Cavannah Hansen’s love for horses grew from a small seed—a simple pony ride at the fair. Now 15 years old, she has grown as a horsewoman and achieved much in competition, but she’s also taken her passion for horses and turned it into service toward others. Here’s how the Declo, Idaho, teen is using her gifts to lift up her community.
Cavannah was adopted into the Hansen family when she was 2 years old. When she was 5, she begged to go on the pony ride when the family went to the California State Fair. This was a core memory for her.
“I fell in love with that horse going around the circle,” she says. “His name was Scarecrow. I just kind of clung to him and wanted to go back to the fair and ride that horse again.”
Life with Horses
A few years later, her older sister Chloe got a horse, so Cavannah would go watch her ride. At 8 years old, Cavannah climbed back into the saddle and felt the desire to go fast.
“I just wanted to ride the horse—it always made me super happy,” she says.
Five of the 11 Hansen children rode at one point. When Cavannah was 10, she joined 4-H and improved her horsemanship skills with the help of a trainer named Lawrence Valdez. With his help, the family purchased a reining horse named Emma for Chloe, and when she moved on to another horse, Cavannah began riding Emma. Although they dabbled in other disciplines, the girls began competing in reining.
Today, only Chloe and Cavannah still ride. Cavannah rides a 5-year-old palomino named Hotshot Dunnit.
“He’s a really good, solid horse,” she says.
She trains with reining trainer Nathan Kent, who lives three hours away, and rides at home most of the time. She competes in American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) and National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) competitions, and qualified for the 2024 The Run For A Million Rookie Shootout.
Cavannah is also a singer and says singing has been healing for her. She has participated in music lessons, which also helped develop her voice. She even sang the national anthem at the 2024 AQHYA World Championship Show.
Giving Back
With the NRHA’s youth program, Cavannah has found a pathway for service by starting a service project called My Blanket. She was inspired by her own experiences coming out of foster care.
“When I was adopted, I was always being held because I was too scared to even walk,” she says. “So my mom would carry me in a pack on her chest everywhere she went. To help me, my parents got me a blanket, and I loved it. It was really comforting to me, and it helped me grow. I wanted to do the same for the other kids in foster care. I wanted them to feel the same happiness and warmth that I had when I got my blanket.”
Cavannah gathered friends from the community, and together, the girls made blankets out of cotton material with tassels, prints and designs, complete with a patch for a child to put their name on it. The My Blanket project donated these blankets to the local foster care program to distribute to children. To date, they’ve made more than 30 blankets through the project.
Moose Tracks Therapy Ranch
With Chloe, Cavannah has also started a nonprofit therapy program at the barn they have on their property.
“We started it for my sister Caroline,” Cavannah says. “She has special needs, and she wanted to be part of the big horses, but she couldn’t do that safely. So three years ago, we got her a therapy Miniature Horse. His name is Moose. It helped her—it made her really happy, and she was able to be involved with us with the horses.”
The therapy ranch is called Moose Tracks, named after the Mini. Chloe and Cavannah take the horse to nursing homes, hospitals, and other locations to introduce kids in the community to horses. Their mom, Kristine, says the girls look for opportunities to invite kids to meet Moose and their other horses.
“They will give riding lessons to kids in foster care for free or help others in the community that need to have their heart healed, while being touched through an experience only a horse can bring,” Kristine says. “As they’re going through their daily activities, they look for people they see in need, and invite them over to the ranch to work with the horses.”
For the Future
Chloe is planning to study equine assisted therapy at Colorado State University, with the hopes of the two sisters running the therapy ranch together in the future. They are so close that they even created a nickname for themselves, complete with hats and tees, called “The Branded Sisters: Sisters by Choice, Branded by Trust, United by God,” and share a desire to use their love for each other and horses in their future equine partnerships, while continuing to serve folks in their community.
Cavannah has a lifelong love for horses. In college, she hopes to study equine science and learn to problem-solve issues in horse behavior.
“I want to do it because I want to figure out what makes a horse act a certain way, and fix what happened to them,” she says. “I feel like from being in foster care, I can relate to the horse, why they act the way they do, and I want to figure out how to help them. Because I understand that the way a horse expresses themselves on the outside is usually a result of something they are feeling on the inside but just can’t voice.”
This article about Cavannah Hansen appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Young Rider magazine. Click here to subscribe!
