On a sunny afternoon in Woodland, two horses — Roy and Ryo — roamed in the pasture at Cowdog Ranch. As Corinne Richards moved easily between her small ceramics studio and the horses, their heads rose from the grass at her voice.
On Ryo’s neck, a white freeze brand stands out against his brown coat. The mark is indicative that the mustang has been processed by the Bureau of Land Management which oversees wild herds; Roy has one, too. The mark also tells the story of when each horse was rounded up and the registration number it was assigned.
Ryo can’t be ridden because of old injuries to his back legs, but he has learned tricks, poses for photos and followed Richards around the paddock, ready and eager for the next treat. While Roy is the one she can saddle, he tends to hang back around newcomers. Ryo is the opposite — an affectionate shadow who trails behind her.
“He’s like a puppy dog,” said Richards.
Together with the dogs that gave the studio its name, the horses, the land and the converted shed behind her house form the heart of COWDOG STUDIO, the ceramics practice Richards has built around animals and art.
Richards grew up in Park City and has spent most of her life in the Wasatch Back, with a few detours. She worked in snowboard shops, lived in South America for several years riding year round, then returned to Utah and built a career in interior design. After nearly a decade with a local firm, she went out on her own and launched her own design business that still anchors her day-to-day work.
Ceramics came later when a friend mentioned taking a wheel class at the Kimball Art Center and Richards decided to sign up.
“I went to one class and I didn’t stop going to classes for two and a half years,” she said. “It took me a minute to really figure it out, which I think most people would say, but once it clicked, it clicked, and it was like I couldn’t think of doing anything else.”
Richards credits much of her growth as a ceramicist to the Kimball Art Center, where she eventually moved into volunteer and student-support roles.
She started by cleaning the studio, then began making illustrated signs that showed students how to use equipment and keep the shared space running smoothly. Eventually she helped organize student booths and ceramic centerpieces for the Kimball Arts Festival and the organization’s fundraising soiree.
“I wouldn’t be where I am without the Kimball,” she said. “The classes, the people, the chance to learn — it all pushed me forward.”
Eventually Richards needed more space and flexibility to work on her pieces, so she constructed a home studio in her backyard. It was a new adventure, and she and her dad handled most of the work themselves, she said — converting a small shed by adding insulation, electrical, shiplap and flooring before installing her kiln, wheel, shelves and supplies.
“It gave me the opportunity where I could start spending my spare time doing ceramics,” she said. “I was ready to just be doing it morning, noon and night.”
Inside, her red kiln and red wheel echo the palette she gravitates toward in her work, where bold uses of black, white and, of course, red, decorate the natural clay at the center of each piece. The studio has become a place where her aesthetic is clear and consistent, inspired by her surroundings — and by the dogs that helped give the space its name.
“We call our ranch COWDOG Ranch,” she said. “We have heelers and Border Collies, so, cattle herding dogs. Our first three dogs all had Heeler in them and they’re called cow dogs. COWDOG STUDIO is because I love dogs and that’s where I’m creating. That’s my passion — being out on our property and being around animals and the kind of western lifestyle.”
As her studio took shape, so did another connection, one that led her to Rescue Ranchito, the Mustang-focused rescue run by sisters Erin and Casey Brown.
“About a year and a couple months ago, Erin posted on Instagram that she was looking for pasture, barns or anything to put the horses in the rescues because she was outgrowing her space in Oakley,” Richards said. “I grew up riding horses and competing on horses and had a long gap of not being involved. I saw that and instantly was like, ‘Hey, I’d love to help.’”
Within a month, two rescue horses from a livestock auction, Nebo and Lobo, were living in her pasture.
“Lobo, I think, kind of became the face of Rescue Ranchito,” Richards said. “We did sweatshirts and art prints to help raise money for his training, so he became like a mascot.”
As her involvement deepened, Richards began contributing in ways that went beyond fostering. With a background in design and a growing ceramics practice, she helped the rescue refine its branding, create fundraiser pieces and produce merchandise.
Richards said the horse-bathing dinner events hosted by Rescue Ranchito were the first time she brought her ceramics, offering pieces for a silent auction to help raise money. The experience helped her realize her studio work could become a consistent way to support the rescue.
From there, she tied COWDOG STUDIO’s work to Rescue Ranchito’s mission and committed a percentage of her sales to the organization.
Around the same time, an unexpected opportunity emerged in her own neighborhood. When a nearby family in Woodland retired and sold their alpacas, their 10-acre property stood empty. Richards asked whether they would consider allowing Rescue Ranchito’s horses to live there if she helped manage the land. They agreed enthusiastically, and six horses soon moved onto the property just down the road. Richards took on a regular feeding schedule and helped set up training routines with a round pen on site. The arrangement gave the rescue additional space and brought her into daily collaboration with Erin and Casey as they worked with the horses together.
From Erin’s perspective, that support came at exactly the right time.
“Corinne has been great,” Erin said. “She’s not only been donating literal pottery, she also sells her pottery and donates (some of the proceeds) to Rescue Ranchito, and she’s donated an incredible amount of time to our efforts.”
Additionally, Erin said Richards has been an effective spokesperson.
“She’s like me — I wouldn’t necessarily find myself in a crowd as the center of attention — but she’s very well spoken, and when she’s passionate about something, that gets clearly passed on,” Erin said.
She mentioned an instance where that made a difference. A mustang named Coulter, caught in a bidding tug-of-war between the rescue and a kill buyer at an auction near Fort Collins, needed to be pulled quickly. Corinne’s fundraising and the donors she drew in helped tip the balance.
“Most people don’t know that horses, while they cannot be slaughtered in the U.S., can still be shipped across the border — mostly to Mexico, at this point, Canada is kind of scaling back — to be slaughtered. And then that meat is shipped primarily to Europe and Asia,” she said. “Sometimes we are truly their last shot before they get in a truck and head to Mexico.”
Mustangs have another layer of complexity. The Bureau of Land Management manages wild herds on public land, conducts roundups and oversees horses in government holding facilities.
“I think at this point, and it’s going to be more here soon, but 70,000 mustangs are just sitting in holding, which is essentially like, if you were to think of a cattle feedlot,” she said, “just getting fed twice a day, and they’re just sitting there.”
Some horses are adopted directly out of BLM holding. Others, for a variety of reasons, cycle back into livestock auctions where kill-buyers shop and organizations like Rescue Ranchito try to intercept the ones they can.
“For us, being from the West, the mustang is one of the last symbols of freedom and wildness,” Erin said. “It’s horrifying to see any horse in that situation, but for me there’s just something pretty awful about seeing a mustang there.”
She sees her work — and that of other mustang rescuers — as one niche in a larger, often messy system. There are groups pressing for on-range fertility control with the goal of fewer roundups, advocates tracking policy changes and documenting roundups and small rescues absorbing the horses that slip through, she said.
Growing up around horses, Erin said she saw barns dominated by women and girls. At the highest levels of competition she saw more men, but around rescues and mustangs, the pattern flips back.
“If you were to nail down some of the kookiest — coolest but also kookiest — women, they’d probably be in mustang rescue,” she said with a laugh. “A lot of the advocates for keeping mustangs wild are women who are just crazy gritty and will not be stopped.”
Erin added that she doesn’t know of any male-led Mustang rescues.
“Nothing against men, because there’s plenty of men that would do the same thing. But I just feel like women have a compassion that goes to another level, whether it’s for their kids or for animals or people,” Richards said. “I think they just saw the horrible things that were happening in that industry, and chose to dedicate their lives to that.”
Earlier this year, Rescue Ranchito moved its headquarters from Oakley to southwestern Colorado, a shift driven by the need for more space and a more sustainable cost of living.
“So far it’s incredible. This area loves mustangs. People want to know all about them and adopt them,” said Erin.
She, her family and what she calls their permanent herd of horses — along with a small, shifting group of rescues in training or rehab — made the trip together. Even with the move, Erin said, the rescue’s ties to Utah and to people who support them, like Richards, remain strong.
“Any collaborations that can bring more eyes, new eyes, fresh eyes — not only for education, but also for potential support — is rad,” she said. “Who would have thought mustangs and pottery? Even if people think it’s random, it can be a really cool match.”
Back in Woodland, Richards is turning her attention to her winter studio schedule and an upcoming Dec. 10 drop. With Rescue Ranchito now several hours away, she spends fewer days on daily horse chores and more time at the wheel and glazing table. The dogs running the fence line, the mustangs stretching in the pasture and the surrounding landscape continue to shape her work.
As with past collections, a portion of each sale will support Rescue Ranchito and the horses that first brought the collaboration together. Richards shares updates on upcoming shop drops through Instagram at @cowdog_studio, with available ceramics listed on her website cowdogstudio.shop.