Founder and President
PAHC founder Sally L. Lasater has been involved in the horse world for more than seven decades as a horse owner, breeder, competitor, show organizer, and an early pioneer in the establishment of equestrian education through visual media.
Her work reflects a lifetime of experience in organizing equestrian events, promoting the horse industry and developing innovative media and educational programs focusing on the horse and equestrian cultures.
Her leadership in equestrian event organization began at an early age. At fourteen, she created what grew into the largest all-breed junior horse show in the country, leading a group of teenagers — all under the age of eighteen — in organizing and managing a four-day, multi-breed, multi-discipline horse show attracting more than a thousand horse and rider entries.
In October 1960, Lasater was featured on the front page of the Houston Chronicle’s Sunday Feature Magazine with a full-page photograph portraying her — at age sixteen — as someone who “aptly symbolizes the renewed interest in horseback riding as a sport.” The article highlighted the growing popularity of horseback riding and recognized her leadership among young riders in the Houston area.
At the age of eighteen, she was acknowledged by the American Quarter Horse Association as the youngest manager and organizer of an AQHA-approved horse show. That same year, she was the first — and perhaps the only — competitor in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Queen contest to ride an Arabian horse, finishing as one of five finalists and demonstrating the capability of the Arabian breed in a traditionally western reining competition.
Over the years, Lasater has organized and managed numerous sanctioned breed shows and competitions across a wide variety of disciplines, including Arabian, Appaloosa, Saddlebred, and Hunter/Jumper events, as well as dressage, combined training (eventing), cutting, and rodeo competitions. Among these was an all-girls rodeo held in Simonton, Texas, which attracted participants from across the state and neighboring regions.
Lasater played a significant role in the development of equestrian video and educational programming. In 1973, she co-produced The American Horse and Horseman, the first nationally syndicated television series devoted to horses, hosted by actor and horseman Dale Robertson.
She later pioneered the distribution of equestrian educational media through a series of innovative initiatives, including EquiVid, The Discovery Trail, and Equestrian Vision US. She also secured video rights to Olympic equestrian events, making them available through tack and feed stores nationwide, bringing elite-level equestrian sport into everyday access for horse enthusiasts.
Her award-winning documentary The Complete Mule (1992) was recognized by Equus Magazine as one of the top equestrian videos of the year. She later developed the original HorseTV concept on RFD-TV and played a key role in launching The HorseTV Channel as a standalone television network, serving as president of HorseTV Media Group, Inc.
Beyond the equestrian industry, Lasater founded and led multiple media and information distribution companies. As founder and CEO of Sallyforth, Inc., doing business as The Video Schoolhouse, she built one of North America’s largest distributors of educational and instructional video programs, distributing more than 10,000 titles across 36 subject categories to libraries, schools, and retail markets. (And yes, she watched every single one of these "how-to" videos before they were added to the title list.)
Her work led to consulting engagements with major organizations including The New York Times, PBS, and Reader’s Digest. She also authored The Knowledge Collection, a book on educational video publishing for McGraw-Hill, and was recognized as an “Outstanding Woman of Monterey" (CA) during the 1980s.
Lasater was also an early innovator in digital and Internet-based platforms within the horse industry. In the early 1990s, she helped create HorseNet.com, one of the first equestrian internet portals, featuring online communities, early e-commerce systems, and one of the first streaming equestrian video channels.
In 2010, she founded PegasusTV, a television and digital media network created to showcase equine and livestock events and rural lifestyle programming. PegasusTV distributed content through digital broadcast channels and online streaming platforms, with affiliate stations in major markets including Houston and Los Angeles.
She also helped organize continuous live daytime broadcast coverage of horse and livestock judging at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, bringing many of these events to television and online audiences for the first time.
Today, Sally Lasater is semi-retired and serves as a preservation breeder of endangered, heritage-bred old-world Polish Arabians, while dedicating her work to promoting and re-establishing the Arabian horse as a versatile, family-friendly companion and historically significant breed.