18 RICHARD WINTERS Continued from page 17


Bring those buckles that I want close to me in these last hours of my life?” No. What do they say? Bring my family. Where’s my kids? Where’s my wife at? Those are the things that are going to make a difference. And all that sticks togther with the glue of our faith. Keeping God No. 1 in our lives. I consider God the orchestrator or the manager of my affairs. The Bible says, without geting too preachy, that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord. And I would not want to go out and plan another clinic or go to another horse show and leave God back at the house. And so, that’s the glue that’s kept our family together and has allowed us to enjoy the blessings of this horse business for all these years.


HT: On your books, what drove you to sit


25 years ago. Oh, I had all the answers back then, don’t misunderstand me—at least I thought I did. But now, some of the things that I said 25 years ago in relation to horses, I’m not even doing that now. It almost takes a lifetime of experience,


knowledge, perhaps bad judgement, mis- takes, pitfalls, to be able then to stop and refer back to all of that history, then to write something that might be of some value to somebody else.


HT: What was your first clinic like?


“It seems like the farther I go in my horsemanship, the farther there is to go.”


–RICHARD WINTERS, horseman down and get those ideas on paper?


RICHARD: That’s tricky. I don’t know if I hit the mark completely or not. But it’s out there. You can turn the pages. The nice thing about my book is it’s got a lot of pictures and no big words. So I wrote a book that I would want to read. And I tried to keep it very practical. I’ve been helping people for a lot of years with their horsemanship. There’s not one chapter in those books that doesn’t, I hope, won’t resonate in a very practical fashion with people. Not a lot of esoteric, philiosophical things that they really can’t get a hold of. But, how am I going to get this horse to pick up the leſt lead? Or, what has Richard learned about body control or stable management or whatever it might be. I never dreamed years ago that writing a book would be part of my paradigm, but it’s been fun and it’s been cool to have that and you know, put my name on the front and hand it to someone. I hope it has some value to them. There are books of value and books of


questionsable value and I won’t speculate where my book falls on that scale. But I think for me to write that book 25 years ago would have been very premature because I do not believe I am the horseman now that I was


RICHARD: I remember exactly when it was. It was 30 years ago because I remember my wife Cheryl holding our first son, Joseph, in her arms. He’s 30 now. He was just a brand new newborn. I remember in that very first clinic—I had stayed up so late the night before, trying to write down all the clever litle sayings and all the different points I wanted to bring up. I wrote them out them on a clipboard, and then I carried the clipboard with me all day because I wanted to share all this improtant infor- mation. A litle bit scary. A litle bit intimidating. I am thankful


that as this industry as evolved, I did my first clinic 30 years ago and not three years ago. When we first started, there were four or five guys out there doing it. Now, there are four of five guys in every town, every weekend doing it. So, I got on that wagon before it was completely out of town, and I was thankful for that. It’s been great for us because you can only


get on one horse at a time. If you are giving a lesson, you can only talk to one person at a time. I used to show a lot of horses. You can only show one at a time. I saw an opportuni- ty—if 10 people would show up, or 15 people would show up, and I could bring some value to them—then this business that I’m in that feels a litle bit financially marginal might pay a litle bit beter, and then I could get my brand and my style of horsemanship out to a greater number of people. And it’s allowed us to go to so many places and meet so many people that we never would have had the opportunity to meet. We’ve literally been around the world doing horsemanship clinics. I never would have gone to places like Switzerland or Sweden or Poland or Australia or all these different places where I’ve been, had it not been for horses and for clinics. There is so much great information out


there now—not just my information. We truly live in the in formation age. I tell people, there really is no excuse to be ignorant any more. You know, you talk about that toolkit or picking up those one or two things. That’s what I tell people at the clinics. You don’t need to go home and be a cookie-cuter of Richard Winters. But if you will glean one or two or can you imagine three things this weekend that you can put in your pocket and take home and apply to what you are already doing—you’re already enjoying a certain amount of success with you’re horse. Just about everything I share with people, if you pin me down, I can probably recall the time I learned it and who I learned it from. I’m probably the king of plagerism. I’ve just taken everything from somebody.


HT: What is your best success?


RICHARD: My family, without a doubt. Again, we can talk about great horses that I’ve had the privileges of riding, and awards that I’ve won. But to have my wife aſter 30-something years— she’s right there in my booth right now, taking care of our business. She’s the one who makes me look so profes- sional. I tell people, there’s a few things I can do that she doesn’t want to do, but there’s a whole list of things that she can do that I don’t know how to do. That’s why we’ve made such a great team. And then to see our kids. To see my daugh-


ter who has followed in my footsteps and then gone just so far beyond, taking what I’ve done and taken it to a whole new level. That is so rewarding. And to share those expe- riences with her. And her brother, Joseph, who doesn’t really care about horses. He’s my own personal superhero. He jumps out of the orange and white helicopters and saves people when they are drowning. He’s a res- cue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard. So, to leave that kind of legacy with our children, to see them doing well, is prety exciting. And those are the things that really mater to us.


EDITOR’S NOTE: Longtime Californian


Richard Winters is now based in Poolville, Texas. This interview by John DeBevoise of Horsetrader Media was one of 19 in the live Horsetrader Media Studio during three days of the Western States Horse Expo Pomona in November 2019.For additional information on Horsetrader Media, email contact@horset- radermedia.com. We’d love to share our new media offerings.


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