Walk into the Santiago Stables, located on the far northwest side of Evansville and the first thing you notice is the smell: a combination of sawdust and horse manure. Then you notice the welcoming committee of mastiffs coming to meet you -no barking, just the expectation of being pet, rubbed and scratched. With dogs at your heels, you pass a knot of girls brushing horses and mucking out stables. Ahead is the practice ring, where a mother sits on a folding chair watching her young daughter making easy circles on a large shaggy horse. The owner, Tammy Adams stands in the middle quietly encouraging her. 
“Good…..good,” she says, never taking her eyes off the little girl. One of the dogs trots out to the ring to watch the lessons, and the other heads off to find someone else to pet him. At the end of the lesson, the little girl leads the horse out of the ring. “She did well,” Adams says to the mother as they pass. “Want to feed him an apple?” she asks the girl.She demonstrates palm up and open wide. “Just like this. Hold your hand flat” She places the apple in the girl’s small hand. “He will eat about half that apple in one bite.” The horse daintily crunches into exactly one half of the apple perched in the outreached hand. The girl squeals and a smile slowly spreads across her face. Adams has witnessed another horse lover being born.
Although she didn’t start riding and showing horses until she was a teenager, Adams recalls as a little girl that she and her sister loved horses. A treat for them would be to go to her grandparent’s Spencer county farm to see the horses. Being a city girl, Adams and her sister would have to fill in the times between visits to the farm by playing horses in their own backyard on the north side of Evansville.
When she found she could actually make a career out of doing what she loved the most, she enrolled in the equestrian program at William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri. With a Bachelor of Science degree in equestrian studies in hand, she began her career of teaching horses and students at Morehead State University in Lexington, Kentucky. She worked at Morehead for 18 years before coming back home to Evansville, bringing one of the old horses from the university with her.
It was that old horse from Morehead that led her to the path she leads now. Adams is known as a collector of old, retired and unwanted horses. Her passion is turning a horse that is considered past its prime and well into retirement into a vital, competitive horse. “I am giving them a job to do. Horses do better if they are working. It keeps them young,” says Adams.
At 35, Caeser is by far the oldest horse at Santiago stables. When Adams got him he was blind in one eye, had a severe knee injury and was very malnourished . “He looked so bad that I was afraid someone was going to report me to animal control. And in all honesty, if he came to anyone else, they probably would have put him down. But to see him today, he is not the same horse ,” Adams says proudly. She lifts his blanket to reveal a shiny chestnut coat. “Look at that,” she says 
in mock dismay, “He is ruining my hay, eating right out of the middle of the bales.” Caeser, as tame as one of the dogs, munches contentedly. Two fat puppies scurry under his legs closely followed by Adam’s four-year-old daughter, Remi. He stops and surveys the action for a moment and goes back to eating. Caeser is considered more of a pet now than a horse. He roams around like one of the family dogs. If he is inclined to, he will stroll up to the family home and graze in the front yard. During riding lessons, he will amble up to the fence and watch along side the parents as little girls go around the ring. Adams smiles “All it took was a little extra TLC. He is so smart, so curious.”
Splash is another example of a horse that had a lot of potential with a little TLC. She has lymphedema, which is a swelling of the back legs. “It is not painful to her. It looks awful and it will never go away. For some people, it would not make her a desirable horse to own. But she is a great horse. We go to the smaller shows and she has ribbons.” Twenty-five horses reside at Santigo Stables. Most of the horses at the stable compete at the smaller horse shows in the Western Kentucky circuit in three-gait field. At the shows, the horses are judged according to how they walk, trot and canter. The rider is judged on her presentation.
Adams has two of the rescued horses from the original Stallings seizure in her collection of horses. “The Indiana Horse Rescue asked if I could take two, and I couldn’t say no.” Bentley, a belgian, and Phoebe, an Amish farm horse , both in their 20’s have been showered with Adam’s brand of love and attention and are now comfortable being ridden. Julie Kercher, whose daughter Emile boards her horse and rides with Santigo Stables recalls when Phoebe first came to Adams. “She was so thin and skittish,” said Kercher. “Tammy really is amazing with horses. It takes a lot of love and attention to help a horse like Phoebe .” Kercher’s daughter has ridden Phoebe in a few smaller shows.
Not only does Adams collect horses, but a look around her stable shows that she collects a variety of teenaged girls. “My goal is to provide a horse for anybody. Horses are an expensive hobby. There are the expensive horses, then there are the economy-plan horses that I have here. These old horses have a lot of life left in them. They are the affordable horses for the average girl. I started this 
stable a long time ago with just a couple of horses and a couple of girls taking lessons, and now look at it,” she says with a smile.
Santiago Stables is a family affair and Adams wouldn’t have it any other way. Most evenings there are between five and seven girls exercising their horses, mucking out stables, grooming and helping out. Many of the girls work in exchange for lessons or board. “Friday nights, parents drop their girls off and we all eat dinner up at the house. Then we head down to the stables to work. Everybody pitches in to help. It is a great extended family for the girls and the horses.” When the stables sends girls to different shows, it is as a big family. “I had a collegue from another stable join us for lunch at one of the shows and he was surprised over how family oriented and close all the girls and families were and how much fun they had together.”
Adams turns back to the practice ring where one of her girls is cantering on a new horse she is considering buying. At four years old, he is a baby when compared to the age of most of the horses in the stable. He has an inquisitive face and alert eyes. His canter is smooth. She studies him and smiles. “Beautiful….” she murmers as she watches him pass by again. “Beautiful.”
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