Black Bluffs Equestrian Center, 1605 S D Road, Mitchell, NE (2024)

12/22/2022

Santa's reindeer have been cleared to come to Texas, y'all! ✅

Make sure you're on the nice list and get proper CVIs and/or permits to travel with your animals this holiday season! 🎄🎅

11/08/2022

11/07/2022

10/24/2022

05/11/2022

04/20/2022

Anything of value to attain will take a huge amount of work! I want you to expect to work hard but also you must work intelligently.
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Ask yourself this these simple question. "It's there a better way to be doing this? Is there a more efficient way to do this? Am I working on the things that actually count or am I just doing busy work?
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Pretty basic stuff but it is amazing how many of us work on things all day long that don't actually move the needle forward. Work hard and work smart! God bless!
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TD

04/06/2022

Stolen from Tanya Jenkins - thank you Tanya this is spot on in so many ways

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To my fellow trainers. My hat is off to you.....

Here's a glimpse of our life in reality. We have a passion, usually starts almost at birth, we go after it.
We work for free to learn. Muck stalls, buck hay, build fence, drag arenas, wash horses, sweep floors and a thousand other tasks just in hopes of learning something about these amazing animals.
Endless and often thankless hours. To get lucky enough to get on some nasty suckers no one wants to ride. But you get on...maybe scared, maybe unsure, but you'd crawl in the middle of a red eyed lion just to prove to yourself that you can. You ride anything they run at you....
Then one day, usually years later, you strike out on your own. You become a trainer..But you still crawl on the bad ones and make the best you can of them. You still get je**ed around trying to lead a knothead to the barn, still get rope burns, get kicked and pawed and bit. Have runaways, broncs, flippers and ones that smash your legs into the fence. Often times risk your life...
Even an easy days are abusive to your body. You are stiff and sore so often you don't even notice anymore. You ride, drive, learn, teach and soul search endless hours...
What little money you actually make you buy or replace gear, struggle to get a truck and trailer, find a place to train out of...yeah it's a real cakewalk.
Through endless hours of learning, failing, trying harder, wanting to quit, digging deeper, you learn to train well and maybe show well...
You start winning, winning starts to become habit...surely you have made it...nope.
You still ain't above mucking stalls or dragging the arena...you basically do what you did in the beginning..you just get paid a little more and have a different title...
After all of this, day and night, you still work crazy odd hours and hunger to get better..If we took a pencil to what we earned per hour we'd go hang ourselves...
Then...the clients. Some good, some bad, some amazing and some absolutely awful..
They go from singing your praises to saying what a poor job you did, how they expected so much more but fail to see what you had to go through to get their less than stellar, pissy, less than world class bred horse to the point that they can ride it, maybe even show it.
Then they decide to ride with another trainer down the road and suddenly they forget how overjoyed they were with all you had accomplished on their baby.
I know you know this...horses aren't the tough part of this business, people are.
Hang in there fellow fools for horse. You are not alone...
Remember why you started my friends...you started because of the love....hang in there, don't lose your passion, your heart and soul over people...keep doing it for the horse.
Chantal Kuhn

01/10/2022

12/06/2021

This year's Kentucky Derby first-place finisher Medina Spirit collapsed and died after a workout at Santa Anita Park on Monday morning, the California Horse Racing Board's Equine Medical Director Jeff Blea confirmed. Trained by Bob Baffert, the 3-year-old son of Protonico had just completed five fur...

11/22/2021

Probably one of the most difficult things for me as a horse trainer is when I gain a new hater. It’s actually something I’m working on, to not let it affect me too much. While I want to be the type of person that cares, sometimes it won’t matter what I do, that person is going to dislike me. And to be a little more specific I’m going to just talk about clients that end up deciding I’m not worth the dirt on my boots.

Last year I trained a horse for a person, probably one of the best horses I started all year. Heck I was pretty happy and dang sure proud of that horse. But despite how I felt...I believe I lost that client and that client was one of my least happy clients of the year. I actually considered that person a friend until not long after they got their horse home. If I had to guess that client may very well hate me and be telling people what a lousy job I did with that horse.

Now from where I was sitting, that horse was as smooth as butter on a warm biscuit when it came to training. Very little resistance and wanted to be good. But the client got the horse home and couldn’t bridle it, and couldn’t work a gate from the horses back. So being a typical person they figured it wasn’t them, and they sure weren’t going to blame fluffy, so it had to be that dang trainers fault!! What this client didn’t realize is that they didn’t want c**t starting, they wanted c**t finishing. They wanted this horse to fill in any and all gaps when it came to their poor timing and feel. Well when it comes to getting a horse used to poor timing and feel I’m not your guy. I don’t offer that to a horse very often.

Also, when you take a horse home and try to work a gate, we need to realize that to the horse this is a brand new thing. Yes, he has worked two different gates at my house, but in his brain he hasn’t generalized that all gates are the same. This is the seasoning part of horse training. It takes time, and new, but similar scenarios before a horse generalizes that this is, in fact, the same thing we’ve done before.

In all c**t starting scenarios there’s going to be some time that it takes for a horse to get used to the way you offer things. You will offer things to that horse in a different way than the trainer did. Just like if your friend rode the horse he would also offer a different feel to that horse. With time and consistency a horse can figure out that even though it’s a slightly different feel, we want the same response. That’s why we recommend lessons. As riders we can help bridge the gap for the horse so he understands what the new rider wants. Be patient, spend time and effort allowing you and your horse to get on the same page. Whether your horse is finished or not, it’s going to take time for the two of you to be dancing to the beat of the same drum.

Another thing that I found interesting is that some of the toughest cases I’ve had, ended up leading to some of the happiest clients. These were the horses that I was not at all happy with where they were at in their training when they went home. But it was like I blew the socks off of these clients they were so impressed! So it turns out that not all clients are created equal. I like the realistic clients that understand horses are living, breathing, thinking animals. Just like us, there isn’t a perfect one out there. They don’t expect to get a push button, kid safe, and perfectly obedient in every way, type of result. Horses have good days and bad days just like us. And their progress looks more like the stock market than a perfectly straight upward rise.

If I really sat down and tried, I could name off several clients that no longer like me. Sometimes it’s timing, or bad luck, or they brought me a very tough horse and expected a unicorn in return. As tough as it is to overcome being disliked by people it is just another piece of my personal development journey. If a person is going to do anything worthwhile in life they are going to acquire haters. Sometimes the more haters you have, the more successful you are becoming. At the end of the day it’s not my job to fix how other people feel about me. It’s my job to be the type of person that I’m proud to be. To sit down and criticize myself, praise myself, hate myself, and love myself. I try to love where I am but also know where I’m going and know where I’m growing.

The balance between self criticism and self praise is never going to be 50/50, but make sure it comes from the conversations within you, and not the conversations happening without you.

10/25/2021

Im proud of the women before me that showed me this is possible.

That showed me women are so incredible and multi faceted.

The fear of imbalance in my professional life kept me away from this amazing experience because of other women not celebrating what a huge accomplishment this is!

This should be celebrated like your promotion at work, your wins and accomplishments, like the biggest thing ever!

Life was never meant to feel balanced. We are always fighting for relaxation in times of stress, breaks during time of instability and the right time to present itself.

Celebrate every accomplishment you have big or small. Your accomplishment may not be what someone else is striving toward or desire for themself but being able to recognize the beauty of someone else’s struggle to get what they personally desire will help us recognize how much credit we personally deserve.

If you haven’t heard it lately…I can only imagine all the things you’ve been through to get to this point. I’m so proud of you! Stop feeling guilty for this chapter of all the blessings you are receiving and embrace them 🤍🤍🤍

08/22/2021

There isn’t anything more inspiring than watching dreams come true for others right before your eyes. Last night in the “unlikeliest” of places for our demographic - Las Vegas - Taylor Sheridan and his dream driven artistry invited the best of the best from the western performance horse world to come together and compete for the biggest prize money our industry has ever seen. The atmosphere he constructed with the help of major sponsors like Teton Ridge and Platinum Performance created electricity that literally lit up the rooms and households of horse enthusiasts from not just around the country but around the WORLD. I talked to friends in Australia that got up in the middle of the night to make sure they didn’t miss a single second of coverage. I haven’t been doing this long, but I am confident that the events we saw unfold in the last week in Las Vegas were like we have never seen before.

Last night, I don’t even think that a mastermind artist and writer like Taylor could have even written the script….

Draw One: One of most formidable showmen and successful trainers in NRHA history - Andrea Fappani - on one of the most consistent aged event horses our industry has ever seen in Platinum Vintage - one of the oldest horses in the field. This is a guy that I am pretty sure could plus 1 riding a goat - a truly meticulous competitor.

Draw Two: The only woman in the field. Gina Schumacher, a non pro, from across the ocean. Stepping up to compete with the “big boys”. A woman from a family of hard working and driven individuals with immense talent inspiring little girls with ponies in every backyard today. Her horse GunnaStepYa - bred by Adh Mor Ranch who also had another horse in the field - PS Mega Shine Chic.

Draw Three: Matt Mills - perhaps one of the most magnetic humans on the planet that has truly taken the time to help those who may not have had access to such coaching through his online program. A guy that grew up riding a city bus an hour to horse lessons as a kid. Riding a horse he had never shown before - Taylor’s Walla Walla Starbuck because his horse unfortunately was no longer able to compete.

Draw Four: Craig Schmersal - the “pattern artist” whose precision in the pen is something I can only correlate to Olympic figure skating on a horse that is literally a machine - 75 plus scores - every, single, time in No Smoking Required.

Draw Five: Million dollar rider Brian Bell riding a family bred and raised horse in Mr Royal Hollywood a horse that was a full brother to Cee Mr Stop that he rode the night before in the $100k shootout.

Draw 6: When all you have to say is “The Black Horse” you truly have made it to another level. Jason Vanlandingham and A Vintage Smoke, bred by Hapcic Ranch in the mountains of Montana - Owned by Diane Mesmer - purchased as a weanling is a story that reads like a fairytale. They have been a team that has literally rewritten history and one everyone comes out to watch any time he is in the draw. An incredible athlete - the “Kobe Bryant” per say of our sport - you can count on them to answer the call no matter the occasion.

Draw 7: Casey Deary riding one of the coolest and biggest turning horses we will ever see. Casey is a trainer that has overcome an incredible amount of adversity when it comes to horse wrecks as a teenager and more recently a C7 Vertebrae Fracture. AmericasNextTopGun his horse is out of a mare he won the NRHA Open L4 Futurity.

Draw 8: Arno Honstetter, A German born horse trainer that came to the USA at the age of 16, worked under Andrea Fappani for 7 years, and has proven himself a competitor at all of the major open events. His horse - the only mare in the field - Ms Dreamy - who went viral after her bridle broke and her rider Dan Huss continued to show anyway.

Draw 9: Martin Muehlstaetter, another Million Dollar rider originally from Austria that has worked his way to the top. His horse one of two bred by Bobby Lewis/Diane Beckmann - Spooks Grand Slam a horse that Martin and his wife Kim both own and show.

Draw 10: Reining legend Tom McCutcheon rides Ruben Vandorp’s Spooks Gotta Crush into the pen for the first time - the horse one of two bred by the late Patsy Shelton Schutz.

Draw 11: Nathan Piper and Patriot, one of two horses bred by the Toyon Ranch. An absolutely gorgeous young stallion that has an incredible fan base due to his way of going around the pen and mesmerizing style.

Draw 12: Cade McCutcheon the youngest Million Dollar Rider in NRHA history with reining success for generations in his family, and Co-Champion of the 2010 TRFAM. Son of Mandy and Tom McCutcheon and grandson to the great Tim McQuay whose fingerprints are on the pedigrees of a majority of the field in one way or another. His a horse - Modern Gun - by Gunners Special Nite who stands at the family’s ranch.

Draw 13: Dany Tremblay - who became a Million Dollar Rider the night before on a horse that is perhaps one of the most athletic horses our industry has seen PS Mega Shine Chic - also bred by Patsy Shelton Schutz. HIs owner Adh Mor Ranch also were the breeder’s of Draw 2.

Draw 14: One of the fastest rising stars in reining Kole Price on Gunna Stop a horse that has an incredible story bred by Toyon Ranch. The horse was owned by Ali Gokey who lost her battle to AML after his win with Austin Roush at the NRHA Futurity in the L1 and L2. Her sister has seen her dreams through with Kole - the two becoming a pair to watch every time entered.

Draw 15: “The Green Shirt” - Living legend Shawn Flarida on Kevin Truax’s Spooks Gotta Spark bred by Bobby Lewis/Diane Beckmann. There isn’t a time when anyone on the planet would count Shawn out, especially when he is mounted on one of the coolest reining horses we have seen recently in “Yellowstone”.

It was a night of runs where not a single one disappointed. We go to see 15 horse/rider combinations rise to the occasion and showcase their programs. We got to see friends, assistants, wives, parents, and kids hug their families at the out gate. We got to listen to insight and commentary from legends in the business. We literally got to witness dreams come running through the gate one run at a time. I am pretty sure all of us held our breaths momentarily with each maneuver. We all had our favorites, but I don’t think a single one of us wanted to see anyone not realize their dreams. That's the magic of horses isn’t it? They have an ability to erase opinion for the betterment of all with their honesty, heart, and effort? We all strap into this crazy roller coaster of the industry for the love of the horse, the hard working honest culture, and because we all have a little bit of a crazy addictive personality - it's the perfect prescription for happiness for those of us that do it! What a fun night!

The run off between the “new” and the “proven” was insanely fun to watch. There isn’t a single rider that hasn’t grown up watching Shawn show. He is the G.O.A.T for a reason riding a horse for great people, bred by one of the best in the business. It was equally as fun to see Koles' big smile, his wife, and his owners become a Million Dollar Team overnight on a horse that is legitimately a “Unicorn Story” that will bring anyone to tears. The journeys behind these horses, their teams, their riders, their breeders, and their owners on the backdrop of Taylor Sheridan’s production were unforgettable.

Thank you to all of you who worked so hard to get there and share your dreams with all of us. To the breeders that bred the horses that made it there, the owners, the trainers and their teams, the c**t starters, the veterinarians, the farriers, the rehab specialists, and more Thank You for letting us witness the dreams come to fruition. To Taylor Sheridan, Brumley Management, Teton Ridge, Platinum Performance and many more that made this happen we appreciate you! Thanks for inspiring us all to dream a little bigger this Sunday!

-Peace, Love, and Unicorns
WhoaZone Equine

08/10/2021

Pentathlon woes

I’ve had maybe a dozen people ask me to say something about how bad the episode was at the Olympic pentathlon, as though I am somehow the go-to person to be critical about all things that smack of horse abuse.

Look---The world is FULL of horses in bad situations. Right this second, somewhere near YOU there are horses without clean water, horses standing in hot fields, covered with flies, no sheds, no trees, no feed, probably skinny and wormy. It is a HUGE list of horse abuse situations, and each one of us needs to do what we can.

But back to the Pentathlon. Sure, bad temper, bad riding, bad behavior---But the thing that gets me is that a couple of days earlier a horse died in eventing, adding to so many horses that have died in eventing over the last few years, and not a peep. Not a murmur. No “Maybe we ought to think of ways to make serious injuries and deaths not be almost “business as usual” in eventing---.”

But yank a horse or slap a horse, and the heavens erupt with indignation----Like where is all that indignation when REAL harm gets done?

I’m not condoning the lousy horsemanship at the Pentathlon, but I would suggest the enraged community should put it into perspective, and not focus on something in a tiny piece of a tiny splinter sport, while managing to ignore the elephant sitting in the corner, the fact that crashing falls are far from rare in ANOTHER and much bigger jumping sport that affects many more horses.

Think about that---?