We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jamie Kohler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jamie below.

Jamie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I am a God fearing animal lover that grew up with a passion and gift with animals and, in particular, working with challenging horses. After growing up showing horses and riding professionally, I started to feel like there was still something missing, an emptiness. Following a series of life changes and events, I soon realized that God could use me and my passion of animals to help love others and show love through sharing the unconditional love that animals give to all of us despite our looks, abilities, or pasts. I realized that animals display the true unconditonal love of Christ to everyone. We began adopting rescued horses, dogs, (and cats) and began providing animal-related activities and horseback riding to individuals of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, and abilities. The mission of Blissful Dreams Rescue Ranch is to share the love and gospel of Jesus Christ through therapeutic horseback riding and animal related activities for children and adults struggling with psychological, emotional, physical, and relational challenges while using formerly abused, neglected, and abandoned horses and dogs. Animal behavior can be so misunderstood, just like people that are “different” can be misunderstood. It is difficult to explain without witnessing it in person, but there is something amazing that happens when you connect misunderstood animals that have been given a second chance with individuals that are misunderstood and/or hurting. We are having our first annual in-house horse show on Saturday, August 26 from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm for anyone that wants to see it all in action.

Jamie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

began riding horses when I was 6 years old when our close friend and neighbor, Liza Loadholt, invited me to ride their new Shetland pony, Albert. From that moment on, I knew I was born to work with horses. I started showing in hunter/jumper shows at 7 years old. I continued to show on the “A” circuit through middle, high school, and college. I lived in Camden, SC where I rode and trained with Ron Danta and Danny Robertshaw while commuting to thr University of South Carolina. In 1994 rode large pony, “Reach a Star,” to Grand pony hunter grand champion at Washington, DC & The Meadowlands International shows. I graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Bachelors in Business Management. Upon graduation, I showed professionally and trained countless ponies and horses. I began to feel something missing though I had thought I had my dream job. I decided to move back to Charleston, SC near my family and started working towards getting into Veterinary school. At the time, my sister, Beth Newton, was teaching the self-contained class at an elementary school. She began bringing her students to visit and ride a pony that I still had at that time. I was able to witness the love that the horses and kids had for each other. This was the beginning of me realizing that I could use my passion to help others. After a long series of events including marriage and having a daughter, my husband and I were led to Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in Oregon. We realized that we could help rescued animals to minister to various broken children, adolescence, and adults that need to experience this unconditional love that the world often does not show to them. This was all inspired the birth of our nonprofit, Blissful Dreams Rescue Ranch. In 2020, I completed Veterinary Technology school at Trident Technical College where I received an Associates in Veterinary Technology, and became a Licensed Veterinary Technician in 2021. I now do my best to use my experience, knowledge, gifts, and passion to take care of a farm full of animals, and use the animals as a vessel to show love and compassion to everyone that visits.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2017 my husband had a hernia surgery that went really bad. He ended up in a Texas hospital on a ventilator for almost 2 weeks. He had 8 surgeries, one in which he almost bled to death and required a blood transfusion and one in which he coded blue and almost had a trach placed. He has a scar that was cut for a trach but they were able to stabilize him before placing. In the meantime, I was trying to take care of our daughter and all of our animals and run our nonprofit while he was in critical condition. There were rumors going around that were far from true. Many thinking that I just needed a break and I made it all up to go to TX and others saying we were looking at houses to move to TX. After several long months of Tom in TX healing, he finally returned home to South Carolina. It was a struggle to pick up pieces and move on, but we did it. God prevailed and got us through all of the hurt and rumors. I will never forget what one of our “critics” told me one day in the middle of it all, “the house built on sand will not stand.” Apparently our house was built on rock. It stood through it all then and continues to stand as I have battled with autoimmune disease and multiple surgeries over the past 15+ years.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I knew my life calling was to be a professional horseback rider. However, once I got there, I felt such an emptiness. This emptiness led me to the difficult decision of leaving what I had worked so hard for since 6 years old, the professional horseback riding career with top known hunter/jumper trainers to transition into therapeutic horseback riding. That then led my husband and I to establish a nonprofit ministry to use my gift and passion of animals to help all around who are in need to feel and know true unconditional love. I learned to use what I love to serve the Lord.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://Blissfuldreams.org/
• Instagram: @Blissful_dreams_rescue_ranch
• Facebook: Blissful Dreams Rescue Ranch
• Twitter: @BlissfulDreams3

Image Credits
Wayne Eggleston Jamie Kohler Samantha Kohler