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Terry Hutchins

Terry started her lifetime journey with the horse as a young girl reading Horse Fever over and over again.  Summers were spent at Grandma's and Grandpa's taking riding lessons and caring for her horse.   It was during those years that the horse became a centering influence in her life and lit a passion that could not be extinguished.

As Terry journeyed through the teen years and on to adulthood, she would migrate back to the horse for serenity and strength while meeting the challenges of family and life. Terry embraced those challenges with a die-hard attitude that helped her achieve her goals and realize her passion for the musical stage and nursing. In whatever she did, the dreams were big and the challenges daunting.

After putting herself through nursing school, Terry chose to take on one of the toughest jobs in nursing--bone marrow transplant. Taking care and learning from patients who were facing the ultimate challenge gave her an appreciation for the blessings she had in her life, the strength to persevere through adversity and a laser focus on her dreams. When the inevitable "burnout" kicked in, Terry returned to the horse for comfort. Little did she know that her real journey with the horse was just beginning!

A trip with a friend to a local stable resulted in Bill, an ex-racehorse and grandson of Secretariat, finding Terry. Bill's sleek beauty hid a troubled horse who was scared and sick of humans. All the "barn knowledge" did not help calm Bill or foster his athletic breeding.  It was through these challenges that Terry discovered natural horsemanship and the value of whole horse health.

Soon afterward Terry, along with her husband "Hutch," founded the Northwest Natural Horsemanship Center. Over the years the Center has provided hundreds of horse owners the opportunity to learn Parelli Natural Horsemanship and provided Terry with exposure to scores of different horses and training challenges. Her deep understanding of the horse and ability to share that knowledge lead to friends asking her to help them learn and they, in turn, recommending Terry to their friends.  Terry's new career as an educator was born.

Terry has obtained her Level 1 Centered Riding Instructor classification and is working on her Parelli Level 3.  She has done extensive course work in many aspects of natural horsemanship and equine health and received a Parelli certificate in foundation training from the La Cense Center in Montana.  She has also studied Advanced Fluidity with Linda Parelli.

Terry does both private and group riding lessons for all ages and trains horses and their owners in the foundations of natural horsemanship when she is not training for Endurance events.