't out there. That's true. Yeah. So I think we're the ones that disappeared, not everybody else. Yeah. We owe you guys an apology. Yeah. All right let's get right to it. Let welcome back to OTTB on tap everyone.
I'm Neve. And I'm Emily. Hey, Neve, what's on tap today? Oh, boy. It's been, I feel like I'm in a confession where it's bless me Father Freson. It's been this many weeks since my last confession been three months since our last podcast. Yes. Burnout's real man. Sorry that we just dropped off the face of the earth.
We didn't realize quite how much we were both [00:01:00] individually burned out and usually one of us gets burned out and the other one is not, and then the other one can rally. Yeah. Really. After the RRP we kept trying to encourage each other okay, we should really record this week.
We really need to record. But if you know the two of us in person at all, we're the kind of people that would rather not do something than do it. Halfway. So that's, you don't half ass it. You've got a whole asset. Exactly. Is it, have you heard the Matthew McConaughey in, in inspirational speech about whole assing it?
No, we whole asked it for two whole years. Really we did, we really went for it. We, I think, released an episode almost every week, sometimes more than one episode a week. We took on two tiers of Patreon. We took on interviewing people for the RRP and following their journey. We took a lot on taking a horse to the RRP bought a horse [00:02:00] to take to the RRP and all that goes with that. Like purely, I know it's a goal that you wanted to accomplish. In your personal life, but it was largely driven, I feel like, by the podcast. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, so we, we I think we definitely whole last it and we needed a break.
We will say that we have gotten a couple of messages just in the last couple of weeks that definitely pulled us out of our funk and 'cause we waffled a little bit, we went back and forth, we don't make any money doing the podcast and any income that we make from Patreon goes straight back into our monthly fees for upkeep and everything.
And it's was really nice to hear from some of our listeners that reached out and just that kind of lit a match and yeah. Yeah, and we got a couple of at least one re new review during this time period. And it always, I think hearing people say things like, I wasn't sure what to do. [00:03:00] And I put you guys on while I was working with my horse and it just helped me get through it and feel more confident.
That means the world to us. Yeah. So I did have a couple of shout outs here, but I think there might've been some more. One person pepper Lanson has written us a few times. I think she's in North Carolina. Found us through chat, GPT, which is pretty cool. She was asking your best bud.
It's my best bud. Yes. My life coach, my recipe generator. Yeah. Your sous chef. My sous chef. But good to know that chat likes us as well. Yeah. I know Lydia Gross reached out. We also have gotten some shout outs from Trotty by nature, so we really appreciate you guys keeping it going.
Also, we need to figure out how. You have such an unbelievable Instagram following. Yes. I mail, I mailed a ton of friendship bracelets just before Christmas and was tagged. The podcast was tagged [00:04:00] and one night I couldn't figure out how to turn off my notifications on Instagram and it was just going off five seconds.
I know my, my, my phone kept going. I'm like, wait, what? We, what did we post? No, we didn't post anything. Thank you. Trotty by nature. Yes. You guys are awesome. And also wanted to give a couple shout outs to the whole pastured place crew. Kaitlyn, Allie, Megan, Amy, Kirsten, and Al, and the family. Yeah, you guys are incredible.
Also, Danielle from Turning For Home has been a wonderful supporter of us. Invited us to Turning for Home Day at Parks Racetrack, which was a really cool experience. So a big shout out to her. Who else? There'll be more as we go along. I think NE's don't put me on the spot. So this episode is just gonna be a little more conversational, but we're just gonna touch on some different highlights, some low lights, and just go back and forth a little bit.[00:05:00]
And hopefully you guys will see where. We are mentally and what we're looking forward to for 2026. We first wanted to talk a little bit about some of the podcast highlights from 2025. Maybe some of our favorite episodes or conversations. And I wrote down three of my favorite episodes and I am curious to see if yours match i'm looking back through them. Yeah. Part of me is sad that we did not release an episode on our regular feed since September 18th because I think our stats would've just knocked it out of the park.
Yeah. Because we were really going so strong. But looking back through our catalog from the past year is pretty incredible. So what episodes or guests and or guests really stood out to you this past year? The first one on my list was season two, episode 27, which was with Ramon Moya.
Yeah. The race horse jockey and exercise rider. That episode is one of our most, [00:06:00] if not the most, listened to episode. He has an incredible social media following, but I think his insight was something that everybody that's involved with thoroughbreds wants to know more about how their lives are on the track and while they're in training and how they start and all of the ins and outs.
And Ramon gives an incredible viewpoint into that, either by his commentary or by his first person point of view videos that he posts on TikTok and Facebook. And he tries to answer everyone's questions all of the time and it's just really impressive. And then. His personal journey as well was really touching and he was so open and honest about, how difficult the life is for a jockey.
And yeah, we'd love to have him on again and go into even more details. So that was a really special episode, I thought. Yeah, no, really and for me, I can't remember if I've spoken about this on the podcast, but I didn't know his backstory. I really went into it not [00:07:00] understanding quite how deep we were going to go in that episode.
And just his openness and was incredible. So if you haven't caught that one it would definitely be. Should be high on your list. Yeah. Yeah. And he has a fantastic voice. He's really wonderful to listen to as well. I know. I'm like, how do I get a voice like that? Yeah, I know. Another episode that was really special to me, and this is a little bit of a sad note, was episode 16 of season two, which was Recycled Racehorse Falconry which was recorded with Martin Whitley.
Martin unfortunately passed away in September of 2025. When I spoke with Martin, we actually were on video together, and it was an episode that I did by myself and I was so excited to speak to him. And he felt like somebody from my family almost. And he took me around his yard and he introduced me to the horses and he sat inside and had a cup of tea [00:08:00] and.
We had this incredible conversation together. And to find out about his passing in September was really tragic, but it's very clear from the network of people involved in the horse industry and the hawking industry and his wife, that Martin touched the lives of many people. And hopefully his episode will continue to spread his generosity of spirit and humor throughout the world.
And we really just hope that, somebody can come in and maybe do something similar to what he created as a legacy. Yeah, no I know that episode was very personal for you and really resonated with a lot of our listeners as well. Would be a great one to also check out. Yeah. He is got just the best wit and sense of humor and passion for thoroughbreds.
He brings what I think a lot of us need to the barn, which is just not really having much of an ego and having a little bit of a [00:09:00] just get on with it attitude. Yeah, I do think that's keeping your ego in check. Yeah. Around all horses. But yeah, particularly off track thoroughbreds is very important.
And then my, probably my favorite episode personally to record hero of mine was episode 24 of season two, which was Ally Kon. Where we talked about little Hail and Ally. I have not forgotten about you. I still have a ton of friendship bracelets to send you Oh my gosh. That I made that have Pink Pony Club on them and team Hell yeah.
On them. She just felt like an old friend and her story about Little Hale, it was so cool. We just hope to see Allie in our area competing on that little mighty thoroughbred soon. Yeah, for sure. And she was super fun to interview too. Just her passion and enthusiasm and what a cool story and yeah, you don't need to be on a 17 hand monster, 18 hand monster.
You can be on a little horse and jump those big jumps [00:10:00] and if you've never seen them go look up any video of them online on YouTube. There's tons of videos. They go around and they're in all hot pink so you cannot miss them. And she's got the biggest smile on her face and his ears are just pricked like little laser beams and he is got a heart bigger than the whole world. It's very inspiring to watch. Yeah. I am trying to think through God I love every single one of our episodes. I know it was really hard to pick it. Really hard, hard to pick. I really enjoyed getting to interview Tom and Claire Mans man. Yes.
Yeah. I think that they were a real standout. They were season two episodes seven and eight. Their approach to retraining, I think is very solid. And they have a cool program in Virginia. And they have a neat way of, did they call it lease to own or trained to own? It was trained to own, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like a training [00:11:00] slash matchmaking service. Yeah. No, that, that was very unique in the horse world, I feel and something that people that ride a lot of. There are breads, I think they think is really cool is that when you get a new one off the track, it is like Christmas morning and you're unwrapping a gift 'cause you don't know exactly what it's going to be.
You can look at its confirmation, you can look at its bloodlines as we do and, make generalizations of how you think it's gonna move, how you think it's gonna jump, what do you think its personality is gonna be like? But you don't always know. They like to surprise us sometimes. And if you're an owner, an amateur owner with one, you can own one horse.
And if that horse turns out to be a little bit different than intended, it can be difficult. So I think it's really cool that they have that program. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that's a little bit of a misunderstood.[00:12:00]
Sorry my phone was ringing. You never have your ringer on you there also. Gosh, we're like amateurs. Mine was not on silent either. Hold on, let me turn it.
What is this podcast thing? I know, my goodness. Yeah, I think that's an undertold like part of the, the journey with thoroughbreds. I can speak from my experience with Oscar. He appeared to be super, quiet and amateur friendly. And it's not that he wasn't amateur friendly in most ways.
It's that as his confidence grew, his talent grew exponentially. It was like he was holding back. He was a little shy. Like a kid in choir class who starts singing and you're like, oh my God, they can really sing. Meanwhile, they've been in the back the whole time and you had no idea.
And so it's just, I think it's very cool that they take the time to. Put together [00:13:00] horses and riders that really wanna do the same things and enjoy the same things. 'cause everybody wins then. Yeah. And I think it's okay too to admit and say, you know what, this horse is not what I thought I was going to be.
Yeah. And I need something that's a little bit different. Yeah. Whether that means you need something with more spark or less spark or, it can go both ways for sure. Absolutely. They love to surprise us sometimes. Another standout for me would be looking through the list here. Sorry. Oh gosh.
I wanna pick all of them. See, I'm the, I'm like literally the worst. You're like, I like them all. I loved Shannon Riley's two part episode. That Yes. Episode that is definitely one I wanted to bring up. I think that. Her retraining philosophy, just her training philosophy in general. She works with horses of all types.
Yeah. Which a lot of the people that we have on, do you know, they're not all just focused on thoroughbreds. But man, she [00:14:00] gets some tough critics. Like she posted just the other day a video of her jumping a really green horse who way over jumped something. And I thought she stayed with him great.
And I thought she did a beautiful job 'cause that horse was gonna rocket her into the moon. And someone comments something about get your butt out of the saddle, or something like that. And luckily at this point, I think Shannon has enough allies and enough fellow professionals that know that somehow this happens to her, that they rallied around and were like, no, this was a very good ride.
Yeah. What are you talking about? It's clearing the flags on the skinny Chevron. It's okay. Yeah, I know. But yeah, that, so those were episodes, season two, episodes 31 and 32. Yeah. And then the third one I wanted to bring up was the two episodes we did with Aubrey Graham. Yes. Yeah. Season two, episode 20 and 21.
We definitely wanna have Aubrey back on very soon. She [00:15:00] has a nonprofit now called Stall 13. Yes. She's doing some great work with that. And she did reach out to us, so she would love to be on again. So stay tuned for that. But actually going and she also has a weekly series that she writes called Yeah.
Bred Logic. That is, yeah. So good. And you can find all of those online. Yeah, no, they're super good articles. She is so insightful. She's a great writer. She's brilliant. But something I wanted to mention is that we got our Spotify wrapped for the year, and this only takes the statistics from Spotify, but her episode.
Season two, episode 21 was our most listened to on Spotify. Oh, no way. That's really cool. Yep. Do less to get more AUB grams. OTTB, retraining Philosophy and Action. So it's actually part two of that episode. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. Little tidbit. Yeah, other shoutouts, obviously trotty by nature are wonderful.
RRP trainers Stephanie [00:16:00] Parot, Chelsea O'Brien were phenomenal. Also, we got to meet Harley Whitaker and Amanda Chance. Yep. So we will be wrapping up and trying to catch up with everybody, CA if they made it to the makeover, and b if they did, how it went to stay from where there, one of the pieces of feedback that I thought was really interesting, I was looking through some of our newest reviews on Apple podcasts for this year.
And I really enjoy the fact that people seem to like the episodes that are a little less structured and a little more US bantering or yeah, just being ourselves. And it's nice to know because I listen to a lot of podcasts and I go back and forth sometimes I'm really in the mood for something very scripted, more storytelling.
And then other times I just very much am listening because I enjoy the co-hosts and I just wanna listen to them talk about anything. It's good to know because there are a lot, quite a few equine [00:17:00] podcasts out there and I think we wanna try to. Carve out our own little space in the industry and find something that makes us unique.
So it's nice to hear that feedback. Yeah, for sure. And I think as we've gotten more comfortable doing this, we can realize that a little pause in the conversation's not gonna kill us and can be edited out. Yeah. Yeah. And be, we are a lot more comfortable speaking off of just a couple notes.
Notes scribbled on a bar napkin than we used to be, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think that we're getting more open and a bit braver about how we speak about things, I think. Going back to the Shannon Riley episode, there is a little danger in putting yourself out there because you're always going to be a target for criticism or mean comments or just negative feedback. And that's just part of what it means to have a [00:18:00] voice in the industry. And so I think I find that to be a privilege as well as something that, makes me nervous at times, but I do think it's something that drives both of us. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a whole lot more that we'd love to discuss.
And we've been talking about what we wanna do as far as Patreon. If you haven't checked us out on Patreon please do, I think you can join as a free member. And then we have two tiers, but we've discussed maybe combining those tiers and making the topics a little bit more general.
Maybe some more horse training, but maybe also some more current events in the horse industry and our take on it, maybe with some guests, things like that. More to come there, but we are gonna probably be doing a little bit of restructuring and then, we'll still keep up with our confirmation analysis and all that good stuff too.
Yeah. But we're just trying to figure out the best direction to go. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about some of the growth moments, [00:19:00] either, through numbers or impact. The first big one, which I know is actually not a true number, is that we on RSS hit over 35,000.
Listen, please. Gosh, I haven't even looked. Yeah. But I know it's more than that. 'cause it doesn't account for, I don't know. It's really difficult to find out any actual. True number because they can be combined from other places. But that's, we use that as our base metric. So yeah, it's a 36, over 36,000 now.
And also if you look into Apple, I haven't looked at the stats from Apple Podcasts and Spotify specifically, but I think on Apple podcasts we have almost that many. Yeah. Just on that, that they're counting. Yeah. So again, it's hard to get like a true nailed down number of there's a lot of like what, what constitutes a listen?
Yeah. Is it listening to the whole thing? Is it listening to one minute? Is it listening to just they press play and then they turn it off? So there's a lot of different ways to slice that data. Yeah. But it's cool to see too [00:20:00] that like we're still getting a decent amount of listens even though we haven't released anything new.
So to me, I'm hoping that means we have some new people that kind of started. Yeah. And we can bring along, if you want, have you watched our Spotify wrap? I haven't. So Spotify puts together a very cool presentation and it's our 2025 wrapped four creators. And hopefully I can share the presentation.
So it says 2025. This was quite the year for you. Oh, I could do a screen recording. That's what I'll do. There you go. A little proof that hard work pays off. A total audience had an increase of 84% from last year. Whoa.
Yeah. And keep in mind, this is on Spotify only, right? So yeah. That's huge. That's huge. Total new audience. Up 321% increase. Total followers increased by [00:21:00] 111% from last year listening time, 159,000 minutes of listening. Wow. Which is 2.62. 2,600 hours. 110 days. Oh my gosh. 15 weeks or three months of listening time.
Wow. I guess we really are keeping you guys busy when you're mucking stalls and hand walking your horses. It's funny 'cause I, we were talking about sort of the impetus to get us to feel excited about recording again. And when you mentioned Spotify wrapped, I'd seen the email come through, but I hadn't opened it or I had to log in and I just didn't feel like it.
And so I logged in and I was like, oh my God. Yeah. It's pretty exciting. This is pretty cool. And keep in mind, we started doing a lot more on, we started our paid content. So that took up a lot of our listening time. So to have these big increases just on our free feed is amazing.
Yeah. [00:22:00] 56% increase in total listening time from last year.
This year, one episode, robes above the rest, and that was Dun, season two, episode 21. Do Less to get more. Aubrey Graham's, OTTV Retraining philosophy. Woohoo. In action. Yes. It was played 69% more than our average episode. Interesting. We'll have to let her know. She'll be excited by that. We had nine on Spotify. 19 countries reached overall.
Our top countries were, the United Kingdom was number five. Number four was New Zealand. Number three was Australia. Number two was Canada, and number one was the United States. Wow. Yeah. All over the globe. We are global. Now they're gonna talk about our top fans. Oh. So we are a top 10 show for [00:23:00] 326 fans. The top five show for 247 fans. And the number one show for 74 fans. There's 74 people. Who are you? If you're one of our top fans on Spotify, let us know. Your top fans streamed 1.9 times more than everybody else. And 55% of them binged two plus episodes in one day.
25% hit play within 24 hours of a new episode drop. Oh, that's good. As some dedication. Yeah. And it goes without saying, our fans have great taste. Oh, this is cool. Here's what else they're listening to. Ooh. So their top artists are number one, Taylor Swift. Yep. Number two. Morgan Wallen. Three.
Zach Bryan, four Tate McRay, and [00:24:00] five Alex Warren. Okay. Top audio books. So I thought this would be really fun. Maybe we can pick an audio book or a book or something like that and have a little reading club. Yeah. Reading and discuss club. That'd be fun.
Number five was that the house made. By mc that's not came out. Four is Courage by Natalie Keller, Reinhart three. The summer I turned pretty two, the Faraway Horses, which is by Buck Braman, and I would love to read that. I got to see Buck Brandman when I was like 20. And it was incredible that way in the dark age way in the 19 hundreds as the kids are calling it.
Yeah. And then number one is in the middle are The Horseman by Tick Maynard which I would also love to read. Yeah. Top shows are fans like [00:25:00] Murder, apparently. Yeah. I think horses in true crime would go hand in hand. Number five is small town murder, four Armchair Expert with Dax Shepherd. Three, the Joe Rogan experience.
Two Morbid and one is Crime Junkie. I was an early adopter of listening to Morbid. I don't listen to it as much anymore though. Okay. It says we might wanna frame this. Oh,
we are a 20, 25 marathon show. Fans listen to you for longer than 95% of other shows. Holy cow. And we are a 2025. Talked about show you received more comments than 94% of other shows. And a 2025 most shared shows you received more shares than 83% of other shows. All right, we'll wrap this up soon, I [00:26:00] promise.
That's it. Yep. So we will share that too 'cause it's pretty cool. But thank you all for your support with this. It's really inspiring for us to see that growth. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other big growth moments for this year was that Emily and I tried to step into the community a little bit more.
We both struggle a little bit with kind of the face-to-face interactions. That's why we don't do video. Maybe eventually we'll end up doing video. 'cause I think there's a lot of different things we could do with it. Yeah. We'd probably have to. Figure out a way to get somebody to either volunteer for the podcast who's good with that, or, I don't know, maybe one day we'll be able to hire somebody and can someone like make a makeup artist?
Just like I need help with this. Like Emily said, we did the turning for home day. We were there we went to the RP of course, and we held a big party for [00:27:00] everybody at our stable. I went to the Real Rider Cup and we'd really like to get involved and do more of that This year we've talked a little bit about possibly getting back to Kentucky as just the podcast and really delving deep into all of the different things that we could do when we're not preoccupied with a horse of our own there.
Yeah, that's something we definitely try to direct ourselves a little bit to do and would love to do more of in the future. So if you have any ideas of events or places you'd like to see us pop up, or things you'd like to see us cover in person, just let us know. Then we'll hide under a rock.
Yeah. Just kidding. Or I'll just go to a William Fox pit clinic and become his new BFF. You could do that too. Just throw myself into the deep end. So some personal reflections for 2025. Oh God. What, in a brief way, [00:28:00] what could you say that 20 25 asked of you?
Oh gosh. Maybe do one that's personal. Yeah. And one that's about your voice. . 20, 25 was a very, it was a transformative year for me personally. But it was a very hard year. Yeah. I had a lot going on. In my personal life and with my horse and obviously with the podcast and also with my job.
I'm very proud of the growth I've had in my job. I work in tech and I got promoted. Yeah. So that was hard fought. Yes. I got promoted to the senior level, which was amazing. And I do love my job very much. And it's very important to me. So it's hard, I think. For me, like what 2025 really asked of me was to duplicate myself so that I could create a clone.
So I could do all the things I have to do in one day [00:29:00] because I have a lot of responsibilities and I take them all very seriously. How's that technology coming along? I'm working on it with chat, okay. That's my buddy. But he has not yet duplicated me. Yeah. Yeah, it asked a lot and I'm I think I need what I need to learn and my takeaways are I need to figure out what my priorities are going to be going forward and how to make my life a little bit less stressful because I feel like I have to do everything.
Yeah. How about you? That take your words out of your mouth. No, not at all. , My professional life is haphazard, so it's, personally, I think I would say professionally some kind of cool opportunities came into my life this year. Particularly that I did some equestrian brand work, which was a new avenue for me.
I work for a rare book company, so product photography and luxury branding is really my comfort zone. But the [00:30:00] work that I do for my small business is all lifestyle. Portrait work. So it was meshing the two things that I do, which was very cool. I got to work with Defiant Saddle that is owned by Matthew and Lauren Bond, who Lauren's been on the podcast.
She was in our first round of RRP trainers. She's fantastic. And I did a promo shoot for Non Finer, which is based near us. They have just started doing e-commerce work with Chewy and needed lifestyle photos of a lot of their attack and equipment, which was really cool. So that's been a neat way for me to see how I can mix the two things that I do in my professional life.
And then personally, this was a year of resilience for me. I feel like 2025 tried to break me and. If it weren't for some of the horse people in my life, some really incredible people that [00:31:00] kind of picked me up and brushed me off and kept me putting a foot in front of each other and, or just stepped in and took over when I needed somebody to do that that resilience.
And I've always been a really resilient person, but I found myself in a place of defeat I think, for a little portion of the year and really had to figure out how I was gonna get to the goals that I had set for myself. And that can be really challenging when the easy thing to do is just to quit and i've never wanted to quit more than this year. So to everybody, especially on this podcast that, stuck by us and supported us and gave us words of support, it really was sometimes the only thing keeping me going. And then the other big reflection for this year was learning how to listen to my horse in a brand new way.
And that's something that we're gonna talk a lot about moving forward, but yeah. And in fact, the next kind [00:32:00] of segment I have what surprised me about this year? And one of the things was that that teaching my horse emotional regulation and self-confidence allowed his body to prepare for new endeavors.
And that was what was really cool was that like he was always talented and he was always athletic, but had I pushed his physical limitations too much too early, I think I would've never gotten the confidence and the trust from him that I got by just taking a huge step backwards and listening and getting to know how to connect with him on an emotional level.
And is. As Chelsea would say, as woo as that sounds, I found it to be the most profound education I got this year. So yeah, I think that's amazing. And I think we've had parallel experiences a little bit in, in learning to deal and help our horses with [00:33:00] emotional regulation. Some with more success than others, but one's a gelding, one's a marere, so I think that plays a lot Yeah.
Into it. Yeah. And one's a thoroughbred and one isn't, and sometimes you can rely on the things that a horse knows because it's a thoroughbred, yeah. It would be really interesting to delve into that a bit more, maybe do an episode exploring like the differences between thoroughbreds and non thoroughbreds.
I bred my own, my mare. So she is by blood. She is three quarters thoroughbred. Her mom was an off track thoroughbred and her dad is and it's been a vastly different experience bringing her along and getting her started under saddle. And just even just handling her on the ground I used to wish we could have just sent her to the track, right?
So still get, still gets threatened every once in a while. To bet she's a brand. So I think they'd now, but in the winter when you can't see [00:34:00] it. Yeah. But yeah, I think, thoroughbred versus non thoroughbred would be something really interesting, to dive into. Yeah. It might be cool to talk with Jess Redmond about that too.
'cause her business model has changed so much. She's still doing thoroughbreds, but has really stepped into the cross spread market. Yeah. So I think that would be pretty cool to talk to her about. Yeah, absolutely. Moving on to some other lessons that we learned this year. What did you learn about boundaries this year?
Emily? I'm no good at them.
How do you mean boundaries? I just think in, in life. I think I learned a lot about boundaries this year in terms of, i'm gonna quote Taylor Swift and that way we can tag her in the post, but she was interviewed, and she talks about thinking about your energy as though [00:35:00] it's expensive, like it's a luxury item.
And that not everybody can afford it. And I say this a lot where I'm like, my time has value, but really your energy is expensive too.
And what I learned was that I was investing my energy into everywhere but myself. And when I finally decided to draw a boundary and invest in myself, it was very interesting to see, where you were being drained from. And I think it's really important to remember to invest in yourself and make sure that you have something to give before you start giving to everybody else.
Yeah. I think that's a great quote. Thanks Taylor. Thanks Taylor.
So this was another little talking point. How do you create an identity outside of productivity? I don't even know what that means. Can you rephrase the question? I think it's I think this is where we got ourselves into this year, right? We were [00:36:00] trying to be so productive and and this kind of goes back to both of us giving our energy. I think we gave every last bit of our energy to the podcast and getting to the RRP and I think that we both have a tough time setting some boundaries on, just trying to be productive first. And then all of a sudden we're like, I don't have anything left to give and I'm tired all the time and I'm cranky.
And, I think that's hard when it comes to horses too. I think we sometimes we find ourselves into a trap of trying to be so goal oriented. Even if it's just, I'm going to the ring today and I'm gonna accomplish X, Y, and Z. You forget what it's all about. Did you ride today? Neve?
Yeah. The whole world is covered in a sheet of ice. I literally had to de-ice my driveway in a two step process. Oh my gosh. First step. I had probably three quarters of an inch of ice out there. First step, don't kill yourself in the driveway. First step, don't kill yourself. Second step was throw down ice melt.
And then I had to let the sun hit it and I [00:37:00] had to go back out there and shovel the whole darn thing off. Yeah. Emily's house is at the bottom of a very steep driveway, and a couple years ago she broke her wrist trying to bring the trash cans in. Yeah. That was super awesome. So now everyone's don't take the trash out.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Got sidetracked there. Sorry. That's all right. Change the subject. I dunno how to answer your question. That's okay. Yeah. I think there's benefits to having a set schedule and having it say I think especially when we were establishing ourselves as a podcast and as a voice.
Out there in the industry. It was important for us to have regular, episodes and have, make sure that we got one out weekly and we did a darn good job of that. Yeah. But a lot of what goes on it's not just us getting on here and talking for an hour or interviewing somebody. Yeah. Hour.
This is the tip of the iceberg. The production that it takes. First of all, [00:38:00] depending on the episode, there's a lot of research that goes into a lot of our episodes, whether we're researching the guests or researching the topic, or if we're doing our evaluates episodes, researching or just, coming up with our own evaluations.
Then doing more in-depth pedigree research. It all takes a lot of time. Yeah, but then doing the actual interview and then all the post-production work is very labor intensive. Plus market coming up with the marketing, the art, the emails, it all takes a lot of time. So I'm glad that we've done that and we've got a really good base, but we'll have to make sure that we can have a sustainable schedule going forward, I think.
Yes. Yeah. We wanted to highlight something that we both didn't discover until the, the last quarter of this year. If you follow the Chinese Zodiac calendar at all, [00:39:00] you will know by now that 2025 was the year of the snake. I found this out the other day, and. Which really makes a lot of sense for the experiences that we've had this year, but it's just a little bit hilarious because of Emily's snake situation.
So I'm very averse to snakes and I didn't realize it until I moved where I moved now, where it has more snakes than I've ever seen in my life. And I feel like they're taunting me. They know it's like a baby. When a baby, you don't like babies and then you're the only one the baby wants to come and play with.
So the symbolism behind the year of the snake is this renewal and shedding of your old skin. And there's other things to it. You can look into it if you want to, but I thought it might be fun for us to talk about maybe what we've shed this year. You can go first. I shed[00:40:00]
a lot of weight I was carrying. Huh. That's funny. I did not shed any weight. Just kidding. I was gonna talk about, I was gonna say I shed some weight. I didn't shed any weight. I think I shed my weight onto you. I think so. Thanks Emily. It's fine. It's fine. And now it's winter. It came out a little wrong. I'm sorry.
It's winter. So my Irish body is the famine is coming. You better hold onto your resources. No, I think I shed some, experiences, some people, that were a part of my life that I think I needed to let go of. And that's doesn't mean that they didn't have a lot of value in my life because I think everybody that impacts your life has value.
But a dear friend of mine talks about how people come into your [00:41:00] life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. And I really like thinking about that philosophy because it allows you to make. Sense of why people don't stay in your life forever. And I think you could have a chance encounter with somebody and say that there's a reason that person came, or you could be friends with somebody for a couple of years and be like that's a season of knowing somebody.
It's just a little, it's a chapter in the the book that is your lifetime. And then there are people that are in your life for a lifetime. And I think we can all say that maybe we can count on one hand or maybe two fingers, the people in our life that will be there for a lifetime.
But I just think it's an evolution of self being able to shed in that way and being able to make those decisions for yourself as hard as they can be. Because you're coming out as this evolved person, but you're also losing something. And so that makes it hard, right? It's both things at the same time.
[00:42:00] Yeah. No I think that I've always felt that some people just come into your life for a reason, and then that if that reason is gone, then you can, sometimes you just move on. And sometimes that's easier and sometimes that's harder. Yeah. We have a prompt for our listeners that I wrote in my notes.
It's not in your notes, Emily. Oh goodness. The prompt for our listeners is if the year of the snake was about shedding skin, what are you no longer carrying into next season? And what are our listeners supposed to do with the prompt? They could put in comment comments. , I'll put it in the show notes. If the year of the snake was about shedding skin what are you no longer carrying into the next season? Shedding skin. Cool. Let us know in the comments would be great to get some comments on the episode. We can [00:43:00] also post that in our Facebook group and Instagram and see if anybody wants to chime in with the setting.
Yeah. And it prompted us to talk about some parallels with O OTBs and I thought one of the really cool ways to apply this to working with OTBs is to let go of the past experiences and expectations of the horse. Yeah that's a really hard thing I think for all of us to do.
It's hard to put a bad ride to bed. It's hard to, you had a bad experience somewhere. Your horse. Spooked or, bucked or whatever. And I think that especially for as adult amateurs, we just we get to enjoy this one thing and we want it to be enjoyable, but sometimes it's really hard.
And so I think we can put a lot of expectations on our horses and especially when you have a goal like the retired race horse project you have to look forward and not always just be thinking about what yesterday was like or last week. Yeah. Or what your last horse was like. Yeah. Don't always carry that forward with you 'cause
you're [00:44:00] sitting on something different now. Yeah. So on our Facebook and Instagram for OTTB on tap.
We asked, what's one OTTB lesson that really stuck with you this year? And there's a common theme. Yes. But there's some really good ones here. Nicole Galinsky Adams said, patience as much as it kills me in a year filled with little injuries, I've had to practice tremendous patience with my beautiful OTTB, which some days is easier said than done.
I will say pods like yours help to feel less alone on that journey. We really appreciate that. Amanda Zaro one of our longtime listeners she says how to listen. And her horse is still sharing new things 17 years later, so Very cool. That's really cool. Finding new things to enhance our partnership, even if it looks different than it has in the past.
Janna Wagner said Sometimes it is not a no. It's weight. [00:45:00] I love that one. And Oh, Janna Wagner. Just to refresh your memories, was the animal communicator that I spoke to about Oscar last year. Yeah. I thought that was a super interesting, I spoke to her about my horse too. Yeah. She said that my horse said that she wants to be a little dog that I can carry around in my purse, which makes a lot of fun.
So much sense. So much sense. Kristen Hansbury, another dear friend and listener of ours. Put one foot in front of the other and just keep at it. Her horse is the sweetest but loves to challenge her. And with consistency and time, we've made great strides. I can see it. She posts a lot of cool hacks.
She's been going out on with her horse. She seems like she's doing a lot of fun stuff with him. Yeah. Then we had Elizabeth Oliphant said, not comparing. So I think that kind of goes back to what you were just talking about with not carrying over or letting go of those past expectations.
But she's restarted a lot of thoroughbreds and on her [00:46:00] hardest one. Been there. Yeah. Totally been there. And I think on our Instagram, Trotty by Nature commented something also about patience. So yes, there's definitely a theme there. I think one of the biggest things I find myself doing when I'm working with any horse and there's a lack of communication or we're not achieving the same thing together Yeah.
Is I find myself taking a beat and then just taking a deep breath and letting my letting it run through my entire body so that my entire energy shifts. And yes, I think we're all. Guilty of holding tension in our bodies at all times, and especially when we're trying to accomplish something, right?
So whether that's like you're trying to turn your horse out and you know it's gonna spin and bolt when you go to let go of it or whatever the case might be. I think having that mindfulness just to take a really deep breath and letting go of that in your body. Yeah, no I agree with that. [00:47:00] I moved my horse to a new farm and the woman who runs it is really in tune with things like that where if if you're tense or, you have this idea that, oh, the last time I turned my horse out, X, y, and Z happened, just take that deep breath and then let it out and just feel your body do some box breathing. I'm a big fan of that. Yes. The other thing I was gonna say that can help is keeping a journal. I have a little notebook that I've been keeping where I just jot down what happened that day. And I think when you look back through that, a you can spot some patterns maybe.
But also you can see your progress Yes. A lot more clearly. Because a lot of times it feels like you are just standing still, but you are making progress with every little step that you take. Yeah, absolutely. So looking ahead for 2026, we have the year of the horse. And isn't that the fire horse or something like?
I think so. I was born the year of the horse. I was born in [00:48:00] 1978. Emily and I are both sagittarians in the 19 hundreds. In the 19 hundreds in the seventies. Oh. And. The purpose for the year of the horse is meant to reignite excitement while staying realistic and grounded. So I'm very much looking forward to 2026.
What are you personally excited about for 2026? Emily? I'm just excited that the year of the snake is gonna be behind us in the rear view mirror. Yeah. I'm a little concerned 'cause it says here that the energy combines the horse's dynamic, adventurous spirit with fires, intensity, passion and transformation, but can bring great progress and success, but also volatility requiring balance and steady pacing.
Okay. Which sounds like my life. But yeah, I think it's, it sounds like we are shedding all of the things that happened to us in 2025 and moving forward and [00:49:00] looking forward and hopefully going on some great rides. Yeah. On Gallop, what's one thing you want to enjoy more?
I don't know, pick an area.
I hope I can enjoy more time with horses. Yeah. Like I said this past year, I spent a lot of time working on my professional life. I do work remotely, so there is some flexibility in my day-to-day schedule, but it can be really tough to balance. So I'm looking forward to bringing more balance and getting to enjoy more time outdoors in general, but hopefully with my horse and hopefully also with my dogs.
Yeah. How about you?
Oof. I think just getting back to the foundation that I have with my quarter horse, he got put on the back burner a little bit last year. I enjoyed the heck out of him 'cause he was just like the old pair of slippers I could put on [00:50:00] anytime I was having a moment of being like, I don't even know how to ride, he is on a little vacation right now. He is on field board. He is living his best life. He is on a hundred acre farm, just enjoying himself. I see him regularly and as soon as the weather normalizes, we'll start walking the hills a little bit and get back to business. But, he is turning 17 this year.
I have a kind of a long wistful goal of maybe trying to. Go after my bronze with him, but really just enjoy him. He's just one of those horses that you can do a little bit of everything on and he's fun. And he's not dull. He's, he tends to keep me on my toes more than anybody else. Yeah. But he is just the horse I've always wanted.
So , I wanna return focused to him and, remember what it's all about. Yeah. And I did wanna say, I know I forgot to mention this at the beginning of the episode, and you guys have probably noticed that I have not updated or posted anything about [00:51:00] Oscar minus the Christmas card that I posted, but he sold towards the end of November, he was campaigned through a professional, Kirsten Shima, who you might remember from an episode in season one, I believe, with one sly Fox, another thoroughbred that I sold her.
A long time ago. . And he is with a student of Alex Conrad's up in New Hampshire. She said he's an absolute dream and she's just everything that he's she's ever wanted. So couldn't be happier for him and for her. And more on that later, but I just wanted to give you guys that little bit of an update.
So it sounds like they're gonna have a fantastic 2026 together as well. Awesome. And then speaking from kind of horse centered hopes for next year I'm hopeful that I might move and maybe, hopefully acquire a small, very small horse property. Yes. [00:52:00] So that's maybe on the horizon for me. A big move. It's exciting.
Yeah, we're gonna take a little field trip in the spring and go scope out some places. Yeah. So that should be really fun. And I think if I can do it right and make it manageable, it'd be awesome to have, be able to have a couple horses at home. Yeah. And spend more time with them. So more come there we have another prompt for you guys talking about 2026, which is if 2026 were about movement that feels right, where would you go first?
And you can add comments or just whatever. Send us an email.
Very well thought out. Neef, you like that? Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay, so what's next for OTTB on tap? We talked a little bit about this already, what the stuff that we really liked. We love [00:53:00] doing the evaluate series, as Emily mentioned. They are quite research heavy and time intensive, but we plan on doing more of those.
We're also toying with the idea of making those sort of an a la carte purchasable item that we would go into a little bit more depth and maybe even do a cameo video segment with. So that's something we've been thinking about. Talking about maybe some more controversial topics which would be a Patreon exclusive.
So just be just getting together maybe with some guests and speaking on issues that are prominent, whether on the forums that we see online or just in some of the groups. Just to have a discussion. It's not to convince anybody of any ideas, but just to, generate more community and a safe place for people to speak openly.
Yeah. We'd love to do something where we share some ads. I know you probably saw over the last couple months we, Emily and I both kept sharing horses that caught our eye. Often we [00:54:00] find ourselves sending each other the exact same horse on Messenger, but yeah, that's where we're thinking. We have talked to Stephanie Park about potentially being a semi-regular co-host just to fill in for one of us when we have commitments.
So that's something we're thinking about doing. We just really enjoyed Stephanie so much and she felt somebody we had known our whole lives and it just felt very natural. We had a lot of fun with her and her husband. And her family. And her family, yeah. And her rp. So yeah, that would be fun.
Yeah. So let us know if you have any thoughts or something you'd love to see us do on the podcast. We're open to ideas and we'll take an idea and kind of run with it. So we've been talking a little bit about, more things like games and I just recently picked up a pack of tarot cards. And I started getting into that. We just wanna keep it light, but also talk about things that really matter to you guys. [00:55:00] Absolutely. So what's your one word for 2025? I had to get that in before you asked me first, so I have time to think. I think resilience. I like that. Yeah. I'm proud of myself for this year. Lemme write down your word. Okay. What about you? I was gonna say over, but it's a cop out goodbye. I'm gonna say transformative. Ooh. That come, comes right back to the snake thing too. I'm gonna have a snake dream tonight.
Oh no. So what's one word you're carrying into 2026?
Optimism. Oh, I like that because I feel like I had the optimism sucked outta my body this year, and I've always been somebody who leads with my [00:56:00] optimism. Yeah. I am gonna say dynamic. Oh. Yeah, that's good. That encompasses a lot of the things that you talked about. So listeners, we can do another prompt.
Yep. What are your two words? What word are you using to define 2025. And what's a word you're carrying into 2026? Yeah. Leave it in the comments also, since we've been gone for such a long time. Maybe, oh, we should run a little, if you follow the prompts on here, we'll put them in the show notes and probably in a social media.
Post we what? What do you win? We ordered a billion shirts for the turning for home thing. Yeah, we do. We've got these really cute, easily distracted by OTBs Yes. Shirts. So sure we can [00:57:00] send out a couple shirts to some winners. I think that would be a nice way to thank our listeners for this year.
And, yeah, I think that's a great idea. Yeah. But thank you guys so much again. I hope this episode somehow makes sense. We just wanted to check in. Thank you all so much for sticking with us. And I posted a very quick little teaser just before I hit record and I've already guys seen some comments from people saying, oh, really?
Yeah. I just posted a little video of me going, is this thing on? Oh my gosh. We're really looking forward to next year and thank you for being here with us. Yeah. And don't forget to check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and follow us on Patreon. Even if you just wanna follow us as a free member.
Yeah. We do, we will be posting different content on there and there's a free preview and you can check out and see if [00:58:00] maybe you wanna listen to that episode. And usually our episodes have the ability, if you want to subscribe, that's great, but you could also just buy the standalone episode if it's a topic that you're really interested in.
So there's a couple different options there. And like I said, we'll probably be retooling our structure a little bit, maybe combining our tiers to make it a little less. Demanding on us. And so we can just focus on creating good content for you guys. So yes. Yeah. And every ti, every time you guys like, or subscribe or interact with us, it just helps people find our podcast.
Every time you show it to somebody on Spotify or leave us a review, it just boosts our metrics so that it'll be the thing that when you're a lonely OTTB lover out in the world looking for somebody to relate to, it'll help people find us faster. Yeah and subscribe on all the things for OTTB on tap.
All right. Cheers. Let's try that again. It's like a, it's like a leg up. Ready? [00:59:00] 3, 2, 1. Cheers. Okay. You know what we are gonna do soon? We are gonna post a video of you trying to give me a leg up. Oh gosh. I still have tennis elbow. You, we should do it with Katie's horse. Oh my gosh. Who's 17 too? All. Bye.