Riley Sommers has spent nearly two decades riding, competing, and taking on challenging “project horses” that require extra training and dedication. When Sommers broke her neck riding her first project horse, her response? To get back in the saddle.

Now the Texas native is faced with a new challenge—grad school.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin, Sommers packed her life into boxes and moved over 1,000 miles to Chicago. 

“I was rapidly approaching burnout and I knew I needed a big change,” Sommers said.

For many, moving out of your parents’ house means leaving a pet behind. For Sommers, it meant finding a way to bring her horse, Finch, with her.

“I didn’t even see it as an option. I was like, of course, she is coming,” Sommers said. “I don’t do well mentally and emotionally when I don’t have something to take care of, and it’s just been such a massive part of my life for so long,” she said.

While adjusting to city life, Sommers found herself without a horse for the first time. 

“It was weird. I was in a completely new city and new apartment, so it was weird to be without a horse since that’s been a constant in my life,” Sommers said. 

After being separated from Finch for over a month, Sommers relied on a transportation service to ship Finch from Austin to Chicago. “She’s like my daughter. I call her my second child, my dog being my first,” Sommers said. 

Back in Austin, Sommers lived a short drive away from her barn Coraggio where she trained with the barn owner, now, close friend, Paige Barnett. “She was my right-hand man for a very long time,” Barnett said. 

“People talk about ‘horse crazy’ or ‘horse lovers’ and she (Riley) has that running very very deep,” Barnett said.

Barnett first met Sommers when she was eleven, back when Barnett could describe her student as “just a kid learning how to ride.”

Before it was her “home away from home,” Coraggio was a space for Sommers to learn her sport. 

It was where she could work hard and fall even harder, the perfect spot for learning how to shake off the dust and get back up again. 

Full of peppermints and carrots, the barn was a safe space for Sommers to fine-tune her skills. Over time, Coraggio became an outlet, a job, a place to compete and a surefire way to make lifelong friends.

“I think she (Riley) is always discovering herself and figuring out herself in a new way,” said fellow rider Emmy Frigo, who met Sommers in 2014 at Coraggio.

“I think she does that through horses and her work, and her education.”

Neither of Sommers’ parents went to grad school, so her decision to move across the country by herself, and with a horse, is something that Frigo is extremely proud of.

“It’s a lot of work to be studying all the time and have a young horse you’re training, (but) I think you’d have to work real hard to keep horses and Riley apart,” Frigo said.

For her trainer, the relationship Sommers had with one horse in particular stands out. 

“The Sienna years were super special,” Barnett said. “It almost brings tears to my eyes talking about Sienna and Riley. As a trainer, it was awesome to be able to have a hand in helping those two learn to communicate with each other.”

Sommers’ mom, Cassie, even joked that Sienna and Sommers shared a brain. “We called her the red-headed tornado,” Sommers said. “The first time I ever rode her, I couldn’t get her to stop.”

Though the jumper mare passed away in 2020, Sommers still finds joy and a steady constant in being able to communicate with young and spirited horses—her new challenger being Finch.

“I was so in love with her, my jumper mare,” Sommers said. “She (Sienna) is why I kept doing it.”

On Sommers’ arm now sits a tiny tattoo of a tornado—a reminder of home, a spirited horse and the rider she’s become. Reunited with Finch, Sommers now keeps an even bigger piece of Texas with her in the city. 

Wherever life takes Sommers, one thing she knows for sure? Her horses.

“It’s one of those things I can fall back on, kind of as something consistent that I can say, ‘Oh, I know where I am, I know who I am, and I know what’s happening right now.’”