The Cowgirl

Portales, NM Fall 2000

Jenn Zeller is a spunky, funky, talented, horse-crazed individual.

Originally born in Oklahoma, her family moved to Texas in the late 80s where she was able to fulfill her lifelong dream of owning a horse.  She had been begging her folks for a horse since she was four. Her dad gave her 6 weeks to tire of feeding him; little did he know that by the time Jennifer was a junior in high school they’d be going to 75 rodeos a  year.

Upon graduating high school, Jenn received a rodeo scholarship to attend Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico, where she began her college rodeo career. She stayed there for two years, and then decided to come back to Texas and go to school at and rodeo for Tarleton State University, part of the Texas A&M University System. While there she was fortunate enough to get to ride under a really talented reined cow horse trainer and gained some excellent knowledge from that experience. Jennifer graduated from Tarleton State University in December 2002 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing.

She took a small hiatus from competing on her horses while she worked on getting a career established as an Assistant Investment Advisor. But the bug came crawling back, and before she knew it she was back at coaching, riding, and training. In  late 2005 she was contacted by Zach Ducheneaux of Ducheneaux Quarter Horses and they were instantly fast friends; he loved horses as much as she did and had a similar training philosophy. They bounced ideas off of one another for quite some time. In 2007 a choice had to be made- keep doing both, or only do the one thing she was passionate about. The horses won. In July, she quit her job in the brokerage world and went to work full-time for herself; riding and training barrel horses, giving lessons to horse-crazy little kids, like she had been, and coaching high school rodeo competitors. She began riding horses for Zach Ducheneaux in February of 2008. Shortly thereafter the opportunity presented itself for her to make the move to South Dakota and ride for the ranch. She jumped at it, and is blessed to get to live the life she always dreamed she’d have.

The friendship between Zach and Jenn grew and they fell in love. Jenn now has the best of everything; she gets to do what she loves each and everyday.  She’ll be the first to tell you that she’s the luckiest girl in the world.