Weatherford, TexasEst. 2009
Cross Timbers Performance Horses
Colts started at two. Futurity horses shown at three. Derby horses finished at four. Reining, cutting, reined cow horse, barrels and ranch versatility, on one hundred forty-eight acres in Parker County.
Official judge’s card
NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity
Open · Fort Worth
Back
142
Composite
Judge · R. Vandiver
224½
Third place · Cats Cross Timber · 2025
01The program
There is no method here with a name on it. There is a schedule, a set of cattle, and a rule that a horse never gets asked for something he has not already been taught.
Most horses that arrive with a problem do not have a training problem. They have a hole — something skipped in the first ninety days because it was boring, then papered over ever since with a bigger bit and a harder hand. The first thing we do with almost every horse that comes through the gate is go back and find it.
Which means the early work looks like nothing at all. Long-trotting outside. Riding fence lines. Standing tied while somebody else gets shod. A two-year-old in this barn spends more time going in a straight line than doing anything a judge would ever put a mark on.
Maneuvers come later, and they come apart from one another. Stops on their own. Spins on their own. Herd work in a pen with three head of cattle and nowhere in particular to be. Full patterns are the last thing a horse learns, and even then he runs one about once a week — because a horse who has run four hundred patterns will run the pattern for you whether you asked him to or not.
We hold the barn at thirty-eight head for the same reason. Past that, horses start getting ridden by whoever is free instead of by whoever ought to be riding them, and nobody notices for a month.
Anybody can make a horse do it. The trick is making him want to do it twice.
02Six disciplines
A cloverleaf. Concentric circles down the middle of the pen. A cow turned twice against a wall. Pick one and it will draw itself.
Colt starting
“Give him a reason to say yes”
Two-year-olds · 60 or 90 days
A colt gets sixty days before anyone asks him a hard question. The first two weeks happen on the ground and in the round pen: hands over every inch of him, feet handled, a saddle that goes on quietly because it has gone on twenty times already.
First rides are short and boring on purpose. He walks, trots and lopes both directions, stops off your seat, moves his hip and his shoulder where you put them, and stands still while you get off. Then he goes outside — pastures, hills, water, a set of cows to follow at a walk.
We would rather send home a plain colt with no holes than a flashy one with three. Everything after this is built on top of it.
Where this goes
What he leaves with
03The calendar
Aged events do not move. Fort Worth is in November whether your colt is ready or not, which means everything in this barn is planned backward from a date somebody else picked.
August – October
Long yearlings
Two-year-olds come in off grass in small sets. Sixty days of ground work and first rides, then thirty days outside before anyone thinks about a maneuver.
01 / 06
November – March
Two-year-olds
Bodies get built. Long-trotting outside, hills, the flag, slow cattle. The two-year-old year is where futurity horses are quietly won and lost, and none of it shows up on a score sheet.
02 / 06
April – August
Coming three
Maneuvers get named and drilled apart from each other — stops on their own, spins on their own, herd work on its own. Full patterns come last, and never more than once a week.
03 / 06
September
Three
The snaffle bit horses go to Fort Worth. It is the first time most of these horses have seen a coliseum, and it is the reason we haul to four small shows in August that do not pay anything.
NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity · Fort Worth
04 / 06
November – December
Three
Cutters to Fort Worth, reiners to Oklahoma City, three weeks apart. Six months of work goes through a gate and gets a number attached to it.
NCHA Futurity · NRHA Futurity
05 / 06
The next three years
Four, five, six
Derby horses come back at four and five with more finish and less rush. Cow horses move into the hackamore, then the two-rein, then straight up in the bridle at six. That is the long game, and it is the one worth playing.
NRHA Derby · NRCHA Derby · World's Greatest Horseman
06 / 06
Scroll for the rest of the year →
04Reading the card
This page is built out of a judge’s card because the barn is. If you are new to aged events, this is the whole vocabulary — and it is worth twenty minutes, because it is the difference between watching a run and understanding one.
The mark scale, per maneuver
70 ± marks
Every maneuver is marked against a 70. Add the pluses, subtract the minuses, then take off penalties. A 72 wins a lot of classes.
Common penalties
60 to 80
One number for two and a half minutes of work, with 70 as the honest average. Credit is earned; penalties are deducted from whatever you earned.
Common penalties
Three scores, one composite
Herd work, rein work and fence work are each scored 60 to 80 and added together. A composite in the mid-220s puts you in a final.
Common penalties
A minus half on your first circle is information, not an insult. It means the circle was not round, or it was not where the last one was. Both are fixable by Thursday.
05The barn
Between Weatherford and Peaster, forty-two miles from Will Rogers. The specification below is the honest one — the same list we would give a buyer.
06The people
Everyone here rides. There is no arrangement where you pay a trainer and an assistant does the riding — if your horse is in the futurity program, the name on the card is the person on his back.
Back
07
Founded the barn in 2009
Head trainer · reined cow horse, reining
Grew up on a Nebraska yearling operation and has been in Parker County since 2003. Rides the hackamore horses himself and will not sell you a horse he would not ride.
NRCHA $1.42M · NRHA $610K
Back
24
Joined 2014
Cutting
Came up through the herd-holding end of the pen, which is where she says she learned to read cattle. Runs the cutting side and the turnback crew.
NCHA $890K · two Futurity finals
Back
11
Joined 2018
Colt starting, two-year-olds
Starts every colt that comes through the gate. Believes most training problems are a colt who was asked a question before he was taught the words.
Roughly 400 colts started
Back
38
Joined 2021
Barrel horses, conditioning
Handles the barrel string and the conditioning program for the whole barn — legs, feet, and what every horse did yesterday, written down.
Two futurity averages, $240K
What clients say
I sent a three-year-old that I had already given up on. Wade did not tell me she was going to be great. He told me exactly what was wrong with her, in order, and then fixed them in that order. She was a Snaffle Bit finalist eighteen months later.
What I did not expect was the video every month. I live nine hours away and I have never once had to wonder what my horse is doing. Most barns will not even return the call.
Renata put my hand down for me the first time and I hated it. She was right. I have won more in two years as a non-pro than in the nine before it.
07Rates & openings
Almost nobody in this industry publishes a day rate. We would rather you knew before you called, and we would much rather you knew about the costs that are not in it — those are the ones that surprise people in March.
$70per day
60 or 90 day term
Two-year-olds who have never been saddled, and older horses who need starting over.
Sets start in August and January
$85per day
Month to month, 30 day notice
Horses being brought along or tuned up in any of the six disciplines.
4 stalls open for fall
$95per day
Committed through the horse's aged-event year
Three-year-olds pointed at Fort Worth or Oklahoma City. Capped at twelve head so that every one of them gets ridden by a trainer, not an assistant.
3 of 12 spots open for the 2027 crop
$150per session
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Riders bringing their own horse for the day. Cattle and flag time included.
Booking three weeks out
08Send us a horse
Including the parts that are not going well. We would rather turn a horse down in July than let you haul him eleven hours in September for nothing.
09Notes from the barn
Usually on Sunday, usually about something that went wrong. No newsletter, no sign-up form.
Two-year-olds12 July 2026
The colts that go home in September will have done less than most people expect and more than most people can see. A defence of the boring part.
Scoring28 June 2026
A minus half on your first circle is information, not an insult. Walking through an actual card from the Derby, maneuver by maneuver.
Cattle9 June 2026
Ninety head, rotated monthly, is the single largest line item in this barn that clients never see. Here is the arithmetic and why we do it anyway.