Amy Stuhr Paterson has always been a self-described workaholic. She brings her laptop to horse shows and works on a mortgage agreement right up until it’s time for her to get tacked up. Her longtime clients know that if they hear horses in the background she’s probably at a show.

“The last time I turned in my laptop to our IT department, I was trying to get all the hay out of the keys,” she joked. “I was afraid they were going to be like, ‘What? Where did you have this?’ ”

As a mortgage loan officer with the National Bank of Kansas City who works solely on commission, she can’t afford to take too much time away. Her workday fluctuates with the housing market and interest rates, so once her day starts she doesn’t know when she might go home. She specializes in Veteran Affairs mortgages, so her clients are located across the United States and throughout the world.

“Once I get [to work], I have to be committed and ready,” she said. “In commission sales, you’ve got to make hay while the sun shines so if the phone is ringing, I have to make sure I’m here.”

To ensure she gets to ride her mare Wies V/D Klumpert, Paterson is up at 5:45 a.m. daily and makes the short drive to her parents’ nearby farm, where she keeps the Hanoverian mare (Future—Sarina V D Klumpert, Havidoff). Afterward, she has time to take a quick shower, throw her wet hair into a bun and get started on the day at the office.

While her schedule works out well in the sweltering summer months, the frigid winter morning temperatures often limit how much she gets to ride. She considers herself lucky to have an indoor at her parents’ farm, but even that doesn’t guarantee a morning ride.

“Those mornings get cold, cold, cold in the wintertime,” said Paterson. “I love it when the days are long, and I don’t care that it’s hot because it’s always rideable at 6 o’clock in the morning.”

The Car That Started It All

Paterson can’t remember a time when she didn’t love horses. “My mom likes to tell the stories of the late ‘60s when they had a [Ford] Mustang, and I loved that car,” Paterson recalled. “I cried when they sold it, and my mom was like, ‘Why are you so upset that we are selling this car?’ And I said, ‘Because it has a horse on the door!’ ”

Once her grandmother signed her up for lessons at age 9, there was no going back. Every Wednesday she’d sit in class staring out the window hoping that the weather would stay pleasant enough for her weekly lesson.

Like many teenagers who participated in the U.S. Pony Club, Paterson found her way to eventing, though it was soon clear that it would never be her calling. 

“I’d win the dressage and then on cross-country I would either get lost or have a million refusals,” she joked, “then I would see how many fences I could knock down in stadium.

“The first rally I went to, my mom was at a fence with her camera to take a picture of me, and I came through the bushes behind her because I was lost,” she continued. “That was pretty typical for me and jumping.”

A detail-oriented person, Paterson was drawn to the systematic training system of dressage. She thrived in focusing on the pieces of a test and finding how minute changes to her ride would positively affect the horse.

“Running and jumping sounded like a lot of fun in theory, but I would really like to get back to my little arena with a fence around it,” she said. “I actually enjoyed it and the puzzle of trying to figure out what works for a horse and what makes its balance better.”

Alongside her trainer Melissa Allen, Paterson has worked through the challenges of bringing up her mare from third level to Intermediaire. The pair has attended the Great American Insurance Group/USDF Region 4 Dressage Championships and won their respective divisions every year they’ve entered. 

Competing her mare, Wies V/D Klumpert, at the FEI levels of dressage keeps Amy Stuhr Paterson
getting out of bed in the wee hours every day. Photo by Jesse Franks

“[‘Wie’] can be a bit of a hot tamale, but she’s very talented. It’s been a really exciting journey for me,” said Paterson, 47. “We are now entering into unchartered territory. I’ve never competed above Intermediaire I before this year, so getting in the ring and doing one-tempi changes and piaffe-passage has been a big learning curve for someone who has done this sport for a long time. 

“I thought I knew how to do this sport and now it’s like ‘whoa, nope, I don’t know anything!’ ” she continued. “It was really frustrating for a while but now it’s starting to click and make sense. It’s pretty cool to teach this old dog some new tricks.” 

Gaining Perspective

While she’s always been happy with her full-speed-ahead lifestyle, her perspective changed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Even when doctors warned her that radiation treatments would tire her out, she refused to let the cancer define her schedule.

She took a day off of work to have a lumpectomy performed and was back at work the following day. A week later she was back in the saddle. Throughout her radiation treatments, she’d mark down a horse show every month and book her hotel, but when it came close to the date she’d have to back off.

“I’d school and be like ‘Gosh, darn it! I can’t sit the trot. I’ve been riding since I was 9, and I can’t sit the trot! What is going on?’ ” she said. “It was very frustrating to me. Finally I was like ‘Stop picking horse shows and just ride. You’ll know when you’re ready.’ ”

She finally made it back in the show ring in October, but nearly a year away from the ring meant she would miss the Greater American Insurance Group/USDF Region 4 Dressage Championship, something that she hated to skip. 

“That was the hardest part, acknowledging that I may not be superwoman for a while and it’s OK,” she said.

“[Cancer] made me realize and look at my priorities and make sure that I remember that the good part of the day isn’t the working part of the day; it’s everything else that work makes possible for me,” she said. “That was a bit of a gut check to remember what’s really important in life.”

With the intricacies of mortgages, Paterson was determined to be there for her customers every step of the way. “I always want to let them know that I’m not going to let it fall apart in underwriting. Every day it’s like whack-a-mole trying to put out fires between lenders and underwriters.”

Since her breast cancer treatment, she’s been working on delegating to others so that she can take time to enjoy her horse shows or take time off to be with her husband of two years, Doug.

The couple met when she was arranging a mortgage agreement for him while he was stationed at the Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb., and she was living in Lee’s Summit, Mo.

Since Doug was a pilot, they made a deal: if he flew out to give her a ride in his plane, she’d let him ride one of her horses. But it didn’t happen quite as planned. He held up his end of the deal, but she later realized she didn’t have anything suitable for him to ride. To this day, that detail remains a bone of contention.

“He always tells people, ‘Oh yeah, she’s ridden in by plane, but I still haven’t ridden any of the horses,’ ” Amy said. “He loves to give me a hard time about that.”

Though he doesn’t ride, Doug quickly stepped in to be Amy’s biggest supporter alongside her parents Bob and Angela Stuhr. He attends every horse show he can with his grooming bucket and video camera on hand.

“[Doug is] super supportive; he’ll do everything possible to be there, which I think is awesome,” she said.