Every horseman dreams of finding that once in a lifetime horse.  The special thing for me is that Deuce, a quarterhorse that goes back to High Brow Cat, came into my life in a completely unexpected fashion.  In 2013, I was encouraged to apply for the Road to the Horse Wild Card competition.  If you are familiar with Road to the Horse, you know that it is a 3 day colt starting competition where three (sometimes four) well known clinicians start three untouched three year old colts. 

The Wild Card competition that year selected seven lesser known clinicians to take home one of the 3 year old colts from the remuda that had not been picked by the weekend competitors.  Each of the Wild Card competitors were given a full year to develop their colt and come back to the next year’s weekend competition to have a Ranch Reining style competition amongst the seven of us.  The winner of the seven Wild Card competitors became one of that weekends three day colt starting competition.  Essentially, it was a competition to get into the main competition.

As fate would have it, I was one of the seven Wild Card competitors chosen to attend the 2013 Road to the Horse event and select one of the untouched 3 year old colts, which all came from the famous 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, TX, to take home and develop for a year.  The thing that made Deuce so special from the beginning is that I knew from one look at the first picture I saw of him that he was the colt I was hoping to choose.  When it came time to see who got to pick their colts first, we drew cards and I drew an Ace.  With an Ace being the high card, I got first pick of the remuda and was over the moon with my luck.

My first year of developing Deuce to come back and compete at Road to the Horse was quite challenging.  Not because of his lack of talent, but because of my lack of experience.  At that point in my career, I was very experienced at starting colts, working with horses that had all sorts of behavioral issues and putting a solid foundation on a horse.  But teaching a horse to do flying lead changes, rollbacks, spins and sliding stops was a different story.  While we did okay at the competition, we didn’t win, but I knew how much talent Deuce had and there was no way I was willing to sell him and move on to the next horse.

Over the next 10 years, I continued to develop Deuce to become what I would consider be a super-horse.  He was highly intelligent and extremely athletic. We could play at Liberty on the ground, ride bridle-less, nail all the advanced Ranch Reining maneuvers and allowed me to work hundreds of horses from his back.  We reached a point where there was zero disconnect between my thoughts and his feet.  He absolutely loved having a job when we would work with other horses and was a star when it came to horsemanship demonstrations.  Along with that, his lateral movement was unlike any other horse I have ever ridden.  He had a spring loaded effect to his lateral movement through both his shoulder and his hip all at the walk, trot and canter and the suspension in all of his gates made it feeling like you were riding on a cloud.

Sadly, on a cold October night in 2023, I went out to do a night check given that the first Montana snow storm of the winter was coming in that night and I wanted to make sure all of our horses were settled.  Seeing that he was standing out in the middle of the snow that was coming in sideways at that point, I immediately knew something wasn’t right.  Upon the vet’s arrival at midnight, we confirmed that he had a spiral fracture through his pastern bone.  Not wanting him to suffer anymore than he already had, we made the agonizing decision to allow him to find peace in horse heaven.  As horrible as the whole ordeal was, I will always be thankful that my vet said I must have found him within 20 minutes of him having a fracture so that he didn’t have to suffer through the night.  Given that I don’t always do a night check like I did that night, I am beyond grateful that a higher power above told me I needed to do one that night.

Deuce will always hold a special place in Kate, my wife, I’s hearts.  There are still days where it feels like he’s going to come around the corner with his ears perked up looking to see what’s we’re up to.  But, at the same time, I will always be grateful that we were blessed with the 10 years that he was in our life.