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““Dad had an old-school way. We patterned them and tried to let them do it themselves to the best
of our ability.” – Dena Kirkpatrick
HER EARLY YEARS
Born in 1961 in Lovington, New Mexico, to the late Dal and Sandra Alexander, Dena grew up on a dairy farm with her two sisters, Teri and Carla. Dal was a successful team roper who believed he needed the speed of race-bred horses to rope on. Also, her grandfather raised New Mexico-bred Thoroughbreds.
“My dad never claimed to be any kind of a horseman, but he put horses under us that were unbelievable,” Dena says. “I never played with dolls; I only played with horses when I was little, and I was blessed to live in a place where I could have horses.”
Although Dena loved the horses and was active in youth rodeo, she was a focused student and earned a presidential scholarship with which she majored in accounting at New Mexico State University. “I was a straight-A student and turned into a horse trainer,” she says jokingly. “I was possibly my high school’s most-likely-to-succeed person who failed to use my academic gifts.”
Dena and her husband, Cliff, now live on the Kirkpatricks’ 100-plus-year-old family ranch in Post, Texas. They raised two daughters, Sarah and Hannah, who both earned double majors at Texas Christian University, worked at New York City internships and now work in the fashion industry in Fort Worth, Texas, 275 miles east of Post. Sarah has a 6-year-old son, R.C., for whom Dena will drop everything when she gets a chance to have him at the ranch.
Dena and Cliff, a trainer in his own right who has produced calf-roping horses that competed in the NFR, may have been destined for marriage, but the road there wasn’t a natural progression.
“We’ve known each other since we were little kids because my father’s family is from Post, and we were also heavily into junior rodeo together in the American Junior Rodeo Association,” Dena says. “But when I went to college, he was wild, and I was not! I went on an academic scholarship; I did not college rodeo, and we lost contact for several years. But our third year of college, we started dating and got married in 1983.”
When Dena and Cliff were newly married, Dena’s dad bought her an own son of Go Man Go. “I filled my permit on him,” Dena says. “I went
to the West Texas Derby in Abilene, the first big barrel futurity/derby of the year, and I didn’t even know what a futurity or derby was back then.
“Dad had an old-school way,” she adds.
“We patterned them and tried to let them do it themselves to the best of our ability. I won that derby on that horse, and I decided I wanted to train barrel racing futurity horses and I’m going to tell you that the next few years were a little bit rough!”
58 SPEEDHORSE
May 2023
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Celie Whitcomb Ray aboard Anna Lee Flit at the 1980 TBRA Futurity.
© Kenneth Springer
Dan Hubbell Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
Sherry Cervi and PC Frenchmans Hayday (AKA “Dinero”) come in second for $103,893 in the 2005