Featured in Cascade Horseman magazine

In a Class of her Own
By Sheri Forrest

In an increasingly competitive reined cow horse industry, Sandy Collier has earned her right of passage. The only woman to ever win the National Reined Cow Horse Association.’s Open Snaffle Bit Futurity Championship, she has made a deep mark in a tough profession largely dominated by men.

A glance into her past reveals that she is as well rounded as the vaquero cowboys for whom the reined cow horse event was
modeled. From her classic east coast upbringing to her buckaroo days spent breaking mustangs in the Los Padres back-country, Sandy Collier has acquired a style…and a class…that is all her own.

Born in Massachusetts, and raised in Rye, NY, Sandy was genetically wired, as she puts it, for a life with horses. Her mother had grown up riding, and both of her parents supported their daughter’s interest. “I was in my first horse show when I was five-years-old,” Sandy remembered.

Her earliest goal, she recalls, was to win a contest in which the first prize was a horse! “I remember playing in this bingo contest, where the prize was this Pinto horse named Cracker Jack,” she said. “I just had to have him!”

Over the years, her parents continued to indulge her love of horses, and kept her in the saddle one way or another. “My folks would buy me a horse, and then we’d always end up selling it for more than we paid,” she remembered. “That’s how I kind of traded up.” Growing up in the eastern region of our country, Sandy says it was a natural that she spent most of her youth riding English and competing in the cross-country three-day-events. “That’s what you did when you grew up on the east coast,” she pointed out. “There wasn't’t a whole lot of cow horse or reining in that area back then. It was hunter-jumpers and dressage, for the most part.”

But the foundation certainly lent itself to the style with which Collier rides a horse today.In reined cow horse circles, she is known for being a very eloquent and “pretty” rider. “I think it’s because of that early experience,” said Sandy. “It really influenced the way I learned to sit a horse.”

Having graduated high school at the age of sixteen, Collier spent some time in Vermont before heading to the west coast, where she landed on a ranch starting and training Mustangs. “We needed the horses for one of the ranches in the back country,” explained Sandy. “We wanted them to be rugged because nothing else could stay sound back there. The Mustangs were Spanish Barbs, and they were wild and tough…and generally four or five years old when I got them! They had never even seen a human being…it was pretty western.” She explained that she would typically start three or four head at a time - then when they were coming along pretty well, she would “head-to-tail” them and head off for a weeklong trip into the back-country to take them to the remote ranch. “By the time we got there, they were pretty broke,” she chuckled.

After spending a few years living the life of a true buckaroo, Collier settled down on a four thousand acre avocado and cattle ranch on the southern California coast, just north of Santa Barbara. It was there that she became involved in the cow horses, and even ran a breeding operation. “We bought a herd of Quarter Horses, one of them being Leo Bar,” she said. “That was really when I seriously changed direction from my english riding days to western. We had cattle and cow horses, and Doug Ingersoll was right down the road.” It was the next logical step, she explained, to start showing.

After several years riding with Doug and refining her own skills, Sandy went to work for cutter, Tom Shelley, in the Santa Ynez Valley region of California. One year later, in 1980, Sandy hung out her own shingle and Sandy Collier Training Stable was born. And she has been in the Santa Ynez Valley ever since. “I have been doing exactly what I’m doing now, everyday, for the past twenty-seven years…of course, I hope that I’m getting a little better at it!” she mused.

Her rugged background also proved to be a significant asset in her career. “I learned how to do so many things that have served me so well in my profession. Back then, everything we wanted (to have), we pretty much had to make. I learned how to braid rawhide, how to make saddles, and things like that.” She added, “I still nail on a shoe when it comes off, and I still do a lot of my own vet work.” Today, Sandy is one of the most successful reined cow horse trainers in the NRCHA. She became the first and only woman to ever win the NRCHA Open Snaffle Bit Futurity Championship, when she rode Miss Rey Dry to the title in 1993. This was one of the wins closest to Sandy’s heart, along with winning the AQHA World Championship in 2002 on Sheza Shinette.

Among her many wins over the years, this past 2006 show season proved successful for Collier as well, when she won the Idaho Reined Cow Horse Futurity on MC Pepolena Play, owned by Diane Ceresola, and was the Reserve Open Champion on Ima Chic Please, owned by Michael and Debra Brautovich. Sandy also earned the top two positions in the Ladies Division of the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity, this time winning the Championship on Ima Chic Please and the Reserve title on MC Pepolena Play. By the end of the season, Collier had earned over $86,000 in 2006, to bring her lifetime earnings to well over $633,000.

Of the many talented horses she has ridden in her career, her favorite, admits Sandy, was the mare she won the AQHA World on…Sheza Shinette, owned by Nancy Crawford. “We called her Norma Jean. She was just a 110 percent kind of girl,” she said fondly. “From the get-go she just always wanted to try real hard, and always knew where every foot was all the time.”

Sheza Shinette proved she had extra fortitude when, after winning the AQHA World, she contracted shipping fever on her tripback to California and nearly died. “The vets said she would probably never compete again because of damage to her lungs, and that she’s be lucky to survive,” said Collier. “But she kept trying to get better, and eventually went on to compete again and, later, to have babies. She’s just the biggest-hearted horse, a real survivor.”

While the pair earned the AQHA World Championship in Jr. Working Cow Horse in 2002, it was at the Snaffle Bit Futurity the year before, that Sandy first felt she had a winner. “She had won the prelims by seven and a half points,” she remembered. “Then she lost a cow in the finals!” With a never say die attitude, Sandy stepped up one of her other futurity horses, Diamond J Star, to win the 2001 NRCHA Open Reserve Futurity Championship. “I had lost a cow on supposedly my best horse, and I knew Diamond J Star had to step up to the plate. And he did!”

While she admits her mother may have wished she had chosen a different career, Sandy said there was never really a time that she purposely decided to become a horse trainer. “It just sort of evolved,” she said. “But it took some time for me to trust that I could make a living at it.” While to the casual on-looker, her success had been rapid early on, it still took Sandy a bit of time to believe it was going to last. Not truly sure if she was going to have enough business, she worked part-time as an Emergency Medical Technician for nearly ten years, before devoting her full attention to horse training.

“I had a lot of medical experience in my past, and even spent some time working on a rescue ski patrol and stuff like that.” She also spent a period of time working in the emergency room in a Santa Ynez hospital. “I have always enjoyed emergency medicine, and probably could have gone that way. It just wasn't’t my passion.”

She admits that she enjoys being self-employed, if nothing else, for the proverbial luxury of making your own schedule. “You like to think you can take a day off if you want one,” said Sandy. “But the reality is, that you can never really have one.” When it comes to being a woman in a profession dominated by her male peers, she admits it has been an uphill climb at times. “It’s certainly not the easiest thing,” laughed Collier. “If I had known how hard it was going to be, I’am not sure I would have signed up,” she joked.

On a more serious note, Collier says that her chosen line of work most definitely has its challenges. “First of all, it’s just darned hard work,” she points out. “No matter where you are on the food chain of horse trainers, you’re still throwing hay around, loading cattle, fixing flat tires and, when you have a naughty horse, it’s not like you can call someone up and have them come get up on him.” She added, “Physically it’s very demanding.” According to Collier, another challenge surrounding a career training horses involves the commitment. “If you want to excel in anything, you have to give a 110 percent (effort)," she explained. “Excelling in this industry means there’s not much room for anything else…meaning marriage and family.

Guys are expected to earn a living, and so they manage a marriage and a family in the context of a training program. For a woman, it doesn't’t usually work like that.” Having been married once before, Sandy believes all her time spent on the road with so much focus on competition left little time to fulfill the traditional role usually expected of a wife. “It’s been a lot of sacrifice that way,” she points out.

Regarding the reasons behind her career choice, Sandy believes she has chosen it for the continuous challenge it presents. “It is an industry constantly evolving, and constantly requiring you to get better and smarter. There isn’t a day that goes by that the horses don’t teach me something,” she said. “At every show, if I’m not riding one of my horses, I’m sitting at the practice pen watching somebody. You just never stop learning. I think as we evolve - and I’ve seen it over a thirty-year period – there’s so much more thought that goes into how to make it easier on the horses…how they think and how they learn.” In recollection, she added, “When I first came into it, the trend was more to force the horses to submit. Today it’s so very different. If you don’t stay abreast of the times and keep honing your skills, and riding smarter, not necessarily harder, you’re going to be just treading water in this business. It’s a continual challenge. That’s what I really like about this sport.” Then she said, “There are a lot of really smart, well-educated people in our industry that could certainly be at the top of many different types of professions. But I think those that stay, love it because it is a challenge both mentally and physically.”

One of Sandy’s concerns about her chosen industry, however, revolves around the increasingly popular practice of cloning that has emerged in the performance horse breeding business. “I’m not really sure where this is going. While I believe in evolution, I’m a firm believer in not messing with nature. If we have the wherewithal to create a better horse, I’m all for that. But the problems we’re starting to see with Osteochondrosis (OCD) in stifles, Hereditary Equine Regional Dermal Asthenia (HERDA), and those types of things occurring in an ever-shrinking gene pool is a real concern,” emphasized Sandy. “I’m sure if we start seeing a lot of serious problems, the industry will do an about-face and make a change. But, there are sure things that make you wonder where we might find ourselves in ten more years with these horses.” She was adamant to point out, however, that while these may very well be problems in the future, the industry is breeding better and better horses, and the prospect of how athletic they may be in ten years is also very exciting, given how far they have come in the past decade.

Regarding advice to young trainers wanting to make their way in the reined cow horse industry, Sandy suggests they first assess their level of commitment. “Don’t even think about being in this business if you don’t have a tremendous self-motivated work ethic,” she stressed. “You need to be willing to work really, really hard and to keep putting one foot in front of the other and be resilient.” She points out that there is a certain degree of thick skin one needs to survive. “There will always be people in this (or any) industry with opinions about what someone else is doing. And, if you have trouble picking yourself up when something goes wrong and dusting yourself off, it can be a very difficult place to make a living.” She adds that it is also imperative to stay very open to learning, no matter how much success one has. “I go to other people’s clinics all the time,” admits Sandy. “Or if I see someone getting something done better than I am, I’m right there asking questions.” She added, “When I started in this business, everything was a big ‘ol secret. Today, lots of people are willing to share their knowledge. I would suggest that a young trainer get a job with a trainer whose style and expertise they admire. And leave their ego at the door!” It certainly seems that Sandy has practiced what she preaches and is all for other trainers learning all they can to improve their skills.

She admits that one of her favorite things is teaching, and she does so at roughly a dozen clinics throughout the United States and abroad each year. She also has produced several training videos, and has plans to produce more in the near future. In addition, she has a book coming out later this year that will focus on training techniques. “I love teaching and sharing my knowledge,” she said. “It only makes life easier on the horses. Anything that accomplishes that is good in my book.”