The Powerhouse Coalition Known as ‘Living on the Edge Partners’
TUSCALOOSA, AL, October 2025 –
“When Ty saw that horse, he said we weren’t leaving without him.”
Melanie Smith laughed as she remembered the moment she and Ty Smith laid eyes on Third Edge at the Teton Ridge Absolute Dispersal Sale Sept. 28, 2025.
“He said he had a gut feeling,” Melanie said. “That was all I needed to hear to know we could throw that pro forma in the trash. We were buying this horse — because sometimes your gut outruns your budget.”
Months of planning had led up to that moment—spreadsheets, late-night conversations, and a pro forma that had been stretched, squeezed, and reworked until they knew exactly how far they could go. They’d spent those weeks quietly gathering every resource they could, preparing for what they knew would be a fight in the sale ring.
“When we buy horses, real estate, anything, it has to pencil,” Melanie said. “We don’t buy anything for the photo or the press release. When we wake up in the morning, there’s no backup plan. It has to work. We have a team at home who trusts us to make smart decisions, because those choices feed their families and ours.”
“When we wake up in the morning, there’s no backup plan. It has to work.”— Melanie Smith
Ty is no stranger to buying and selling record-setting horses. In fact, he’s been behind nearly every headline-making sale in the Western performance horse industry over the past five years.
When the bidding started, there were plenty of heavy hitters in the mix, but Ty had already made up his mind.
When he nodded his head for the final time, it wasn’t about the money—it was about the horse.
“You can’t explain it, but you know it when you see it. He’s got it,” Ty said.
“Right after we bought him, I texted our long-time controller Laura and said, ‘Gather up the money,’” Melanie said. “She liked the message. That’s all I needed. It’s cool knowing you’ve got people on the other side who are just as all-in, like ‘let’s go.’ If we had a business with any amount of cash reserves in it, we were moving it. That horse was getting paid for. And I’ll tell you, I slept like a rock that night. No second-guessing. Not for a second.”
Within hours, their closest circle of customers and friends—people who’d built businesses from the ground up and knew what it meant to take a risk—wanted in.
Some of them had been part of the early talks, but Third Edge ended up well past those original numbers. Still, nobody hesitated. There was no backup plan, no safety net, just a shared gut feeling that it was the right move.
Over the next 12 days, those people came together to form a partnership that perfectly captured the spirit of everyone involved. A coalition of founders, builders, and risk-takers who shared the same fire and the same passion for the horse industry joined together.
They called it Living on the Edge Partners. Read full press release here.