Chrissy Kittson emerged from the darkness like a mirage, leading a Dutch warmblood horse past rows of forest-green stables beneath a star-covered midnight sky.

The J Bar J Boys Ranch in Bend, home of the Oregon High Desert Classic Horse Show, stood like a ghost town in the dead of night. Kittson, a 24-year-old Seattle resident, walked carefully toward her horse’s stall, listening for the hip-hop beat that she and her friend, Lisa Davis, use to keep them awake through the early-morning hours.

Back at the stable, Kittson secured the horse, Clyde, with two lead ropes and resumed braiding the horse’s black mane. When she finished braiding Clyde, she braided another horse, and another, and another.

”We kind of consider ourselves horse stylists,” said Kittson, standing on a stepladder as her fingers worked the horse’s hair. ”This takes a lot of practice. It’s not rocket science anyone could learn how to do it. But you need to have a knack for it.”

Kittson is among a handful of braiders who work through the night to earn a paycheck. Hired by horse owners to spiff up their animals for competition, the braiders travel from show to show between January and October, the duration of the Pacific Northwest show circuit.

The work shift is an exhausting 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. stretch, but the pay is rewarding. Kittson said she makes about $55,000 a year before taxes, and that’s without working in the ”offseason.” Davis, braiding a thoroughbred in the stall next to Kittson, said she has plenty of money left for leisure after paying her own horse bills.

”It’s not something I want to do forever, but right now it’s good money,” said Davis, also from Seattle. ”I have a lot of opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

The braiders are a tight-knit group, because they usually travel to the same shows. They share hotel rooms and transportation. Sometimes, if one braider has too many clients at a show and another too few, they share work.

Most braiders have show experience. Many have taken it one step further, competing during the day while braiding all night to cover expensive entry fees. First-year braider Erika Wilson of Port Angeles, Wash., said she’ll do just that later this month.

See Braiders / D2

Continued from D1

”I don’t like to do it because at this point, I ride a bunch of other people’s horses, and it’s not fair to them,” Wilson said. ”I’m so tired that I’m not able to perform at my full capacity.”

”I did that for the first few years of my braiding career,” said Tammy Viau, 34, of Vancouver, British Columbia. ”I couldn’t afford to go to horse shows and not generate income, because it used to cost an arm and a leg.

”Now it costs two arms and two legs.”

Viau said she spends most of her braiding money on her own ”four-legged creature” back home.

”We all have horses and lots of horse bills,” said 31-year-old Tara Parsons, also of Vancouver, who worked next to Viau. ”But we go shopping a lot. We don’t have outlets (shopping malls) where we’re from.”

In eight years of braiding, Viau has seen her share of late-night horse antics. On Wednesday night, for instance, she said she found a loose horse that wandered away from the stables.

Two years ago at the High Desert Classic, Viau recalled, a horse somehow stuck a back hoof between the bars of its stable window. Viau and other braiders had to remove the front of the stall and disassemble the window to free the horse’s foot.

And yes, Viau said, they still got their braiding done.