Stepping down: The story of letting go professionally to have fun as a amateur

Dr. Craig Wood with the University of Kentucky discusses his recent decision to retire from the judging and professional horseman world. A respected judge, Dr. Wood decided he wanted to have fun for himself for a change and focus on showing in his "golden" years.

Transcript

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Kris Hiney: Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney with Oklahoma State University, and today we have a returning guest, although we have not heard from him for a while, Dr. Craig Wood with the University of Kentucky, so welcome back, Craig! Great, thanks, glad to be here. So, the last time we spoke with you, you actually were delving into roping as a new horse

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Kris Hiney: Passion Pursuit. How is that going?

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Kris Hiney: Well, I figured out that I needed to kind of pursue something now, so instead of doing the roping as much, I got into doing a lot of the ranch stuff, which is close to roping, you know, except now, when I do the ranch trail and all, we rope some steel objects and all that, because roping is not that easy when everybody starts moving. You know, you got the horse moving, you got the cow moving.

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Kris Hiney: The rope is moving. The rope is moving, and it's a lot harder than just standing there throwing the rope when you're practicing. Okay, so you thought you were gonna be pretty, pretty awesome at this, and it just… Well, I didn't know… I didn't know if I was gonna be really awesome, but I thought, you know, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try to do it, but…

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Kris Hiney: So I took the horse I was using for that, and we're doing some ranch stuff now, and all that, so it's been… it's been really enjoyable. Okay, and ranch classes are super, super popular, so you have lots to do. So, we're gonna talk a little bit today about, kind of, your path in the horse industry, and it might be kind of fun for people to, to hear your journey a little bit. So, right now, you're not…

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Kris Hiney: really positioned directly in the horse industry, right? Because you're in an administrative office that's not day-to-day horse, but you used to be a horse specialist, correct? That's correct, yeah. When I first started at the University of Kentucky.

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Kris Hiney: in what was then named the College of Agriculture. It's now called the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.

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Kris Hiney: I was the Extension Horse Specialist, so everything I did on a daily basis was involved directly with horses of all breeds, and I worked with people of all ages, all the way up from 4-H kids just starting at 8 and 9,

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Kris Hiney: All the way up to adults and breeders and folks in the horse industry, that that was their passion, that was their livelihood, as well as those that, you know, that was just something they did on the side and enjoyed it.

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Kris Hiney: And you had a pretty diverse background, too, in horses, right? So you've had some Western, you used to be a fox hunter and all kinds of crazy stuff. So had a lot of life experience to draw on in your teaching. Right, yeah, I've had a lot of diversity in what I've done with horses. As a young boy, I started out with my grandfather. He had running quarter horses.

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Kris Hiney: And I kind of broke those and rode them for him as he legged them up, getting ready to go to the track and all that. And then I got into showing horses and all that with the family. We did that as a youth as I was growing up. And then when I went to Kentucky.

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Kris Hiney: I still was doing a lot of stuff with stock horses and all, but…

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Kris Hiney: But then, I got into fox hunting, and really enjoyed that. That was fun. That's the closest thing to horse racing as you can get, because you run at a high rate of speed through the countryside when you're chasing a fox, and jump a few cute coops here and there, and a few stone fences and all that, and had a really good time.

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Kris Hiney: Doing that, so yeah, I've done a lot of different things. And then I got into doing some hunter Jumper.

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Kris Hiney: You know, from… as a result of the fox hunting and all that, and I really enjoyed that as well. Well, in Kentucky, you kind of have to lean into the thoroughbreds a little bit, don't you? Yeah, you do, and my fox-hunting horses were thoroughbreds.

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Kris Hiney: you know, led into those, and then I had a couple of thoroughbred mares that I bred to some… to some loud colored paint stallions, and that's how I got into the paint horse industry and all that, started raising paint horses to… to do not only the… kind of, like, the Western events, but also the… the English and the hunt seat as well.

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Kris Hiney: So, we know, well, I know, but our listeners probably don't know. So, you've been a, a carded judge, right? So, how many years have… have you been judging horses professionally? Yeah, I, I'm an APHA carded judge, and I've been judging for 21 years, doing that.

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Kris Hiney: And, also, I've been a professional horseman for the same association for about 15 years.

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Kris Hiney: So, when we were chatting kind of earlier.

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Kris Hiney: this becoming a judge… now, we'll give you maybe historical… you did a little

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Kris Hiney: Didn't you do some judging as a… as the youth, and that… did that get you into the judging pathway? Yeah, I'm a product of coming up through youth judging programs. In college, I was on the horse judging team, also on the livestock judging team, so I had a lot of experience in judging horses. So, it was kind of a natural step when I got the job at Kentucky as the extension horse specialist.

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Kris Hiney: to kind of go into being a professional judge and applying to be a cardedjudge, because that really lent itself to what I was doing in my professional career.

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Kris Hiney: It kind of gave me the ability to have a little more credential behind me in the kinds of things we did. I coached judging teams, at the University of Kentucky. I coached judging teams when I was in graduate school, horse judging teams.

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Kris Hiney: And also, that was kind of a logical step to be in.

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Kris Hiney: A carded judge with an association, and since

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Kris Hiney: got into breeding paint horses. The American Paint Horse Association was the one that was most appealing. So you stuck with the paints as your carded judge, and you've judged internationally with the paint horses, right? Yeah, that's one of the…

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Kris Hiney: things on being a carded judge, it opens up a lot of opportunities for you to judge in a lot of different countries. So I've judged, in Germany, I judged in France, I also judged in Mexico a couple of times and all that. So it gave me the opportunity to kind of see the industry from an international perspective.

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Kris Hiney: Which was… which was really valuable for what I was doing with the university there, and the horse program that we had in Kentucky that we were doing. Right. So, lots of positives to… to judging horses, but there's some…

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Kris Hiney: Negatives, right, to being a professional horse judge? Tell us a little about the negatives on that side. Yeah, I'll say the negatives, and they're not that… there are a few that you experience. I think a lot of it is just the amount of travel you do as a judge, you know, that's a negative. It begins to kind of wear on you, you know, you… you're fighting with the airlines, you know, because they're not going to get you there on time, or something happens, and you're going to arrive

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Kris Hiney: late, so you're kind of nervous about, you know, am I going to get there?

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Kris Hiney: Am I going to be able to fulfill my judging obligation for the group that I'm going to because of all the travel things that go on?

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Kris Hiney: And then, you know, it's not as bad as it used to be, but it used to be that you judge long hours. I mean, you might judge

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Kris Hiney: you know, 18, 20 hours, it seems like, at some shows that just didn't run as efficiently as they should have and all that. So, there's been some negatives. There's been a few exhibitors that kind of take exception to the way you placed horses and all that, and they kind of want to tell you about it and all that, but

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Kris Hiney: You know, a lot of that, we fixed a lot of that, because not only do we educate the judges, be better judges, and

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Kris Hiney: be able to explain what they're doing, and with the advent of the score system, it really helps explain and point out exactly to the exhibitors what you were looking at and how you evaluated it. But it also educates the exhibitor. The exhibitor now knows this is what the judge is looking for.

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Kris Hiney: And they start to learn, well, you know, I didn't do that very good in the class. You know that when you go in and ride, you'll be able to self-assess yourself after that ride much easier, because you're seeing the same stuff that the judges are being trained on. You're just not being tested on it.

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Kris Hiney: For your competency, and how you understand it, and how you would apply it. So they may not be as quite as up-to-date in the penalties and scoring, would be my guess. Yeah, that's accurate, you know. But they've come a long way, the exhibitors have an understanding, you know, when you get a 3-point penalty, what that means for that class, or a one-point penalty.

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Kris Hiney: you got a pretty good idea, well, I must have done one of three things, you know, and you can, you know, everybody videos everything now, because we all have video cameras on our phones, so they can go back and look and see that.

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Kris Hiney: And a lot of the… and I would say the APHA probably started this, has done a great job of providing resources for their exhibitors to learn more in-depth about how things are judged. Yeah, it started out as we wanted a platform to be able to educate judges.

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Kris Hiney: And give them the ability to refresh what they needed to look for before they went to a show. So, with the creation of this online environment, that made it easy for judges to go in and look at, you know, if they hadn't judged a roping in a while, they could go in and look at some rope horses, see what other…

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Kris Hiney: judges have scored them and all that, and kind of tune up a little bit before they go.

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Kris Hiney: So once we were doing that, it became obvious that the next step was, let's just open it up to the exhibitors and let them do the same thing, because

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Kris Hiney: you know, nothing we're doing should be kept behind a curtain, anything like that. It should be open to everybody, so that's kind of what we did, is we opened it up and let them see the same kinds of things. And is it not a little bit of a double-edged sword, right? The more educated the exhibitor, the more they can be like, hey now. That's right! Well, yeah, because they hold the judges accountable, because they're educated well. You know, they've seen the same stuff, they can ask you

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Kris Hiney: Really informative educational questions, and holds you to what you're supposed to be doing.

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Kris Hiney: You know, and that's important, and that's what makes…

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Kris Hiney: it more credible for the judges to be able to make the right decisions and everybody see what that is. Now, do… do judges miss things? Sure, they miss things, you know, like everybody does, but…

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Kris Hiney: You know, one of the things that's been really good is that big shows, when they have a major penalty, all those are always discussed before the class is placed to make sure that everybody saw the same thing and what's… what's being done, because

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Kris Hiney: I don't want to penalize an exhibitor when they don't need to be penalized, or reward someone that shouldn't be rewarded. Right. And pretty much all of the stock horse world has kind of followed

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Kris Hiney: fairly similar patterns in judging and education? Yeah, I would say over the last 10 years, there's been a concerted effort for all the stock horse breeds to evaluate horses the same way, have the same scoring systems, the same penalty systems.

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Kris Hiney: For different disciplines that we judge, and that's made it a lot easier, not only for judges, so that they remember what they need to use as criteria and the penalties, points to use, but also the exhibitors, so that they're… they understand more of a consistency on what's being looked for in the different classes.

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Kris Hiney: And I'll maybe just ask you a question you don't know the answer to. What about the other things that the horse industry does? So there's the whole hunter Jumper side, and the Arabian side, and all the USCF stuff, like, is it a fairly similar…

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Kris Hiney: Exhibitor-judge education model? Well, I can't speak to all of the disciplines you mentioned there, but I will speak to the ones that I've exhibited in, in the hunter-jumper world and all that. It's not as cut and dry as what we have with some of the scoring systems that we have.

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Kris Hiney: In the stock horse world, and the way in which the judging's done. Dressage, sure, it's pretty… that's pretty… and been like that for years. It's pretty cut and dry about what it is, what the penalties are, and those kinds of things when you're looking at Dressage. But some of the rest of them, there's a little bit more subjectivity to some of it.

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Kris Hiney: It's… they're working at it, trying to make it a little bit better and all that, but…

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Kris Hiney: You know, there's a lot of tradition in the horse industry, and that's the kind of thing you have to kind of work with. That's not a negative thing, but we do need to keep progressing and moving forward and improving.

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Kris Hiney: the quality of the judges, as well as the quality of the exhibitors, because we're getting really, really good horses now, and so we need to judge them appropriately, and the exhibitors need to show them in the correct way. Right, and there's a… I mean, as we all know, there's a fair amount of money in the competition horse world, and exhibitors want

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Kris Hiney: should be fairly assessed, right? They put a lot of time and money into this, so having it a murky black box of, you know, roll the dice in Vegas, that doesn't seem the best way to keep clientele. Right, the more subjectivity you can take out of it to make it where this is exactly what you see and how you need to score it.

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Kris Hiney: the better the exhibitors are going to accept the results and all, and the less controversy you have once you start adding a lot of money to the way the horse is finish in class. Yeah, yeah, because that part's pretty important. Right. Or value. Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: So, we were gonna take this, little tack, because you've decided, like, all these wonderful, judgy things that we're talking about, and you're like, forget that, I'm done. Yeah, that's… I guess you could put it that way, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah,

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Kris Hiney: So, the way I look at it is, I've done different things in my life based on what I wanted to do at that particular time.

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Kris Hiney: And, you know, being a carded judge has been extremely rewarding. I've made a lot of great friends, it's allowed me to travel all over the world to judge and do that, so it's not a negative, but you reach a certain point in time in your life.

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Kris Hiney: When you… when you look at yourself and you go, you know what?

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Kris Hiney: I'm not getting any younger.

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Kris Hiney: I'll just tell you, I'm 66.

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Kris Hiney: And my physical abilities are probably as good as they're gonna get right now. That as I get older, they're not gonna get any better. So if I want to start doing some of the things, like showing horses and doing that in… at the level of competition at which I could probably compete as I get older.

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Kris Hiney: then being a professional and having to go into the open classes, for me, I'm going, you know, that's probably not very appealing, because I want to be going in there with younger exhibitors that,

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Kris Hiney: have better physical abilities, they control their bodies better than I will be as I start getting older.

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Kris Hiney: So I need to kind of look at that and see, where do I want to go? Where do I want to…

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Kris Hiney: Have fun in my life as I get to the older stages, and I decided, you know what? I want to show horses some more, I want to do those fun activities, but I want to do it where I can be competitive.

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Kris Hiney: So, to me, I decided I'm gonna give up my judge's card that I've had for 21 years, and it wasn't an easy decision. And then I also gave up my professional horseman status that I've had for 15 years.

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Kris Hiney: And with the American Pain Horse Association, within 3 years, I can be classified as an amateur. So maybe we should back up, because I don't know that everybody knows that. For a lot of associations, and it's not all, so this is, like, you have to check in with what they are, if you're a carded judge.

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Kris Hiney: Doesn't matter if you ride horses professionally, you are now a professional, right? Right, yeah. You're a professional, so if you want to go show, the only classes you can go in are the open classes. You can't… you're not allowed to go in the amateur classes, because you're a professional.

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Kris Hiney: take funds.

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Kris Hiney: To support what you do as a professional horseman, or as a judge, or as a trainer. So you can't be paid for that and still be an amateur.

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Kris Hiney: But I know along a lot of the amateurs, a lot of them have always argued, like, okay, but judging a horse, is that a little bit different in a professional manner than

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Kris Hiney: Training horses for a living, which is the physical act of teaching horses to do things.

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Kris Hiney: That's true, but if you're the trainer, and you know what the judge is looking for in those particular disciplines, you have an advantage to train that horse where it meets those standards.

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Kris Hiney: And that's what I think if you look around and you see some of these really good trainers, they're also judges. And so they… they know what the judge is being trained to look for.

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Kris Hiney: So, they go out and they train that horse to meet those standards.

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Kris Hiney: And that's… that's the reason I think exhibitors have started to excel more, is because they're seeing what those judges are being trained for. They know what the gates are, because when judging, the first thing you look for, is that a correct gait? So is that a 4-beat walk? Is that a 2-beat jaw? Or trot? Is that a 3-beat canter? You know?

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Kris Hiney: And if it's not, then that's incorrect. So you can't use them, because they're not doing the correct gait. Now, there's a lot of other things that go in there, that's a pretty simplistic look at it, but that's the way judges are taught, is to say, once you call for a gate, then you look to see, okay, who's doing the correct gate in the class?

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Kris Hiney: Then you say, okay, now, which one's doing it

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Kris Hiney: with the most length to stride, hits the ground the softest, the most collected, quietest, and most behaved in the class going around. But if they're four-beating.

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Kris Hiney: at a canter, or a low, then that's not correct, so you can't… you can't use them. Well, I assume the other part, you know, I always think about, are you riding… because there's a lot of pattern classes, you're riding them offensively or defensively. If you're riding them defensively, you're staying out of the penalty box, right? So, like, if you know all your…

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Kris Hiney: penalties, then you know how to, like, oh, I better stop next to the code, right? Well, let me give you this. If you're riding defensively, and you're saying, I'm gonna stay out of the penalty box, then you're gonna score 70. Okay? And can that win… win a lot, right? That could win a class, yeah, it could.

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Kris Hiney: But, once you start adding some degrees of difficulty, that's when you start getting to the plus halves, wants, plus one and a half, or you get to the plus twos, plus threes in the classes that go from

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Kris Hiney: from negative 3 to positive 3, you know, in there. So, you know, you start… you have to add levels of difficulty to really start to win classes and excel and do well. So, yeah, you can be defensive and say, you know, I'm just gonna go at this. Or, if you're watching the class, and you've been scoring in your mind, and you got a pretty good idea that

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Kris Hiney: You know, the best run I've seen is a 68.

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Kris Hiney: if I can stay out of the penalty box and just get a zero for correctness in what I'm doing at the different gates or the different maneuvers, I'm a 70 and I can win. But most of the time, 70…

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Kris Hiney: is not gonna win the club for you. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So, so for you personally, with your… your card, so do you… so you would say you're not competitive with the trainers, but that the associations are, like, you're too competitive

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Kris Hiney: With the amateurs to allow you to play with them.

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Kris Hiney: Now, I wouldn't say…

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Kris Hiney: I would… I would do it this way. As the… with the other professionals, where I am now is I'm probably middle of the pack, okay? If I go into class, I'm probably gonna be anywhere from 2nd to 6th, okay? It's gonna be hard for me

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Kris Hiney: to beat some of these in the events I go in, in the ranch classes and all.

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Kris Hiney: to some of the other trainers, because they just have more physical ability, and in my… for me, that's age. Right. Okay? My age is kind of preventing me from

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Kris Hiney: being as sharp as I was when I was 40, okay? In terms of being able to control body movements, arms, legs, throw the rope at the right time. Roping, you know, that's what I discovered, you know, I'm just not…

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Kris Hiney: it's not there yet to be able to do those kinds of things, and even if I practiced a bunch, at my age, I probably wouldn't get to the point where if I was in a really good roping class, that I wouldn't… I wouldn't win. So, if I don't care about winning, yeah, I'm probably good. But, you know, I like to win just like everybody else does, so I'm looking at where can I be the most competitive?

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Kris Hiney: And that's to go, okay, well, I'm gonna… I'm not gonna judge anymore, and I'm gonna be a professional horseman, meaning I'm not gonna help people and receive money for it, for doing that, and working with the horses or anything like that. Can you still help for free? Yeah, you can help for free, but you can't take any money for it.

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Kris Hiney: But what I'm gonna do, I want to focus on my horses, okay? I want to ride mine… I'm gonna make you help a 4-Hers. Yeah, well, yeah, I can do that now, but I want to ride mine, I want to…

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Kris Hiney: to the best of their ability, and then mine, and then go in the classes where I can be the most competitive. I'm not gonna win all of them at all, you know, because you're riding a live animal.

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Kris Hiney: And in lots of cases, has a mind of their own at certain times, you know? So, you gotta get them broke, you gotta get them trained, and then they gotta perform, and you have to perform in connection with them as one, to be able to get to that top level and win the class, so… Okay. But don't they have age divisions now?

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Kris Hiney: They do have age… for amateurs, they've broken it up where they have different age divisions, you know, they have, like, 3 age divisions.

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Kris Hiney: And also, you can compete at different levels. You know, the regular amateurs, I don't… I won't be able to tell you the age range, because I haven't studied it enough yet. But I do know that they have, like, the, you know, the young amateurs, and then there's the more mature seniors. Okay, the senior amateurs. Right, that can compete together and all that. So, it kind of levels the playing field for them and all that, and gives them an opportunity to go out and have fun in the class.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So, you may not be, you know, physically assured… are you still mentally assured?

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Kris Hiney: I'm pretty mentally sharp, yeah, yeah. Just every now and then when my brain tells my hand to do something, sometimes it doesn't react as quick as I want to. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or I'm riding the horse and going, you know, I need to ask it to do this, and I'm a little late in doing that, so I miss the spot on the maneuver.

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Kris Hiney: Where in a class with a bunch of professionals, you know, that's gonna cost you pretty good. Gotcha. So, but with some amateurs, you know, there's gonna be a little bit of leeway in there, where I may be the only one that gets it closest to the spot, and the rest of them are further away from making the maneuver where it's supposed to be.

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Kris Hiney: So what would you say, for a lot of people, that maybe they're interested in getting a card, but they still really like showing their horse? Like, so…

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Kris Hiney: So what is the option there? Can they judge other things, or is it, you know, if you're taking money for anything…

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Kris Hiney: Just because you have your car doesn't mean you can't show. There's classes for you to show in, it's just that you're competing with the other professionals, okay? So you have to decide, okay, what do I want to do?

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Kris Hiney: When I was getting my car.

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Kris Hiney: I was thinking, you know, I want to be… I want to be a judge. I'm still going to write and do things, but I'm not going to focus as much on writing and spend as much time doing it as a professional trainer. So I have to understand that when I go into class with them, I'm already

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Kris Hiney: at a disadvantage, because I haven't spent the hours and time it takes to get the horse at that very top level. So I was fine with that then.

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Kris Hiney: Because I was gen…

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Kris Hiney: and doing all that, and I got to see all those really good horses, so I know what they're supposed to do.

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Kris Hiney: And I know how they're supposed to do it, and I know how you make them, train them to do it, but the problem is that sometimes it doesn't come out the correct way at the right times, all that, so… So we're gonna lower our standard a little bit. But, I mean.

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Kris Hiney: I would say most horse people would recognize the majority of trainers that

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Kris Hiney: that's their full-time job, probably are going to be better, not all of them, right, than… than amateurs, just because you don't have as much… It's the whole 10,000 hours deal, okay? If you're a professional trainer, and that's your job, that's your way of living.

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Kris Hiney: Then you're gonna spend 10,000 hours doing it, and you're gonna get really good.

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Kris Hiney: or an amateur, you know, they have a day job most of the time that's not in the horse profession, not dealing with riding horses that many hours in a day to get to that 10,000 hours. So you gotta look at that, and that's why the whole amateur,

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Kris Hiney: division exists. It's because you give a place for people that have a love for horses and want to ride horses, but they have other interests and other professions they're devoted to and all that, but yet they can get out on the… at night and on the weekends and ride the horses and have fun and be competitive.

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Kris Hiney: Do you ever see any, like, tr…

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Kris Hiney: trainers that are like, screw this, I want to just be an amateur and give up their… Well, you see them do that as they get older, okay? I know a lot of trainers that once they got into their 70s, you know, they gave all that up, they had car…

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Kris Hiney: and all that, and they gave all that up to just ride as amateurs, because they're to the point now, I want to enjoy the rest of my life, and I want to do the things that I have fun doing, and I've always rode horses, and I like being in the showring.

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Kris Hiney: And I like winning, but in that other division, I couldn't achieve that last thing as winning, so maybe now I have a better opportunity

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Kris Hiney: to be in that top 10, or be in that top 5, you know, in those classes. So, a lot of trainers do that when they get older, they'll,

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Kris Hiney: let their cards and stuff go away, and then become amateurs. So do you have any big, like, big life philosophies? Like, when it…

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Kris Hiney: career versus, you know, passion for the recreational… when is it time to, like… Well, I think that's… I think that's, on an individual basis.

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Kris Hiney: Mine came to me, I've been thinking about this for a couple of years, you know, it's just that…

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Kris Hiney: as you get older, you know, things don't work the way they did when you were younger and all that. Oh, no, I know it. And we all… yeah, I mean, and we all try to stay fit and exercise and do things and all that, but you just reach a time where you say, well, you know, I'm winding down my career.

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Kris Hiney: it's not going to be that much longer that I retire from my job within the college. Did they know that? This is breaking news. Oh, no, it's not breaking… they… I have a lot of people ask me, what are you retiring? And what I… the answer I give them is.

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Kris Hiney: said, well, you know, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Okay. You know, so it's close, and so I'm doing this thing about what am I going to do when I retire? What do I want to do? What would I enjoy? Well, what have I enjoyed in my professional life? I enjoyed working with horses. I was riding horses. I enjoyed being around horse people.

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Kris Hiney: So, you know, I want to… I want to go, and I want to do that. I want to ride horses, I want to have fun, I want to enjoy them.

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Kris Hiney: So… my thinking is, I think I can do that, and enjoy more as an amateur.

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Kris Hiney: than I would as a professional horseman, or judge, or trainer. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: But you're still allowed to sell horses, right? That doesn't count against you. Oh, yeah, I can buy and sell horses and all that. That's not going to count against you at all. Okay, because that would be pretty binding. Yeah, no, no. Can't make a profit on that horse. No, no, no. Beat some tax laws and go sideways real quick, so… Right.

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Kris Hiney: Well, any other big, big thoughts about, you know, this new, exciting portion of…

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Kris Hiney: of your life, which is gonna be focused on fun. Just wish me luck. Okay. No, I think it'd be a lot of fun. I'm kind of looking forward to it. You know, like I said, the hard part was making a decision, but once it's made, I felt really good about it.

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Kris Hiney: this is good, and I'm gonna go with it, and I'm gonna pursue it, and I'm gonna have fun, and… Pursue it. It's just another chapter in your life as you progress through it. There you go.

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Kris Hiney: They get philosophical. Yeah, well, no, we can get deep here. Any other big, big thoughts that, like… Gonna have to start showing minis so that you just… Well, I don't know about that. Nothing against minis, but I don't know about that. You can still ride them for now. Right, yeah, yeah. And the other thing is, you know.

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Kris Hiney: you're probably gonna reach a point… I'm probably gonna reach a point where…

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Kris Hiney: jumping a horse is not going to be something that doctors are gonna let you do. So I want to do that more. I enjoy that, I want to do that more while I still can. You know, because it's… it's something about flying through the air that's just kind of exhilarating. It's fun. Yeah. But then when that balance…

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Kris Hiney: starts to go, or the ground starts to look a little harder. Yeah. Maybe the horse needs to be a little more trustworthy, so… That's right, yeah. Yeah, maybe not be schooling the greenies. Right, exactly. Okay. Well, I appreciate you taking, some time today to visit with us about this next exciting chapter. Maybe encourage some other horse people out there to

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Kris Hiney: I don't know whether they should be thinking about getting a card and being professional for a while, getting really in-depth into the judging, or…

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Kris Hiney: Thinking, hey, maybe time for me to have a little fun.

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Kris Hiney: All right, well, we appreciate it, and again, this has been another episode of our Tack Box Talk, Horse Stories with a Purpose.