I remember the first day I ever swung a leg over Sister. I’d just had my first baby, and I was visiting my parents in Cottonwood, California, just north of Red Bluff. Sister was around four years old. Her mother, Reba, was the horse I high-school rodeoed on. My dad had recently started running Sister through the barrels.
Just get on her, he told me.
I rode around not doing anything serious. Dad said,
Run her through the pattern. She took off and just about turned out from underneath me on that first barrel. I was, like,
Holy cow! She already knows what she’s doing. The first minute I was on her I felt her greatness.
The main thing I took away from that experience was her confidence. From Day One, Sister’s never been scared of anything. If you give her a job to do, she’s, like,
Oh, I can do that, and I can do it really good.
Sister is beautiful. She’s a blue roan. She’s put together perfectly—not too big but not tiny, either. She moves real smoothly. She hardly looks like she’s running, but she is. I’ll be honest—she makes my job easy. I don’t have to worry about her doing anything out of the ordinary. She’s just so consistent. I know she’ll go into the arena every time and do the same thing, which takes a load off my mind.
Sister’s strong. She never weakens on me. I’ve never come out of the arena and thought she didn’t try her hardest. Sister’s the most honest horse you could ask for. She has never let me down.
I didn’t know how good Sister was until I won the world title on her in 2017. There are great horses, and then there are horses you can win the gold buckle on.
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