No, this is not an Equine Magazine cover shoot (although, maybe I should submit this to them…).

This gorgeous woman is Leah Louise. Our relationship was an old high school classmate friendship (both on the swim team and I was the slowest swimmer), turning into the casual Facebook friend, and then evolved into me stalking her on Instagram (@leahlouise2096).

Leah is always doing exciting things like dog agility courses with her pup, bow hunting wild game, forging horseshoes, and of course— riding horses.

All of these awesome things scrolled through my IG feed but then I started to notice that she was talking about her recovery? What? What happened?

Apparently I wasn’t watching close enough, because I completely missed Leah sustaining a very serious brain injury from two falls in one day.

First she fell off her horse and then a few hours later, she cracked her head on the corner of her night stand. She was lucky she didn’t die but the effects from it were severe.

You can follow more of her journey on her Instagram and I highly recommend it.

She’s still on the winding journey of her recovery but she’s been cleared for riding horses (last year) and now she can enjoy every moment of her mare’s first colt.

The names of her beautiful horses? The mom’s name is Missy, nicknamed ‘Dragon’ and the baby’s name is Pyro. How freaking awesome is that??

She’s also currently training more horses for private clients.

During our photoshoot, we hit the golden hour (completely unplanned) and the amazing images in the field will probably be my absolute favorite of all my photos to date.

Mama Dragon was the calmest horse ever, following Leah’s every direction and the baby was sprinting in the field sunlight, stopping once for milk. That day was magical for me and I’m so glad we did it.

Thank you, Leah, for letting me come out to the stables and to photograph you!

P.S. This shoot was on my dream list and it still is! Check it out and contact me if you have a horse and rider that would love to be photographed.