An Awakening – The Story Behind Tabatha Poling and Lazy Holla Dayz

Last year at Congress, Ryan Kail and Tabatha Poling went on a mission to find the perfect horse. When she stepped her foot into the stirrup of Lazy Holla Dayz, it took Tabatha five minutes to know “Stella” was the one.

Since then, says Tabatha, “This horse is making all my dreams come true. It’s incredible. I’ve done every show Ryan and Andrea have done, and we’ve won every single circuit all year. It’s just unbelievable – it’s like a perfect partnership.”

It’s also the first time she’s had a trainer and had a horse in a training barn, and the first year she has shown at this level. Before that, she did local shows on her own.

Their accomplishments this week at 2024 Arizona Fall Championship, L1 Amateur Pleasure and Amateur Select Pleasure circuit wins were no exception, adding to Stella’s impressive list of Congress Champion, two-time Reserve Congress Champion, Bronze Congress Champion, and NSBA World Bronze Champion.

“She is just a phenomenal horse,” explains Tabatha. “She’s kind, she’s sweet, she’s talented, and in between shows, I take her home and she gets turned out and loved on.”

An Awakening

Having Stella is more than just a goal for Tabatha – it was part of an awakening she received after a serious accident approximately two years ago.

“I had a brand new squeeze of hay, and I had no hay on the ground. So of course, the girl that can do everything on her own went to the top to pull a bale and my hook came out and I went off headfirst backwards, my head hit the tractor and then I hit the concrete. So I cracked my head open, punctured my lung, broke nine ribs and several bones and my pelvis.”

So the corporate woman who worked all the time, never home and never seeing her family, who always said she was going to retire from the company where she’d worked for 32 years said, “That’s enough – I could have died.  So I retired, and Stella joined the Kails, and I’m just living my dream.”

Stella and her husband, Dave Poling, have also begun a small breeding program this past year, Poling Performance Horses. They have their first foal, by Machine Made and out of an RL Best of Sudden mare – Rosie – and she’s a roan! Ryan named her Ring Around the Rosie, Tabatha explains, because she would lope circles around her mom as soon as she was born. “And the name was available! It was really cute, so we’re very excited.”

 

 

See the article from just under a year ago here: https://www.equinechronicle.com/a-bright-future-for-the-new-team-of-tabatha-poling-and-lazy-holla-dayz/