Sandra-leah Barbara: The giddyup factor
 
If you can”™t find a job, start a business. If you fall off a horse, get back on as soon as you can. If you feel fear, face it. These are traits that make for successful business people and for successful equestrians. Sandra-leah Barbara is both and consequently, again this summer, she will be off on a riding adventure amid the wild beauty of Montana.
The Clinton Corners resident owns three businesses, including Image Pro Printing, and a horse named Wind Dancer. She and her husband moved to the area about a decade ago and despite extensive experience in computer graphics with major corporations, including Microsoft, “I couldn”™t find a job,” Barbara said. So she found a “Mom and Pop copy shop” called Copy Shack for sale in Pleasant Valley and purchased it, converting it from old fashioned copy machines to digital copiers.
In 2003, she purchased another business, the former Copy Wise shop in Poughkeepsie and converted it to Image Pro Printing, a copy shop and printer. Then, last year, she added another business, becoming a franchise for Proforma, creating what is now called Proforma Image Pro Printing.
“Small businesses have to change to keep up with the times and the economy,” said Barbara.
Barbara, who said she is in “my fifties” lives with her husband John “about two minutes” from a barn where her passion resides, horses, including her own, Wind Dancer. Among the more interesting aspects to her passion for horses is how late she came to love them.
A self-described “Midwestern girl” from Cincinnati, she lived for 10 years in the Big Apple until, she said, “Enough was enough.” The couple was familiar with the Hudson Valley through John”™s hunting trips and so they sought and found “A log cabin on a little plot of land.”
Five years ago they planned a trip to Yosemite to do some dude-ranch riding, but learned they needed to have at least a little experience on horseback to be allowed to ride. So they took lessons back East and went riding the foothills of Yosemite”™s peaks. “We enjoyed it so much we just kind of continued. And it seemed like a natural progression; all of a sudden I wanted a horse.”
Despite the attraction to horses and riding, “I was a nervous rider, I had all sorts of issues at the beginning,” said Barbara. “So my husband said, ”˜Why don”™t you find something you are not so nervous about?”™Â But there”™s is just something special about it, so I stayed with it. Now I am a relaxed rider.”
There are many aspects of horses she finds appealing, starting with the animals themselves. “They are just such incredibly smart animals,” she said. “You come walking up and they can figure you out, what kind of rider you are going to be.”
She said the whole experience of keeping and riding a horse is a skill that takes a lifetime of learning, from grooming and care to riding techniques to “how to deal with their emotions because they are all as different as we are. The horses taught me life lessons.” Â
Among them was letting go of work and appreciating the moment. “You have to tell the horse exactly what you like, total focus is required,” said Barbara. “You can”™t be thinking about business. But when you”™ve got your own business, you take stuff home with you. With horses it”™s the only time I get out of my head.”
Her husband had always wanted horses, unbeknownst to her, so the shared passion gives them an easy way to bond on weekends, when they have precious time together that isn”™t easy to find during the work week. “I think everyone should have a passion, that”™s what gives life something to live for,” said Barbara. “And I”™m doubly lucky with the fact that my husband and I were able to find this passion together.”
Valuable as that benefit is to her, she said her passion for horses has helped in another way. “You face your fears,” Barbara said. “If you find something that scares you, go ahead and confront it. I”™ve fallen off horses and broken an ankle. When I got my cast off, I got right back up on horseback.”
Such pluck has brought her a long way and she has gone to places she never imagined. “When we started this, I was afraid to even pet them,” Barbara said. Last summer, however, she and John went to Montana for some wild riding: “Four hours a day in the saddle,” through mud thick enough to mire horses, rivers where horses wade through chest deep as the rider hangs on, mountains where the rider must occasionally turn the horse sideways on the trail and let the animal rest. “And then you have to go back down,” said Barbara, “and I have a fear of heights. Your senses are engaged, all of your senses.”
And the result of such stimulation? “We signed up to go back this year,” she said.