Aimee Robinson, Horsewoman, PR Content Manager, Valley Vet

Editorial and marketing professional with a focus on animal health, creating content alongside experts to further wellness for horses, livestock and pets.

A 2022 AHP Equine Media NextGen Award co-recipient.

Avid pet and equine adoption advocate -- local humane society Board President, volunteer and foster. Prior to working in animal health, held positions within magazine editorial and print manufacturing/publishing industries.

Transcript

Rose Cushing 0:32

And I am with today's Course Women Podcast Women's Month. So we're celebrating this month and great achievements of women in our industry. I'm talking not only with women who have had great success, but a whole lot of people on the horizon to become historical figures in our industry. Our guest today is Amy Robinson. And Amy is the content director for Valley Vet and was a recipient of the American Horse Publications Equan Media Next Generation Award. So welcome to the show, Amy.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Oh, thank you so much, Rose, for having me. I've been looking forward to visiting with you.

Rose Cushing 1:10

Me too. So tell me a little bit about how you fell in love with horses.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Oh gosh. Um, you know, that story is going to take us way back. Um, I'm originally from Otmoldy, Oklahoma, and my parents had Appaloosa racehorses whenever I was brought into this world. And uh they had Appaloosis for quite some time. They still have some of the old retirees actually across the road from us. My husband and I, we found a little piece of property um right across my parents' farm, and that's just been a blessing. But at any rate, whenever I was really little, I could still, you know, remember back walking through the barn aisles at the tracks and feeding sugar cubes, and uh it was just really special to be there and and accept the pictures with my parents and most of us in the winter circle with uh a few of the favorite horses. And um, we my parents, they they got me a surprise for my third birthday, and she is a little POA pony named Sparfler. And I just was enamored with this pony, and we did everything together, and we actually still have her today. She is now, I believe, 33 years old. If I misquote that, she'd be mad at me if I said she was older than she is. I think she's 33. And uh she's just the absolute spitfire that she was whenever my parents got her for me. And my parents they took me up to the hot walker with her with some of the horses, and I just sit around on her and um hang out with them and the horses might up a little bit, and she was always she took pretty good care of me, except when she didn't. And she was uh she was really what got me into my work for horses. We still have several here with us across the road from us, we have the retirees at my parents' place, and then we have three of them here with us at our place, and it's just been it's just been the absolute dream. You know, I I went to college and I wasn't on the equestriary team, so I did haul some horses with the OSU just to have them and bring them along with me and we'd go to horse trials on the weekends whenever I could get away and moved one with them when I moved to the Law Wisconsin for work and they just you know, they're kinda they kinda stuck to me like Google.

Rose Cushing 3:26

Right. They do have that effect on you, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

They do, they do, ugly yourself.

Rose Cushing 3:32

I I told my husband when we first met, he was very much a city person, and I said, Don't ever let me pet a horse because I'll catch horse fever. And he thought I meant a disease. Little did he know I did. So it wasn't too long before we had a whole lot of 'em.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

And that's the way life should be, and and he sounds like a great man. I like him already.

Rose Cushing 3:54

He is. He he I I wound up having a breeding for him for years and he learned a lot and terrorized at first, and before long he was helping the mamas have the babies and imprinting them. So, you know, he's come a long way.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Oh, that's fantastic. My my husband, the exact same. We met whenever I moved back to Tulsa, and um he was a neighbor and he didn't have any pets at the time, and he had ridden a horse maybe once or twice, and now he's just in love with it, and and it's it's fun to see that through them when they get into it and and it kind of speaks to them like glue boots.

Rose Cushing 4:29

It it's true, it's very true. People my family thinks knows that I'm horse crazy, but what they don't realize is Rodney's more horse crazy than I am. So that that makes a good match for us.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

It definitely does. That's awesome. I love to hear that. Absolutely all the horse husbands out there.

Rose Cushing 4:46

Yeah, you you gotta, you know, hats off to them because you gotta be one to survive being married to one. This is so true. So tell me about your job at Valley Ved. That's really interesting that you're a content manager.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Thank you. Um, I love it. I I really do. I've been with Valley Vet Supply for now about four years. And um, you know, before I joined, they had focused on content, but only as time really allowed. And it's really a neat history at Valley Vet because the owners of Valley Bet Supply were it was founded from as a practicing vet clinic. And they had a mixed practice clinic in Mary's at the campus. And uh Dr. Arnold Magley and Dr. Rachel, they really saw a need for getting medications to, you know, horse owners and farmers that really didn't have great access to a vet clinic. And so they saw that need. And so whenever I came on board, it was really kind of starting a content program from the ground up. And the main mission was just finding the questions that animal owners had and trying to help solve those questions and overall to help their animals. So I really write quite a bit with our tech service veterinarians. We have three that work with us now. Um our owners have since retired, a much, much urgency retirement. And I work with our tech service veteran other experts and sliding stories on mostly cattle health and also horse health, and then a little bit of pet health here and there. And it's really fun to to tie that in and just to try to help folks that maybe even have all animals. Because it's interesting when you think about it, but something like a a story about sitting on a ranch dog space, that's also going to apply to our fish owners and to our our ranchers. And so it's just been a such a meaningful career. And you know, I've I kind of stumbled into animal health, to be really honest. Um whenever I graduated, I graduated with a journalism degree from LSU, and I went and worked with Spot Graphics, a large technologies company headquartered out of Wisconsin. The first six months of your position was working on the factory floor, rotating within the different departments of these facilities. So I think we ended up rotating to around five different facilities in the Wisconsin area. And I downfiled magazines, I textbooks, I drove a horse risk, and it was 12-hour shifts, night and day shifts that just kind of switched around. And that was such an awesome, you know, entrance into our industry, and then from there I went to working at Milwaukee magazine, and then um actually learned that the Zoetis business was at Beta Rutter, which was a great advertising agency that was exported to Milwaukee. And uh I had the opportunity to work with with Beta Rudder and Zoletta for several years, and it was just incredible. It was really fun to see how journalism took me back into animal health and agriculture after all of these years and then um a bit like I was at supply now for about four years. It's just been a remarkable, meaningful career, I would definitely say. And and working with our editors now too and and supplying stories and and helping connect sources, it's just it really is a dream.

Rose Cushing 8:08

That's really cool. I I started my career in the newspaper magazine industry, and I and my uh publisher always said when the ink gets in your blood rose, you're never gonna get rid of it, and he's certainly right.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We're the ones who will always be picking up those pieces.

Rose Cushing 8:27

That's right, that's right. But you know how wonderful we are that our equine industry allows us to have that kind of a career. Uh it's an amazing industry in that there's probably no career that I can think of that you can't blend in with horses. I mean, I I did an article once for our magazine and there were 450 careers that you know touched into the horse industry. So it's a big industry.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Oh, absolutely. If someone's got the heart for horses, there's definitely a place for them or whatever profession they may dream of. And that's that's you're right, that's a really special thing.

Rose Cushing 9:01

It is. It truly is. So tell me about the award that you won.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Sure. Um, so that was the AHP Equal Media Next Gen Award. And you know, my my friend uh my longtime friend and also colleague at Valley Beck Corey Smith, she nominated me along with uh you know, who's the our president and CEO for this award. And I was honestly just honored to be nominated and to be considered of in that light. And so they they ended up selecting two of us to be co-recipients of this award and the speakers expected to use us. May I believe it was. And it was really powerful. Um I can still think about when I was in the backseat of my trainer's truck and we were going to a horse file in Kansas. We mentioned, you know, the first time we should use riders. If you want to be a rider, we should really consider that. And the kind of beautiful circle I think you consider for that was just I really I was lost to words. It was so just moving and and empowering to know that all these years later it has happened and um and but I can be so passionate about a career, it's not just if my dad would say a four bit of a word.

Rose Cushing 10:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

And um I know that's not that's not the case for for everyone, and that's something I'll never take for granted. And it was just incredibly special in the AHP folks, everyone is just so wonderful and welcoming, and um, it's been a wonderful group to be involved with and to grow with.

Rose Cushing 10:36

Absolutely. Absolutely. I I've been to a few of the conventions and they were just so informative and so good, and what a nice group of folks.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Oh, absolutely. To have everyone rally together and and to learn together and from each other is it really is a unique, a unique group. I'm very grateful to be a part of it.

Rose Cushing 10:57

So of all the stories that you've written for for Valley Vet, what's your favorite topic?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Oh, that's a good question. That is a very good question.

Rose Cushing 11:11

Is it horses or cattle, or you know, is do you have a specific thing that that's more interesting to write about?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Sure. Well, I guess I would say that my heart always beats for horses. So anything horse health related, that's really important to me. Um so I would say anything horse health I'm sorry, um, I would say anything horse health related is is definitely something I'm drawn to. But also I'd say the questions that we might have as horse owners finding answers to that and hopefully being able to help others. There's one piece that I wrote, it's been a couple of years now I worked with a detective, and it was the topic of it was is it behavior related or is it pain-related issues that you're having with your horse? And for the lead for that, I ended up using we have we have several attacks here at our house. And one of them, she since has retired since she was eight, ended up having a fractured vertebrae. And she was a horse that I probably spent more hours in a saddle with with several different trainers, and we just we really fought through some issues, and I knew she was a sweethearted mare, it wasn't out of that, and so we ended up taking her to a couple of different beds, and we ended up ran in the OSUVET hospital in Stillwater, Oklahoma. And they did x-rays and they really looked very, very closely to her and they just they determined that she ended up having a fraction of the vertebrae of her neck, um C1, I believe it was, and it all made sense and it was something that I was I was really grateful for an answer and I wish that I would have known much earlier. And um that was probably the truth that rings the closest to my heart just because if someone is facing issues with their horse one after another after another, um ask all the questions you can and just look into the heart of your horse and and know she's not a mean-spirited individual. She doesn't want to hurt anybody, and after the pain that she was experiencing, it was close because that's how it hurts every good. And so that's probably of all species I wrote, that's one that I would say really uh is closest to my heart.

Rose Cushing 13:19

That that's a really good article, and oftentimes, you know, we just assume that they're being bad, and we don't take the time to look and make sure that there's not something wrong with them, you know, other than just they don't feel like it that day. So that's a much needed.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Definitely so. She's um she's a queen of the back pasture and she's she's enjoying life, and I'm I'm glad that she's retired and she'll never leave. She's um she's read incredibly well, and she has earned her retirement tinfold. She's always so good to meet. I adopted her whenever I lived in Miami, Florida, and then moved her to Kansas City with me, and then moved her back to Oklahoma with me. So we've really been through a lot, but yeah. You know, I I hope that piece helps others, but that's you know, at the end of the day, that's really what I hope the the work that I'm allowed to do um does. I hope that it helps others and and their animals.

Rose Cushing 14:14

Oh, I'm certain that it will. Now, how can the how can people access those articles?

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Sure. So we have quite a collection of articles on our website, um, and that's valuvet.com backslash education. Um from there you can go dive into horse care, livestock care, and also tech care articles. And we also do news releases. So most of the pieces that I write, honestly, I I submit to our editors, our equine industry and our and our ag industry editors for use in their magazines. So um those is probably you could check out, you know, um several different ag publications. I'm sure, you know, drovers, the best of cattle, um, ag updates. I also do some freelance writing doing occasionally, but whenever I get the stamp, I absolutely love these vibrates with Holly with what's illustrated um several times, and I've really enjoyed that as well.

Rose Cushing 15:12

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Hey y'all, this is Ronnie from Yale City Special Big Base located in Bible, North Carolina. It's almost great town. Is your horse floating? Does your horse have a second?

Rose Cushing 16:14

So what's left on your bucket list? I'm sure you're young and you have a lot left to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

That's another good question. Um, what's left on my bucket list? You know, I guess I would say work-related, I I want to continue doing the things that I'm doing. I I want to find the best avenues that we could help educate and help inform and hopefully help the animals that everyone has them as there. That's that's definitely number one. Um, you know, sports-wise, I'm just now getting back into bidding. I've had some, you know, we we all have some unexpected, that's kind of been the case with my last few horses. And so I've got a new guy, and we're just now getting back into it. We just had our first sample boxes about a few weeks ago. And so I'm excited to see what he thinks about it, and I'm really excited to be getting back into it. We've adopted a few horses from horses now just out of the Oklahoma and space, but they're just wonderful. It's such a cool place. They have they have when you arrive, we've got like probably, I don't know, 30 dogs at Greece. And Nelda, she rescues um senior dogs from high-kill shelters across the state. And that they go there, they live out their days, and she's even got some that are seeing or or vision or sorry, hearing or vision repaired and um in pairs, but they have to have a separate place for this. So it's these state, it's easy to say. But um it's it's just an awesome place. If you're a dog or a host a host person, it is just heaven. So um that's just that's just been really cool. Um outside of that, I'm also really involved with our humane society in town. So Oklahoma, we've got a lot of states around us with basic overpopulation, I see so we're all just driving to hopefully save more dogs and cats and put them in a better spot. So definitely there's a lot of work ahead, but it's it's something that I absolutely love, and it's amazing to work with such great people all around.

Rose Cushing 18:21

That's very, very good causes and good things to have on your list for sure. What what thank you what advice would you give to young women coming into our industry? Because the horse industry is a tough place to make a living.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

You know, that's a good question too. And um, I guess I would say don't give up. You might have, you know, if you're a recent graduate, you might have an interesting path getting through the horse industry. If you're if you're unable to get in right away, you could be driving for us in Wisconsin. Um but yeah, you know, just you never know where your path is gonna take you, but if you're really set on getting somewhere, you'll get there and just keep close contacts and you know, be open to kind of getting out of your element and connecting with others and and just know that everyone's here to help. Everyone wants to learn to help advance and you're gonna learn so much along the way, and then one day you might be in a position that you can help others. And so just if it's something you want to do or just stay strong and keep after it and follow your path wherever it will lead you, and certainly the worst is good.

Rose Cushing 19:33

Very, very good advice as well. Well, I've enjoyed talking with you a lot this morning, Amy. So how can people find follow you and what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Sure, sure. So you can follow me on Instagram, um, it's Amy underscore blue L O O. Um, I really just post things about horses and dogs, so feel free to follow me there. You can also follow my work at Vallivet.com backslash education, and also keep an eye out and horse illustrator. I love to work with them too. And you know, just um thank you so much for for having me and for having me on, and it's been such a wonderful, wonderful visit. I've really appreciated it.

Rose Cushing 20:17

Thank you. I appreciate you being on the show, and as always, thank you guys for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's show. Our souls wander in similar places. Even though we may not know each other, we're welcome to.