The horse world that built Equine Talent.

Joanne grew up with horses and has been involved with them for most of her life. As a child, she grew up alongside her cousin Terry, who was more like a sister. Terry and her mother always had horses, and Joanne was fortunate to get a pony named Kelly. Kelly was fuzzy, opinionated, and just small enough to be the perfect starter pony.

Then there was Frosty, a Tennessee Walker who was kind and gentle. Terry rode English and performed in hunter-jumper and cross-country events. Watching Terry ride left an early impression: good horsemanship could look calm, balanced, and almost effortless from the outside.

The moment everything changed came from a magazine. It was the late 1990s when Terry and I were flipping through the pages and stumbled across an ad for an AQHA Reining show. There was a photograph of a horse in full sliding stop — front legs driving, hindquarters low, hooves skimming the ground in a plume of arena dirt. There was something about that image, the raw athleticism of it, the controlled power, that we couldn't shake. We looked at each other. We had to see it in person.

We went. And that was that. Terry decided she wanted to give Reining a spin — no pun intended. The first trainer we met was Carlton Crowe. He brought out one of his horses and told Terry to step on and try a turnaround. She did, and she was already quick. Then Carlton looked over at me. I felt the familiar flutter of nerves, but I stepped over into the western saddle anyway. The horse spun and I grabbed the horn with both hands and held on. When it stopped, I was grinning from ear to ear. I was hooked.

Terry bought her first Reining horse from Carlton — a mare out of Doc O'Lena named Lena Money. I tagged along to shows, watching from the rail, learning the sport by osmosis. In the early 2000s Terry began working with trainer Mavis Garber and acquired a new horse, Sail Win Dude — Junior, as everyone called him. From the beginning, it was clear that Terry and Junior weren't going to work.

Junior was hot, opinionated, and full of energy. Joanne put him into training with Mavis Garber and began driving to the farm every Saturday. Mavis understood Junior's history and taught Joanne to ride him differently: drive forward with the leg, soften the hands, stop demanding, and start communicating.

For a $5,600 horse, Mavis turned Junior into a Reiner and a good one. Joanne and Junior showed together for the next five years, won the year-end Rookie Award for the Dixie Reining Horse Association, and qualified for the All-American Quarter Horse Congress, where they placed 22nd against 75 horses.

Wilkinson began competing Mr. Gun Smoke in cutting to promote him, and the horse delivered — earning a Superior in AQHA cutting with 71 performance points. Then Wilkinson bred the stallion, raised the resulting foal himself, and pointed her toward the biggest stage in cutting. That foal was Gun Smoke's Dream. In 1972, Dale Wilkinson rode her to win the NCHA Cutting Futurity. One man. One stallion. Nearly two decades. A partnership that changed everything.

Mr. Gun Smoke's offspring competed and won across reining, cutting, and reined cow horse. His direct get earned nearly a million dollars in competition, and as a maternal grandsire his reach extended to over $2.46 million in NCHA earnings and more than $862,000 in NRHA competition.

But perhaps his most visible legacy shows up in the arena every single week: the splash gene. Mr. Gun Smoke carried a white-spotting pattern that produced horses with sweeping blazes, chrome leg markings, and often pale blue eyes. That signature look was passed down most dramatically through Colonels Smoking Gun — Gunner — whose bald face and chrome became the defining image of modern reining. Gunner became the NRHA's all-time leading sire, with offspring earnings surpassing $12 million. Today, you can walk into almost any competitive reining barn and find a bald-faced horse. Trace that pedigree back far enough, and Mr. Gun Smoke is there, still running.

He was inducted into the NRCHA Hall of Fame in 1980, the NRHA Hall of Fame in 2008, and the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2016. He was, as those closest to him always said, a horse well before his time. And the man who saw that — who spent 18 years developing it and sharing it with the world — was Dale Wilkinson.

I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in God's timing — and in 2022, His timing arrived in the form of an unexpected phone call from Mavis Garber. She needed a website. It was that simple on the surface. But the moment I heard her voice, something in me shifted.

I drove down and stayed with Mavis and Nick, and being back in that world — the smell of horses, the sound of boots on barn aisles, the easy warmth of people who love what they do — felt like coming home. I went to a show, took photographs, and built her the site. Go to dwreins.com.

Before I left, I asked Mavis if she knew any Reining trainers near Roswell, Georgia. She mentioned a name: Francis Mercier, down in Roopville. I made the call on a Saturday and drove out to meet him. I met him and an incredible group of his customers.

Francis put me up on a nice mare and it felt so good. I broke down and had tears in my eyes as it had been so long since I was in a saddle. I started taking lessons with Francis and before I knew it I had my own horse in training.