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At her clinics, she stresses validating
her theories, either with horsemanship and simple mathematics. “’This works for me’
is not a good reason to teach someone,” she says. It’s important to Dena that her students understand the reasoning behind her methods. “If they don’t, they won’t be able to implement them into their training program.
“I’ve been blessed to ride with some very great horsemen, and I got to a stage where I was sort of obsessed with how much to break a horse at the poll and still run a speed event. So, I started asking people. Doug Carpenter was a friend of mine and said he had no
idea. But then he called me out of the blue one day and said he knew who could answer my question: Ian Francis from Australia. I’d just come home from Australia and all I had heard was ‘Ian Francis’!
“I went with Doug to meet Ian here
in the U.S. and was surprised he’d even heard of me. I asked him my question: How much do you frame up a horse that will be running a speed event? Ian said he couldn’t begin to tell me because he’d never ridden a barrel race.”
A few months later, Dena was asked to do a clinic with Ian in Australia. “Doing the clinics together was the beginning of
a great relationship and was kind of eye opening for both of us,” she says. “At the beginning he said, ‘My friends are kind of laughing at me because I was doing clinics about how to run around “drums” and not knock them down,’ but after a couple of years, he finally said, ‘This could be the most difficult event for a horse to run: We ask them to go full out and still gather up to turn a barrel, fast again and gather back up, fast again and gather up, and then fast again to the finish.’
“That’s a huge part of my past and I feel so blessed to have gotten to do those clinics with him,” she adds. “He and I kind of laugh about the fact that by the time you’re old enough
to have learned what you need to know, your body just can’t do it for you anymore!
“I’d add Ian to my list of major influencers,” she says. “If I’d met him when I was 20 instead of when I was 40-something, there’s no telling what
I could’ve done for the horses I got.
He is a master at cutting, reining and campdrafting, an Australian speed event where they push a yearling cow out in kind of a cloverleaf pattern in a giant arena.
HER TOP MOUNTS
Dena sees barrel racing more as the test of her passion—training—than her actual passion. “I was even laughing lately because I probably have in my barn the best horse that I’ve ever had in my life and I haven’t been to a rodeo yet because I’ve been busy with my family,” she says. “But I get excited about training! I thoroughly enjoy the daily accomplishments that a young horse has.
“I have a 2 year old, The Goodbye Lane filly, that I was leading around to see what she remembered about being messed with and I’m like, aww, you’re so smart. And then I kind of got tickled at that because I have Gracies Lane up there, and I love running her, but I still can’t wait to ride that 2 year old. I love it when they can win, for their sake. I love to win, too, but what I really love is when people know my horse’s name because of their success!
“I feel a huge amount of accomplishment when they’re happy, healthy and loving their job. It’s a hard job and not all of them can do it,” she adds. “What matters most is how hard they try. If they keep trying, I’m going to stick with them.”
Her list of superstar mounts includes Willy Nick Bar, Kates Always First and Gracies Lane. The incomparable 1993 gelding Willy Nick
Bar (Dr Nick Bar-Mystical Avenger, Staunch Avenger TB), although owned by others over the years, now resides with another 30-year- old retired buddy in Dena’s pasture. “He was a superstar, and he was a winner,” she says. “I’d say, if you want to just look at stats, winning and still holding that 1997 record on Willy Nick Bar was a huge success. Some horses just have a little bit of anxiety about running but he just loved his job.”
Another of those top mounts, the 2005 mare Kates Always First (First Down Dash- Shawne Kate, Shawne Bug), is what Dena calls a big girl. “She had the body and the speed, and she never really fell with me, but
a lot of times the ground wasn’t good enough to hold her in her turn with the power she took into it,” she says. “She was a powerful rocket with a hyper-sensitive mouth, so it was a little difficult training her. And the fact that she was an own daughter of First Down Dash out of a producing mare, and not going to the racetrack was a big deal back then.
I feel a little bad about having her because
60 SPEEDHORSE May 2023
Dena and Kates Always First at the 2009 BFA World Championship.
Kenneth Springer