Entering her second year at Cal Poly, Kalysa Hamilton knew a big part of her college experience was missing — her best friend. So she had this friend shipped across the ocean to live at school with her.
Hamilton, from Hawaii, has grown to know her big-eyed, hoofed companion, Amber, very well during the eight years she’s owned her. Horses are best known for their keen senses, speed and endurance, but what Hamilton said she treasures most is the friendship horses offer their owners. The relationships with her horses are so important that she is the only Cal Poly student who had her two animals flown overseas to be boarded at the university’s rodeo facility.
“I think it’s important to have something where you can have an out from school,” the animal science senior, who also participates in the Cal Poly Rodeo Club, said. “I still have time to go out and hang out with friends, but I have equally as much fun being out (on the rodeo grounds).”
Hamilton makes sure to feed, groom and ride her horses every day. She practices often with her male horse, Smokey, but competes with Amber because of the mare’s unusual skills, she said.
And confidence is needed when your horse’s original name sounds like a cooking utensil. Amber is a nationally-recognized award winner; the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association recently named her the 2012 Horse of the Year at the West Coast Regional College Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas. Amber’s title is attributed mostly to her unique talent in several rodeo events rather than just one, Hamilton said. The duo has been successful in women’s rodeo events including roping, goat tying and barrel racing.
“A lot of the time, people have a single horse for each event,” she said. “Especially barrel horses aren’t mixed with roping events, but with (Amber), you can rope on her and then run barrels on her, which is just not heard of. And she’s really competitive. It shows she has a lot of talent and a lot of heart to try for you.”
Another reason the horse is specially recognized, Hamilton said, is her natural athletic ability paired with her compatibility and bond with her owner.
“It’s amazing what a horse can pick up on,” she said. “So when you’re nervous, there are a lot of times your horse will get nervous too. Confidence is key.”
Amber is registered as Foxy Cookie Cutter, a name given to her by her previous owners as a combination of her parents’ registered names. For short, she was already called Amber, which is fitting due to the animal’s very girly and princess-like personality, Hamilton said.
For Hamilton, her time with horses came long before she owned Amber. She began taking horseback riding lessons at age 5 and has competed in rodeos since she was six.
“She’s overcome a lot of obstacles,” said Hamilton’s family friend, Mike Smith, who helped Hamilton with her roping skills back in Hawaii.
Smith witnessed firsthand the biggest obstacle Hamilton faced when she was in eighth grade, he said. She was practicing running breakaways—where the rider’s goal is to rope a calf—when her horse bucked her off. With one end of the rope tied tight around the horse, she was dragged across the arena and hit her foot hard on a bench post, leaving her foot hanging off her leg by mere tendons and skin.
Luckily, Hamilton’s foot was reattached successfully, and she continued with rodeo events after it healed.
“Coming back from that pretty much made her a hero in my eyes,” Smith said. “I don’t know many people who would stay positive from that. From that point on, she always worked hard. … I’m glad she’s had success and that all her hard work paid off.”
Even after the injury, Hamilton remained passionate about rodeo throughout high school. Upon arriving at college, she instantly felt lost without her horses and did something about it, Hamilton said.
Transporting her animals from Hawaii to campus required a good amount of effort, she said. First, the horses must go through the quarantine process, where they receive veterinarian tests to check for diseases. Then Pacific Airlift, Inc., a company specializing in transporting livestock to and from Hawaii, took them on a five-hour flight along with a shipment of cattle. From there, Hamilton and her dad picked them up from Los Angeles International Airport and drove them to campus by trailer.
“(Flying is) really easy on the horses, because if you send them by boat, that takes over a week, and usually, they lose a lot of weight and they get stressed,” Hamilton said. “So the plane is pretty much as simple as loading them into your trailer to drive them.”
Shipping their horses to campus by trailer is, in fact, what most Cal Poly students choose to do. Forty-five to 50 horses are boarded at the university’s rodeo facility, all of which are student property. Each owner has one to three horses, Cal Poly rodeo coach Tony Branquinho said.
Most students do not own a trailer, so they hire a shipping company to get the job done. Shipping companies typically charge a base fee between $50 and $500 and an average of $1 to $5 per mile, depending on the company. Once the horses arrive to campus, students are charged $300 per stall, plus a bit more than $100 each month to maintain the stall and are required to feed and clean after their horses.
Despite the effort and costs required to ship horses to college and maintain them, it has its perks, Branquinho said.
“What I’ve noticed is that it gives the students a release from all the high demands of education,” Branquinho said. “It gives students a chance to keep part of what they’ve grown up doing.”
Peyton Burns, a computer engineering sophomore who brought her horse from Missouri, agrees having a horse at school can help cope with the difficulties of college life.
“It definitely improves my college experience,” she said. “I just had a midterm this morning and went out to the barn afterwards. … It kind of gets rid of stress. There’s nothing like galloping full speed when you just feel completely alive and completely free.”
Hamilton will graduate next month and said she is grateful for the rewarding experience her horses and the rodeo club have given her.
“I couldn’t imagine not doing this in college,” Hamilton said. “It keeps me sane.”