Jennifer Tychynski knows the value of hard work and that is reflected in what she does during her day job and even more in what she does in her spare time.
“During the day I am a commercial insurance underwriter in Kitchener,” said Tychynski. “At night I do all my chores and on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I practice. Saturdays and Sundays I rodeo.”
Rodeo season in Ontario runs from the end of April to November and it is a very busy time for Tychynski.
“It is getting bigger,” she said. “I just got the schedule and there are about 40 rodeos in Ontario and Quebec. We try to get to all of them. Last year was a good year. We hit a lot of them and it was tiring but it was good.”
She covers a lot of ground during a rodeo run both on the road and in the saddle.
“I hit Quebec, New York and then back in Ontario,” she said. “Sometimes we would be hitting three rodeos in a weekend. Quebec we would hit three in a weekend and then haul back down on a Sunday and hit one Sunday morning then haul home.”
More often than not she returns home with trophies and winning buckles.
“We compete for money too,” she said. “I won quite a bit of money. I won at the London Rodeo and I qualified for the St. Tite finals in Quebec. They take the top 20 girls and I placed 12 out of the 20. Then I came back to Ontario and we hit a jackpot in Ancaster in November. There were about 30 girls there.”
She typically travels and competes with two horses.
“One calf-roping horse and one barrel horse,” said Tychynski. “I barrel race and I break-away rope, which is my stronger point. The calf runs and I have a rope that is attached to my saddle. It is tied to the saddle horn with a mason line. As soon as the loop goes around the calf and I pull my slack then the calf takes my rope. So, it breaks the mason line off my saddle horn. I used to tie-down rope but the cows got a little too big.”
Tychynski and her partner Ryan Robinson have a farm in Ariss, Jenny Go Ranch, where they have 18 horses, three dogs, a donkey and a zonkey, which is a mix between a donkey and a zebra.
“I have a new horse that I brought along last year,” said Tychynski. “I competed down in Ohio with her and ended up placing six out of 15. Her name is Jelly. She’s a quarter horse.”
Tychynski was born in in Burlington but she has lived in the country most of her life and is a farm girl through and through.
“Mom and dad always lived on a farm,” she said.”We started out in Puslinch on a little hobby farm then we moved closer to Guelph and had a beef farm out there. When I was living at home I was either cash cropping, milking cows or looking after beef cows.”
When she was a teenager she got a job walking and grooming horses at Mohawk Raceway, where she got her grooming license.
She completed a co-op with the Royal Bank when she attended Arthur District High School and went on to college to become an insurance broker.
After more than eight years years as an insurance broker in Arthur, she started working with Robinson at his Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop, RNR Custom Cycle, in Guelph. When Robinson decided to move the shop to their farm, two years ago she got back in the insurance business.
“I decided to go back into it,” she said. “I work at Josslin Insurance in Kitchener. I am not a broker. I am learning the commercial part first before I go get my license and start selling commercial insurance. I like to know the product before I sell it.”
She teaches riding and roping lessons on the farm when she isn’t competing and doing chores and is looking forward to the start of the new rodeo season that starts April 29.
This season she will be traveling without her constant companion, her late dog Gunner.
“He was my other rodeo partner,” said Tychyinski. “When Ryan couldn’t come with me he was the best cuddler when I had to sleep over in the trailer. I lost Gunner four months ago. He had a brain tumour and I am still heart broken.”
Gunner was on her mind when she picked out a new eight-week-old Blue Heeler pup.
“He has a marking like Gunner and a marking like another Blue Heeler I had before Gunner,” she said. “So, I have a new rodeo partner and his name is Parker. He is named after Peter Parker from Spiderman.”
Tychynski has built a strong network of friends in the rodeo circuit and is eager to reconnect with them but prefers the company of her dogs and horses over people most of the time.
“It has been in my blood since I was three years old to ride horses,” she said. “If I didn’t have rodeo what else would I do?”
