Life on the Rider Family Ranch

June 20, 2026 | Personal Experience

Most of what I write about is the bigger stuff, the travel and the advocacy and the engineering, but the truth is that the loudest part of my life has four legs and an opinion about breakfast. I live on a small ranch in Florida that my family runs, and we have given it a name that follows me everywhere I post about it, the Rider Family Ranch (hence the hashtag, #RiderFamilyRanch). It is not a sprawling operation with a hundred head of cattle. It is a goat herd that thinks it owns the place, a horse the size of a pickup truck, three small dogs with the confidence of much larger dogs, and a couple of cats who have never once acknowledged that any of the rest of us live here too. This is the part of my world I do not talk about enough, so consider this the official tour.

The Goat Herd Runs This Place

If you want to understand the ranch, start with the goats, because they certainly think you should. We keep a small herd of them, and they are the kind of animal that turns a routine chore into a negotiation. They come in every color we could ask for, from a deep glossy black with white markings to a warm cinnamon brown, and they have absolutely no concept of personal space, which is exactly why I love them. Sit down anywhere near the pen and you will have company in about four seconds, usually a goat trying to figure out whether your shirt is edible.

Ryleigh Newman smiling under a shelter while cradling a young black goat with white-tipped ears against his shoulder. — One of the black kids deciding my shoulder was a perfectly good place to hang out. I did not argue.

There is something about goats that resets your whole mood, because it is impossible to take yourself seriously when one of them is chewing on your sleeve and staring at you like you owe it money. They headbutt, they climb on things they should not climb on, and they make a noise that sounds suspiciously like a person yelling for help. I could have a rough morning, roll out to the pen, and be laughing within a minute. That is not nothing. That is most of the reason we keep them.

Three goats milling around on a wooden deck in front of a white fence, one black-and-white goat in front, a brown-and-white one behind, and a dark goat looking over its shoulder. — A typical scene at the pen. Somebody is always eating, somebody is always plotting, and at least one of them is judging me.

They also have a real talent for napping in a pile. On a warm afternoon you can find half the herd folded into a single shelter, hay everywhere, legs going in directions that do not look comfortable, all of them perfectly content. It is the goat equivalent of a group nap on the couch, and honestly I respect it.

A brown goat, a black goat, and a spotted goat all piled together in a hay-filled plastic shelter, one with its tongue out at the back. — Peak goat behavior: cram as many bodies as possible into one shelter and call it a day.

Baby Luna and a Valentine's Morning

The best goat story I have starts early on a Valentine's Day morning, when one of our does gave us a kid we named Luna. There is no way to describe a newborn goat that does the moment justice, because they come out wobbly and impossibly small and then, within a few hours, they are bouncing around like they have been here for years. Watching one of them arrive on the holiday made for falling in love felt a little on the nose, but I was not going to complain about the timing.

A young cinnamon-brown goat with white patches standing on a weathered wooden deck in front of a wire fence, looking straight at the camera with big dark eyes. — Luna, our Valentine's morning baby, already standing tall and ready to cause trouble.

Luna grew up the way the good ones do, curious and bold and absolutely certain that the world was built for her to climb on. Raising a goat from her first morning gives you a strange kind of ownership over the whole thing, and every time I see her out in the herd now I remember how tiny she started. She is proof that the small ranch life delivers its best moments when you least expect them, usually before the sun is even up.

Meeting Mousey, the Gentle Giant

Then there is Mousey, who is a Percheron, which is a polite way of saying he is a draft horse roughly the size of a small building. Percherons were bred to pull heavy loads, and standing next to one for the first time reorganizes your sense of scale. His head alone is bigger than my whole torso. He is also, against all reason, one of the calmest animals on the property, the kind of giant who seems to understand that he has to be careful with the rest of us.

A large grey-and-white Percheron horse on a lead rope in a grassy yard, while Ryleigh Newman sits on an orange four-wheeler nearby looking up at the horse and smiling. — Saying hello to Mousey from wheel height. He is enormous, and somehow that is exactly why it works.

Greeting Mousey is one of my favorite small rituals on the ranch. I roll up alongside him, he lowers that massive head down to where I am, and for a second the size difference stops mattering at all. A lot of people assume a horse and a wheelchair are a complicated combination, and sometimes they are, but Mousey makes it easy. He meets me where I am, literally, and that turns out to be the whole trick. A gentle giant who comes down to your level is worth a hundred animals that make you reach for them.

Three Blue Dogs Named Delilah, Dixie, and Demi

Inside the house, the energy shifts from large and calm to small and absolutely unhinged, because that is where the dogs live. We have three toy and miniature Australian Shepherds, and in keeping with a theme nobody can stop committing to, they are all named Blue: Delilah Blue, Dixie Blue, and Demi Blue. They have the classic Aussie coloring, those merle coats with the patches of copper and white, and at least one of them has the bright blue eyes that make people stop and stare. They are tiny. They do not know they are tiny.

Ryleigh Newman in sunglasses and a blue shirt smiling broadly while holding a fluffy blue merle mini Aussie puppy with one piercing blue eye against his chest. — One of the Blue girls as a puppy. The eyes do most of the work, and she knows it.

Australian Shepherds are working dogs at heart, which means they need a job, and if you do not give them one they will invent it, usually involving herding whatever is moving, including me. A power wheelchair, it turns out, is an irresistible target for a herding breed, so I have spent a fair amount of time being escorted across the yard by a dog that comes up to my footplate. I am not complaining. Having a small blue shadow follow you everywhere is a pretty good way to live.

Ryleigh Newman lying on the grass in sunglasses, holding out a fist toward a small grey merle Aussie puppy who is leaning in to meet it, a small four-wheeler parked behind them. — Getting down on their level for once. The fist bump was her idea, mostly.

The best thing about raising them from puppies is watching the personalities split apart. They look almost identical in photos, but spend a week around them and Delilah, Dixie, and Demi turn into three completely different dogs, one bold, one shy, one convinced the rules do not apply. Telling them apart is half the fun. Keeping up with all three at once is the other half.

Winston and Clifford Hold the House

Every ranch needs management that contributes nothing and answers to no one, and ours is handled by the cats. Winston came to us as a rescue, which means he carries himself with the quiet dignity of an animal who knows he won the lottery and is not going to gloat about it. Clifford is the opposite kind of presence, a big red Maine Coon who grew from a scruffy orange kitten into a genuinely enormous cat, all fur and ear tufts and main-character confidence. He is named after the famous big red dog, and the joke gets less funny and more accurate every month as he keeps growing.

Ryleigh Newman in a backward cap and glasses smiling while holding a fluffy orange Maine Coon kitten cradled in his arms indoors. — Clifford back when he was a kitten and still fit in my arms. That window has since closed.

Watching Clifford grow into a Maine Coon has been its own slow-motion comedy, because they do not stop at normal cat size. He started as a tiny orange thing posing on a rainbow blanket and turned into a long, fluffy animal that takes up an entire cat tree and stares down everything else in the house. Winston, for his part, tolerates all of it with the patience of a cat who has clearly seen worse. The two of them have worked out a truce that mostly involves ignoring each other on separate floors of the same furniture.

A fluffy orange Maine Coon kitten perched on a green-and-white cat tree, looking down at a larger pale pointed cat reaching up the scratching post in a bright kitchen. — The household cat tree, also known as neutral territory, also known as the only place these two negotiate.

The cats are the reminder that the ranch is also just a home. For all the barns and pens and acres, a lot of the best moments happen on the living room floor, where a rescue cat and an oversized Maine Coon stretch out near each other and call it a day. They do not do anything useful. That is, I think, entirely the point.

A pale fluffy cat and an orange Maine Coon lying close together on a tile floor and patterned rug, both relaxed and stretched out near a food bowl. — Winston and Clifford running the house the only way they know how, which is by lying down in the middle of it.

The Whole Crew, One Place

Some of these characters never share a frame, so here they are together in one spot: the goats and baby Luna, Mousey lowering his head, the Blue girls, and the cats who run the indoor operation. This is what the Rider Family Ranch actually looks like on an ordinary day, which is to say loud, hairy, and exactly the way I like it.

Ryleigh Newman grinning in a car back seat with a small black goat kid tucked against his chest. — A goat riding shotgun, which is a completely normal thing to have happen on the ranch.

A cinnamon-brown baby goat with white patches standing on a wooden deck in front of a wire fence. — Baby Luna, our Valentine's morning arrival.

A young brown goat with small dark horns standing near a wooden post and a pile of hay at golden hour, a few strands hanging from its mouth. — Golden-hour snack time at the goat pen.

One of the black goats catching the light just right.

A dark goat with floppy ears sticking its tongue out near a fence post, with green grass and a white fence behind it. — The official ranch greeting, delivered with full sincerity.

Three goats piled together in a hay-filled plastic shelter, one sticking its tongue out at the back. — The group nap, an essential daily event.

A large grey-and-white Percheron horse on a lead rope while Ryleigh Newman watches from an orange four-wheeler nearby. — Mousey the Percheron, the gentle giant of the place.

A small blue merle Australian Shepherd puppy with a red collar standing in the grass, looking back over its shoulder with bright blue eyes. — One of the Blue girls exploring the yard.

A small blue merle mini Aussie puppy with a red collar standing beside the large knobby tire and green rim of a power wheelchair on the grass. — A mini Aussie sizing up the wheelchair tire, herding instincts already on.

A fluffy orange Maine Coon kitten lounging across a rainbow-striped blanket indoors beneath a red wall clock. — Clifford as a kitten, before the growth spurt that never ended.

A pale fluffy cat and an orange Maine Coon stretched out close together on a tile floor and patterned rug near a food bowl. — Winston and Clifford, the indoor management team, on break.

Why This Is the Part That Matters

People who meet me through the advocacy work or the engineering sometimes seem surprised that the rest of my life is this ordinary, and I get it, because a small ranch full of animals is not exactly a headline. But this is the part I would not trade. The wheelchair is real and it is part of every one of these moments, but it is not the story. The story is a goat asleep on my shoulder, a horse the size of a barn bending down to say hello, three small dogs herding me across the yard, and a couple of cats who could not care less about any of it. That is the good, normal, joyful version of my life, and the Rider Family Ranch is where it happens. Come hang out with the goats sometime. Be awesome.

Written by Ryleigh Newman

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