Compiled by Sharon Meyers

Kylie Hogan

Popular American country music singer Patsy Cline was an early influence on Kylie Hogan, who has been singing professionally for around 16 years. Not an easy profession when you are a single mother raising a child and the owner of a few horses. Couple this with working fulltime during the day and you have one busy lady!

A versatile and talented entertainer, Kylie has made two albums; Someone on Your Mind and Love and Lust and both had film clips played plus charted on the Country Music Channel in Australia and had airplay and chart success globally. Kylie made the Top Played Country Artist in the World Charts at around number 253 and at one stage had a Number 2 chart hit in the United Kingdom with a song off the first album. She has also sung internationally, toured the USA and performed in New Zealand. Highlights were receiving a Tamworth Songwriters Award for best-recorded song Out Getting Over You and being nominated for various Country Music awards.

Kylie enjoyed horse ownership as a teenager but then things shifted into high gear and life started to speed by, leaving no time for equines. Fortuitously they sped back into Kylie’s life nine years ago when her daughter Tara-Mae wanted to start riding. It was nigh on impossible finding an Arabian in the Narrabri (NSW) area where they lived at the time, so a Quarter Horse was initially purchased through Alan Wallen in Queensland for Tara-Mae. Eventually Kylie found an Arabian near Narrabri for herself.

Singing at gigs around the country and working fulltime means Kylie is away from home a great deal, not the ideal situation for the day-to-day care of horses. The simple solution: agist them with trustworthy people where she can visit them when time allows.

Why Arabian horses?

I think life is too short to ride an ugly horse! Seeing them running free spirited with tails in the air and heads held high in a paddock is a sight to behold. They are just beauty you can hold in your hand as well as your heart.

I love the expression on their faces – you can tell what they are thinking. I feel Arabians are like cats in this world. You do not own an Arabian. Your Arabian horse chooses you. It’s a relationship not an ownership.

I had other horses before obtaining my first Arabian but sadly I didn’t enjoy them and had no connection with them.

As a teenager I saw that a lady was advertising Arabian horses for sale around the corner from where I lived in Wynnum, Queensland and I went down to see them. She was so pleasant and helpful and I fell in love with the horses there and then. I spent so much time at her house! She must have been a very patient person.

Eventually, just before my 15th birthday I acquired Silver Shara (Tarong Ramsar x Suntana), a purebred yearling and that was the start of my love affair with Arabians. I have never in my life had a quieter horse. Basically as a two-year-old I just got on and rode her without breaking her in. I rode the streets of Wynnum for years with her and we also swam in the water out at the Port of Brisbane. Shara even had Santa Claus ride her while covered in tinsel, right into the Wynnum Plaza Shopping Centre where she was excitedly greeted by hundreds of cheering children!

I won't ever own another breed.

Happiest moments with Arabian horses

Diamond Road Identity aka Indi winning at the 2013 Aussies was pretty fantastic. I was working in Port Hedland, Western Australia while Lehan Brittens prepared him for the championships and she certainly deserves the credit for his win. David Gillett, who bred Indi, rang to congratulate me as soon as the class finished – momentous moment for us both – the first Aussie championship for me and the first horse David had bred that went on to win an Australian title!

Show wins are amazing but my proudest moments are always when children ride Tannamara Montesshah (Tannamara Shahtahn x Tannamara Vitesse), aka Monster. I purchased Monster as a six-year-old unhandled stallion. Everyone told me I would never get a child on him. Six months later, after he was gelded, a little girl at pony club had been bucked off her pony, so I went and got Monster out of his stable and gave him a quick ride. To see this little girl scramble up on a large Arabian horse and finish her pony club gymkhana that day was heartwarming. She could barely get him out of a walk in the barrel race – eventually he relented and did a small trot to the finish for her. Everyone was cheering “Go Monte! Go Monte!” – I cried.

My first win on him at an open gymkhana was for the quietest pony competition. I had a sly giggle at that too. I rode out into the arena with a tarp under my arm. In front of the judges, who by this stage were looking slightly alarmed, I unfurled it and we trotted around dragging it behind and over us. The blue was ours!

Same as the day Kate Dertell rang about the purebred gelding Gamaal (by A. Jakarta). I had met his dam Gameelah KA a few years earlier at Future Farms and thought she was one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. I considered it a pipe dream to own one of her foals. I saw Gamaal as a foal, then as a yearling and was infatuated by him. I just cried when Kate told me I could purchase him. He is now being prepared for the show ring by Racheal Spring in Queensland, where I now live. She adores him and so does her children.

What have you done with your Arabians?

Oh, just about everything I can including pony club, campdraft clinics, cutting clinics, horseball, team penning, mustering of stock on properties – through to the show ring.

Favourite non-horse activity?

Riding my motorbike, anywhere, as long as I am riding.

In your free time?

I have just joined a Western Performance Club in Beaudesert and will be training and competing in these events on Gamaal and Tannamara Montesshah.

What’s on your bucket list?

I always wanted one of those pretty bronze “horsey” heads with Australian Champion on it. I have one now thanks to Diamond Road Identity. I would like a garland for winning a saddle class and I want to ride in the Tom Quilty Gold Cup. And how much fun would it be to ride an Arabian around the pyramids in Egypt!