Horse-loving lawyer left the law to help run a Colorado ranch
The Modern Law Library
Horse-loving lawyer left the law to help run a Colorado ranch
December 4, 2024, 4:00 pm CST
Once an East Coast lawyer, Ami Cullen is now the director of equestrian operations at the C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, Colorado.
Ami Cullen grew up loving horses and competing in hunter/jumper events. She decided to pursue law as a career. Then a visit to a Colorado dude ranch changed everything. Then a visit to a Colorado dude ranch changed everything.
In Running Free: An Incredible Story of Love, Survival, and How 200 Horses Trapped in a Wildfire Helped One Woman Find Her Soul Cullen shares a lightly fictionalized version of the journey that she’s been on for more than a decade.
Just as Cullen once did, Running Free’s main character Emme Muller visits the C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, Colorado, on a girl’s trip and falls in love with the wrangling way of life. She decides to leave her life as an East Coast lawyer to work at the ranch–initially planning it as a six-month sabbatical from her career.
Instead, she stays, eventually becoming head wrangler and marrying another employee at the dude ranch. In October 2020, however, the East Troublesome Fire – the second largest wildfire in Colorado’s history – threatened the C LazyU Ranch. Cullen, now the director of equestrian operations at the C Lazy U Ranch, tells Lee Rawles of the ABA Journal that this part of Running Free also holds true. Cullen, now the director of equestrian operation at the C Lazy U Ranch was responsible for saving the herd of 200 horses during two harrowing fire evacuations and a snowstorm that sent fleeing trailers careening down the road in 2020. She tells Rawles that her first attempt at writing a novel, Running Free, was 80 pages long and read like a brief. By fictionalizing her experiences and creating some composite characters, she was able to write Running Free, her first novel.
In this episode, Cullen discusses deciding to leave the law, what it’s like to help run a dude ranch, leadership skills that she learned from working with horses, and why you’re never too old to take up equestrianship.
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Ami Cullen
Ami Cullen is originally from Chester County, Pennsylvania where her passion for horses began. She competed at the national level in the hunter/jumper division as a child. Cullen began practicing medical-malpractice law in Bethesda, Maryland, after earning her law degree at the Catholic University School of Law, Washington, D.C. Cullen discovered her passion for ranch life and caring for horses during a vacation to the C LazyU Ranch. Cullen is currently the director of C Lazy U Ranch’s Equine Program and oversees the C Lazy U Ranch’s equestrian program. Certified as a horsemanship association instructor in English and Western disciplines, Cullen delights in connecting people with horses and teaching novice equestrians horsemanship.
