ABOUT Cali Canberra
In hindsight, it is easy to see that the night Cali bought her first horse was the beginning chapter of her first great story – her own story. It was the winter of 1978, against the backdrop of a Scottsdale, Arizona sunset, when Cali Canberra bought her first Quarter Horse. The idea was to have fun while making money to support her lifelong passion for horses. Cali acquired a solid black Poco Bueno bred mare to train, ride for enjoyment, and then resell for a modest profit… and it all happened in just a few short months.
Starting with that single Quarter Horse, for a few years, she had a steady flow of Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds come and go through her life, always making at least a modest profit from her passion. It turned out that Cali excelled at buying, training, riding and reselling horses. By the early 1980's, the rapidly growing Arabian market caught Cali’s attention. Her focus shifted and she began to use her finely tuned horse expertise and marketing skills to buy, sell, and broker some of the most valuable Polish Arabians in the world.
With all of the tax incentives for the people buying expensive horses, it didn’t take many clients (or many horses) for Cali to make a great living doing what she loved. When she wasn’t riding some of the best horses in the world she was spending her time developing a close relationship with a few very important, and very fascinating, clients. Her client list included a world-renowned entomologist, a leading shareholder of UPS, a Top Gun fighter pilot, and the internationally recognized designer Paolo Gucci.
In the 1980’s, Cali traveled throughout the USA and Poland, studying Polish Arabian horses and built her small client base. Eventually, Cali and her husband Steve designed and built their own professional horse operation in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and settled down to raise their daughter. For over ten years Cali owned as many as 25-30 elite Arabians at a time as she bred, trained, and sold her unbelievable horses. She was living the lifestyle she dreamed of-- until the Arabian market crashed and never recovered.
The collapse of the market caused pain and heartache for Cali and her family as they had to come to terms with the reality that the lifestyle they had grown accustomed to wouldn’t be possible to maintain anymore. Cali tried to let go of the past, but she couldn't let all of her knowledge and life experience be forgotten and go to waste. Without an up-scale horse market to fall back on, she came up with a plan to share the fascinating stories of the high-stakes Arabian business with others.
Through her three acclaimed legal-mystery novels (Trading Paper, Never Enough! and Buying Time) Cali Canberra has single-handedly exposed the truth of the turbulent era in the Arabian Horse industry, albeit through fiction –the most entertaining way to tell her stories. Her readers love that the novels are both entertaining and inspired by the way the horse industry really operates and real things that happen in the business world (in a variety of professions and industries).
All of the experiences, both high and low, have paved Cali’s way to a new, more spiritual and less materialistic life than that of her high-stakes past. She says that, in retrospect, there is very little of the 1980’s she would repeat if she knew then what she knows now. Although she dearly loved her horses, she was caught up in making money - and spending money, with little regard for her future or a spiritual life.
While Cali’s new outlook on life has led her to a passion for Native American and Eastern/Traditional Chinese Medicine healing, ways of being, living and thinking, there is one thing about her past that she clings to dearly: the horses themselves.
Cali’s personal transformation led her to write Wisdom of the Horse, an inspirational novel that is an adventure of the mind and spirit. Her more spiritual approach to life and writing has extended to her horse philosophy and has strengthened her already strong bond with her animals. She currently owns Kota, a six-year-old Palomino Quarter Horse mare, Mojo, an 8 year old Arabian gelding, Barbary’s Princess, a 26-year-old retired Arabian mare sired by Barbary+++ , and Casino, a retired 22-year-old Arabian gelding sired by *Algonkian.
She has a unique relationship with her horses, whom she keeps barefoot (the wild horse mustang model) and pastured on 25 acres at her home in Dawsonville, Georgia. She is a huge proponent of using kindness and compassion in handling and training, natural horsemanship methods, and holistic health care. Cali rides Kota several days a week using a training/conditioning program that includes trail riding, bridleless training, and reining horse training (for pleasure, not showing). She's training Mojo with plans to do camping/distance riding with him when he's ready. Cali also rides horses of all breeds for other people and teaches them how to effectively understand, communicate, rehabilitate, condition, train, ride and care for their horses, through one on one sessions and at clinics.
It has now been 32-years since the night Cali Canberra bought her first horse against the backdrop of a Scottsdale, Arizona sunset. Every day she’s just as eager to spend time with her horses as she was in 1978.
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With her vast experiences in all areas of the horse world, Canberra is excited to continue to share her unparalleled knowledge of the horse world through both her books and her soon-to-be-unveiled online project where she will share her expertise and opinions about a variety of equine topics, products, and superstars. Stay tuned. She hopes you will join the conversation!