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into it, I was calling horse farms all over Oklahoma to find one that would want to help me. A lot of them said no. They didn’t want to take on young riders. I found one in Luther [Oklahoma]. I cleaned stalls and things like that. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be around the horses.”
Even though horse racing is not a family business for Perry, it has been a keen lifelong interest for her. Competing in rodeos and show jumping while young, Perry recalled going to Remington Park with her mother after rodeos, where she would move up against the rail and pester jockey G.R. Carter for goggles and gloves.
Years later, when Perry began her career, there was Carter, giving her advice.
“He helped me a lot before I started riding professionally, just sitting in the gate with the schooling horses,” she noted. “He’s a very good guy and a great rider.”
The work schedule of a jockey goes
far beyond the bursts of speed that occur during the actual races. Perry works six days a week, tracking horses in the morning and running schooling races in the afternoons. Most of her lone off day—Monday, the regular dark day at Remington—is spent resting and recuperating.
“You work your butt off in the mornings, but if you’re not getting rides, you’re not learning much,” she said. “You can be a great gallop hand but a bad race rider.”
It’s not an easy life, but Perry has zero regrets about her career choice.
“I think it’s just living a dream, really,” she said. “I wanted to do it since I was younger. It’s fun. So many people are caught up in jobs they think they have to do or people tell them, ‘No, you can’t do that.’
If you have a dream and you work hard enough, you don’t have to be the best at it, but if you’re having fun and seeing hard work pay off, that’s most rewarding.
“There’s always going to be people who try to bring you down. If it’s something you want to do, then work hard. It doesn’t come all at once and it doesn’t come overnight, that’s for sure.”
It’s not an easy life, but Perry has zero regrets about her career choice.
“I love to evoke an emotion with the perfect photo.”
Equine Marketer/Photographer Amanda Glidden:
No Two Days Are The Same
Every day starts the same for Amanda Glidden—with coffee and her computer. The goal, also, remains unchanged: strengthening the social media presence of her clients, and Quarter Horse racing as a whole.
“I worked for Oklahoma Stud and James Ranch and when we had race winners and things we wanted to celebrate about the stallions ... to find the time to jump on Facebook and make a post, you couldn’t do it,” Glidden said. “You just didn’t have the time in the day.
“I thought, there needs to be someone that knows how to word all of that ... that can actually do it for them. They don’t even have to think about it.”
Glidden aims to fill those needs through her business, Equine Marketing Solutions. Based in Oklahoma, she also has clients in
Texas and Louisiana—eight in total—and promotes their farms and stallions through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
“Each day starts the same... coffee and
the computer. After that, no two days are
the same,” Glidden said. “I work odd hours, seven days a week. With iPhones and laptops, there’s no such thing as a vacation.
“The news changes almost every day in the horse business, so it’s nice to be able to keep that current for my clients.”
Running her own business is just the latest role Glidden has taken in the industry. She ran barrel races in high school and, after finishing college, she worked for a cutting horse breeder where she rode horses at shows and helped with colts at the ranch. From there, she took a job in the Oklahoma Stud office. She also worked for Speedhorse Magazine, selling ad space, but that
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