She earns a national dressage honor while also homeschooling her children and volunteering in Haiti.

Many adult amateurs juggle a career, raising children and riding their horses. It’s never an easy task, but Dixie Montgomery has taken it to an entirely different level, having raised and homeschooled 17 children.

She also runs a non-profit organization called HOPE in Haiti, but she still makes horses an important part of her life, earning the Dover Saddlery Adult Amateur Medal national reserve championship for 2009. Montgomery, Monroe, Wash., and her Dutch Warmblood Wester scored an average of 68.29 percent at second level to take the honor.

Montgomery said that while still in high school, she told her mother that she wasn’t going to get married, but she would have 10 boys.

“I have always had a love for children, and especially for those who were less fortunate,” said Montgomery. “I remember going to an orphanage in Tijuana [Mexico] when I was in high school, and my heart ached for those children so badly. So seeds were planted long ago, although I’ve never been much of a visionary and had no idea what my life would hold. I still don’t.”

It’s usually not a good policy to pick up hitchhikers, but Montgomery did exactly that one day. Fortunately for her, this individual was not a shady person, and he invited her to a Bible study. Montgomery eventually moved in with his sister and later met their brother Dick when he returned from serving two years in the army as a medic. She became good friends with Dick and at age 23 married him.

A House Full Of Love

“My husband and I are both Christians and have always wanted to help others, especially children that were unwanted for one reason or another,” said Dixie. “Only one of our adopted kids was a baby when he came to us, and we refer to him as our Haitian souvenir, as we were living in Haiti at the time. He’s now at school in [the United States Military Academy] West Point [N.Y.].”

Their other children ranged in age from 3 to 14 years old when they came to live with the Montgomerys. “We never planned our family, just continued taking in children when there was a need,” said Dixie.

She still has teenagers in the house as her children range from 15 to 32 years now. “We have a Korean daughter, Viet-namese son, three sons and a daughter from Haiti, an Ethiopian son, a Russian daughter, and the others are from the Washington area,” she said. “Our biological children are all mixed in age-wise.”

Dick, a paint contractor, taught the children the value of honest work, and they helped in the painting to earn their own money.

“He always told them that it provided for us, and they could learn how to work along side of him,” Dixie said, adding three of their sons have now taken over the paint company.

Dixie doesn’t work outside the home, but she considers herself “one of the hardest working non-paid women out there.”

Life in the Montgomery home was not easy or low key.

“How we made it work, I’m not sure,” Dixie admitted. “We stretched every penny but always had plenty to eat and paid our bills. Vacations were day trips to various places or moving to Haiti for two years and working within an orphanage and community. That has laid the foundation for the birth of our organization HOPE in Haiti. Family has been very important to us, and we always tried to eat meals together, stretching out our old round oak table to fit all of us.”

At times there would be 15 or 16 people around that table, and Dixie felt like she was cooking for an entire camp.

The family always lived on acreage and had milk goats, a milk cow, chickens, cats, dogs and horses. The children had chores to do before and after their schooling, including milking the goats, chopping firewood, mowing lots of grass and caring for the horses. If it sounds like a story from another time, in some ways it is.

Dixie has home schooled all her children and continues to do so with the last two teenagers. Most of her children still live in the area, although one married daughter lives in Hawaii and another has spent the past five years in a village in Guinea, West Africa, doing mission work. Several of her daughters rode as children.

A Call To Service

In a brave move, Dixie and Dick took their (at the time) eight children to live in Haiti from 1989 to 1991. While in Dessalines, about 100 miles north of Port Au Prince, they met Louinet Gilles and encouraged and supported the 19-year-old through Bible college.

After Louinet became a pastor, he started a church, which has grown to include a second sister church and two primary schools. Today these facilities serve the poorest of the poor in the hills and mountains outside of Dessalines.

“[We] built a house on an orphanage, worked within a small rural town and came back with nine kids,” said Dixie. “Love for these people captured our hearts and lives.”

Over the years Dixie and Dick stayed in touch with the people of Dessalines and in 2005 returned for a visit. They were inspired by the work of Pastor Louinet and wanted to get more involved in the community. But just as they were making plans for the future, tragedy struck. Dick, her husband of 30 years, was killed in a car accident in 2006. She was left a widow with 16 children.

“Slowly, with much support from friends, I am rediscovering who I am,” she said. “I don’t think I ever missed a day riding because it kept me breathing.”

A year after that terrible accident, in honor of her husband, Dixie traveled back to Haiti along with eight of her children and one niece and founded a non-profit organization called HOPE in Haiti. This sponsorship program helps Haitian children get an education.

In the wake of January’s devastating earthquake, Dixie’s group sent food and money to help with the relief, and they’ve made several trips to offer aid and support.

Finding Time For Horses

Although Dixie didn’t come from an equestrian family, somewhere in this life of serving the poor, she found time for horses. Prior to her involvement in dressage, she rode Arabians, trained Thoroughbreds for the racetrack and evented for a few years. Once she shifted her focus to dressage there’s been no looking back.

“I love all the details of dressage,” she said.

As Dixie gained knowledge in dressage, she decided she wanted to find her “dream horse.” Her budget was certainly limited, and to build up the necessary funds, she had to sell three of her horses. She enlisted the help of Suzanne Hudson of Northwest Dressage in Woodinville, Wash., and trainer Roxanne Christenson of Trilogy Farms in Monroe, Wash.

Hudson and Christenson embarked on a shopping trip in the Netherlands looking for the right mount for Dixie. They were on their way back to the airport for their return flight home, had not found the right horse, but had one more stop to make. They arrived in near darkness on a cold, rainy day, and this particular farm didn’t have an indoor arena.

The owner brought out a 3-year-old. “After a few wild moments, he settled in, and we were quite taken,” said Christenson. “[We] had no doubt about it—that was Dixie’s horse. [Suzanne] videotaped him, but all you could see were four white polos whizzing around. It was so dark. But the rest is history!”

Dixie keeps that horse, Wester, at her own farm and hauls for weekly lessons with Christenson.

“[Christenson] has been wonderfully patient and kind with me,” said Dixie. “She found my special horse and is a fantastic trainer.”

“She is religious about riding,” said Christenson. She also described Dixie as calm, cool and collected, but Wester can be “a little bit of a hot rod.” Dixie appreciates his temperament and embraces the things about the horse that not everyone would find appealing.

Dixie is small, and Wester is petite also. “Together they make each other look big,” said Christenson.
Dixie hopes to continue their work and one day reach Grand Prix. “I feel that we have accomplished a good foundation for the upper levels,” said Dixie.

Christenson sees that goal, barring an injury or something unexpected, as an attainable one. “There’s no way they’ll keep her out of there,” she said.

At Wester’s young age of 7, they are already playing with the Grand Prix movements, and he has a natural talent for collected work. Christenson said that Dixie is doing a phenomenal job with a phenomenal horse. She doesn’t let anything stop her.

“It takes deep commitment to continue through all types of weather, children, crisis, pain and celebrations,” said Dixie. “My children still remind me that I don’t have to ride on Thanksgiving Day. Sometimes I listen to them.”
Dixie has a new youngster named Earl Of Jazz (by Jazz out of a Contango mare). Northwest Dressage bought this weanling colt for Dixie and imported him right after Christmas in 2009. He has similar bloodlines to Wester (Rhodium—Sindy, Con-tango) and according to Christenson, “is absolutely beautiful and even fancier in movement than his big brother.”

Between managing horses, raising 17 children and founding HOPE in Haiti, it’s hard to imagine there being time for much else, but Dixie also finds joy in gardening and has several acres of shrubs, flowers and vegetables.

“Life has been an incredible adventure, both good and difficult times, but all in all very, very good,” she said. “I will walk on, knowing that I have been given a wonderful grace to continue in, and there is still much to do. I have invested in my children and am reaping the reward in seeing their lives unfold as they give to others.”