At four years old, Neuman was given a pony named Poncho for Christmas. Since then she has never been without a horse. Although she has never been formally trained, Neuman but learned by watching and doing. In high school she showed her horses minimally in trail, western pleasure, English pleasure and jumping.

 

As an adult, Neuman moved on to endurance riding, back country trail riding, and working on ranches with cows. She got her first mustang in 1982 when she traded an Arabian mare for a mustang mare. Since then mustangs are her horse of choice. Neuman says that mustangs are "real horses, ones nature made, not bred by man for color or certain pretty characteristics.”

She discovered her calling with mustangs came while watching a wild horse being gentled at a BLM adoption. Since the late 1990s Lesley has travel around the United States doing wild horse gentling demonstrations for BLM at their satellite adoptions. She once traveled with a troupe of trainers to Australia to work with the wild brumbies of the Outback.

 

Neuman was born and raised in California, moving to North East Oregon in June 2007. She retired from her career in graphic arts, sold her "ranchette" and found a place in the middle of nowhere, where she, her two mules and four horses have all the space and grass they could ever want.