It’s Never Too Late to Learn to Ride Horseback

For 65-year-old Rose Young, horseback riding was about finding a new joy. It was also her reward for surviving breast cancer.

“It’s Never Too Late” is a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms. Rose Young has an uncanny ability to adapt to demanding jobs and intense situations. She’s been an FBI agent focusing on white-collar crimes; a lawyer practicing insurance litigation; and, after moving back to North Carolina from Lafayette, La. with her husband and daughter in 2003, a health care compliance officer. But the one pursuit she feared, though desperately ached to do, even as a child, was to go horseback riding. “I grew up in Hamlet, a small railroad town in North Carolina,” said Ms. Young, 65. “I was five when I saw my first horse and longed for a lesson. I got led around once or twice by a neighbor, who had a horse on their farm, but that was a rare treat. I never got on a horse again.”