About Us

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Ms. Jean touched her first horse and rode her first pony at age 3.  The obsession never stopped and her parents put her in formal English lessons starting at age 6.  Like many students, she first learned the basics of grooming, saddling and how to ride effectively.  Her early English riding career in dressage and jumping was from age 6 to age 15.

At age 15, Ms. Jean went to the Marriott Ranch for her first trail ride in VA, and was offered a volunteer position as a Wrangler.  Shortly thereafter, she became a paid Wrangler.  She became obsessed with her time at this beautiful facility and spent every available moment outside of work out in the fields with 60 plus horses.  

Ms. Jean worked for the Marriott Ranch all through high school and college.  She learned about caring for horses and working for a huge corporation  that drew in 1000’s of people each month.  Back then, there were sometimes 3 rides per day with 20-30 customers on each ride.  So, from those experiences came a lifetimes worth of education.

Ms. Jean went to college at George Mason University where she studied art, attaining a Bachelor in Fine Arts.  In her late teens, she started spending more evenings at the ranch, taking her sketchbook with her into the field to sketch pictures of horses.  But what happened seemed like a slow, magical and surprising  process.  She started watching the interactions of horses, learned about hierarchy and about small friend groups within the herd.  She saw the many different and important roles that mares had and how after correcting one another, sometimes with a simple ear flick or facial expression combined with a tail swish, that body language was impactful yet understood.  And regardless of how aggressive a correction was from a more dominant horse to a more submissive horse, they always went back to caring for each other, protecting each other and watching each other.

After graduating college, Ms. Jean also moved on from the Marriott Ranch to explore other opportunities. Full-time, she was a childcare facility director, attaining her Masters degree online at night.   On weekday evenings, she started going to a roping barn, became a header and competed in the Virginia Cowboy Association jackpots locally on weekends, on and off for 7 years.  In that time, she felt a large piece of her interest in horses was missing, so that is how her business came to fruition.

After trying her hand at team roping, Ms. Jean knew that she needed to get back to what she loved the most…helping horses and becoming a better equestrian by learning from the best professors in the business, the horses.  And so, she created The Natural Connection, an equestrian business focused on rehabilitating and retraining unwanted horses in Virginia.  Since the opening of her business, Ms. Jean consistently found time to dedicate to continuing education in both English and Western disciplines.  Training in different disciplines was an integral part of the successful training of her horses.  Based on each horse’s abilities, strengths, emotional stability and conformation, Ms. Jean could start a horse in disciple training after foundational training was completed.  So from 2004-2016, her business focused on rehabilitated unwanted horses whom eventually became lesson mounts.  She opened up a public boarding option, as well as professionally training horses for the public.  In a twist of fate, between 2017-2024, Ms. Jean became the first independent contractor at the Marriott Ranch and she returned to the ranch where it all started.  Although her time at the ranch is now over, the lessons from the herd remain the anchor in which her philosophy is built upon.