Page 80 - March_2022

T
Bob aboard Rezamay after winning a Ft. Pierre Jack Pot Race in 1970.
PASSING IT DOWN
Although John attributed the family’s horse expertise to his brother Andrew, when John became a jockey, it didn’t take long for others to recognize his innate horse talent. They started bringing their horses
to him to train, and in 1974 he was recognized as the High-Point Quarter Horse Trainer at three tracks in three states (Belle Fourche, South Dakota; Miles City, Montana; and Casper, Wyoming). In 2018 he earned AQHA’s 50-year-breeder Legacy Award.
John passed his “horse sense” gene down to both Bob and Gary. Both sons rode racehorses— Gary winning his first race in 1965— until they outgrew that job, and both have also worked in all aspects of the ranch’s operations at one time or another since the late 1960s. “In the early ’80s, we had five studs here and 400 head of cattle at one time,” Bob says. “That was a job, not an adventure!”
These days, Bob’s focus is on training and the racetrack operations, while Gary concentrates on the cattle and the horse breeding and sales operations at home. “I went to the racetrack for a few years, but I didn’t really like it that well, so I came home,” Gary says. “I like raising colts and taking horses to the sales.”
“For a long time, we had to do both jobs to make it work,” Bob says. “Then I started going to the racetrack and Gary stayed on the ranch. We both broke colts for years and usually I’d leave for the racetrack in the spring and come home in the fall, so we were both here over winter to take care of the cattle and the foaling and all. It’s nice being home, but economics tells me I can’t [be there long-term].”
THEIR INFLUENCE
Now in their mid-60s, Bob and Gary have learned not only from their father and grandparents, but from industry icons such as Ed Giles, Larry Sharp and Gordon Steinmiller. “We watched them manage a lot of horses and they took good care of them,” Bob says.
Care is a large part of their standard of success. “If you take good care of your horses, your horses will take good care of you,” Bob says. “I like to bring out the individual horse; just like people, they’re all different. Some like to train hard, and some don’t. I like figuring out what makes them happy and keeps them sound.”
The other part of their success is in breeding and racing horses with speed and brains. “We strive to have fast horses that can do other things,” says Bob.
“I suppose in this part of the country, they were really pioneers in the racehorse industry and along with that they ranch and are good stock people with good genetics in their livestock and of course, excellent genetics in their horses,” says auctioneer Lynn Weishaar of Reva, South Dakota, a former neighbor and longtime friend who’s known them for decades. “They’ve been racehorse
“Trainers of the Year many, many times in South Dakota; they have their horses conditioned and ready to go when it’s time to race.”
Gary aboard Go Go Dakota,
owned by his father John, after
winning a Ft. Pierre Jack Pot Race in 1970.
Wes Giles
78 SPEEDHORSE March 2022
“If you take good care of your horses, your horses will take good care of you. I like to bring out the individual horse; just like people, they’re all different.”
– Bob Johnson
Susan Bachelor, Speedhorse
Courtesy Bob Johnson Courtesy Bob Johnson
“