Ep. 114 - Road to the Horse Wild Card Winner Jona "JR" Robles
Jona Robles is the face, the voice, and the brains behind JR Horse Training based out of Sherwood, Oregon. He specializes in the implementation of natural horsemanship in his horse training to cater a program to horses of a variety of disciplines. While we have a lot to talk about in regards to reining horses, colt starting and eventing horses - there is a lot that JR has done over the years in horse training.
Growing Up
“My story is very different, very unique,” says Jona. “I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and had played sports my whole life.” A dad that was never really in his life, Jona as the oldest often fell into the father-figure role. He attended the University of Oregon as a walk on as a kicker for the football team. That was his “thing” and he wanted to play sports for the Ducks. While short-lived, he could have gone to a different school, but he liked the UofO so he decided to stay.
While he had always wanted to go to the NBA, he ran into some professional athletes from Mexico at a tournament, the last year before college and went down there and play college basketball. His mom thought he was crazy, so he went home to finish school, and then went back to Mexico to play professional basketball at the time at the age of 22 years old. At this point, he had still never been introduced to horses.
At 24 years old, he was trying to impress a girl he had just met, and told her he knew about horses. A smaller barn with a lot of stalls, she told him she was going to let a bunch of horses in to let them go into their stalls. Opening the sliding door, thirteen plus horses ran into the barn and he freaked out, literally running up a stall wall! She immediately knew he had no idea what he was doing at that point and asked if he wanted to learn.
She started him with stall cleaning. That was 13 years ago and fast forward, he’s one of the competitors at Road to the Horse. He travels the country giving clinics and horse expos - “it’s unreal!”
Deciding to be a Horse Trainer
“I went to school for sociology and psychology,” says Jona, who believes that ties into his relationship with horses and how you interact with people and vice versa. Everything that he had learned about people, he applied to horses, and then combined it with his athletic hand-eye coordination.
The first year of getting into horses, the market was really bad and so people were giving away horses. The first horse was a “gelding” on Craigslist, but he was quickly called that his gelding was not a gelding, he was in fact still a stud. That was Jona’s introduction to the horse world which was someone lying to him about a horse.
After working the horse for three to four months, someone offered to buy the horse. The person then said, “I’ll give you $5,000.” Sold. In his head, he thought “that was easy money.” He got another and trained it, sold it. Then people started asking if they could send their horses to him as he was having success with horses that nobody else wanted. But never, in a million years, was he thinking that he wanted to be a horse trainer because he had his degree and the thought of leaving his job at the OHSU Legacy Hospital as a Patient Advocate was a non-negotiable.
“There was a lot of heavy stuff, there were a lot of things that I would take home at night and think about when I was trying to go to sleep,” says Jona. “I was in a suit and tie every day. The more I was in an office, the more I was thinking of the horses and wanting to spend more time at the barn… I had no plan, I just aid I was going to quit my job.”
His mom thought he was crazy at the time, but his thought was that his degree would always be there if he wanted to go back to it. He leased a facility in 2015 and was the stall cleaner, feeder, and trainer. That’s when people started to send more and more horses to him. For over a year and a half, he would travel and charge $25/hour to ride. “There were horses that I had no point in being around at that point in my career.”
Some of them were highly questionable but he always said, “yup!” “I think people felt bad for me,” he said with a laugh. “They would make me lunch or bring me food.”
Competing in local colt starting competitions, Jona qualified for the finals at the NFR in 2016 where he competed and was the Reserve World Champion. That’s when sponsorships had started to come through because it was the first big level event he had done that people could be a part of.
The first sponsorship was Team Equine in Molalla, Oregon. They were one of the firsts that had reached out and they are still working together.
Then entered this lady from Washington who asked him to start dressage horses. At first he wasn’t sure, but she offered enough money for him to relocate his business, they ended up starting 60-70 colts in the first ten months. Big, strong, sensitive and ready to go - these colts made him learn a lot and a lot quickly as he tried not to die. There’s still a lot of that that he uses for it.
“I have only been showing three and a half years,” says Jona. That interest is what got him into reining cow horse and reining. That’s now the route he wants to go down specifically.
The last three years have been incredibly surreal, because it happened so quickly. “Last year, around October, not a lot of people know about this, but I took a break for about a month. I actually almost completely walked away from horses and quit horses completely because I was so burnt out - not from the horses aspect, but from the people aspect,” says Jonah. “It was hard. I kept saying yes to everybody and definitely overworking myself… I think the people around me at the time, probably weren’t the best people to have around me. It wasn't a positive environment so, for me, I kept thinking it would work and kept trying to make it work… I decided that I was going to tell everybody to just go home.”
Jona thought all of his clients would be cool and have another trainer. Each of them said take your time whether it be four or six months, and then we will bring the horses back. At the time, he didn’t think that he was going to be back in six months and was planning on going to an office job with his degree.
His biggest rock is his mom and she made a list with him of the pros and cons. The horses were a positive, they were therapeutic for him. He headed out to see places he had always wanted to see. One of those big moments was a sunrise over the Grand Canyon where something came over him and he was emotional, tearing up, and just had a moment where he felt like while he was on vacation, he was getting different signs to go back to horses.
“I was sitting on the beach in Miami, and I was like ‘What am I doing?’” That night he texted everyone that he was coming back and he hadn’t even been gone for two and a half weeks at the time. “I had saved quite a bit throughout the years so, for me, I knew I had six months to a year to keep traveling and not care. I had the freedom to do it, but the fact that I kept thinking about it even though I had the freedom to leave and travel for a bit, it really showed me that it was what I wanted to do.”
When he came back, every single client had come back. All of the assistants had been let go so he was starting over again. Coming back, he had the opportunity for a fresh start to do a good job. He wants those assistants to come to him organically instead of posting for a position that he would have to filter through. In the first month, he had three to four people that wanted to be a part of this.
The head assistant, Callie, moved from Montana after graduating from Montana State and was working at a Dude Ranch. At one point she had said, “I am going to work for you one day” and he didn’t believe her. She was his pen wrangler at the Road to the Horse. Another assistant is from CalPoly’s program that now lives in Oregon and works.
People walk into the barn and people always ask about the vibe and energy - how it almost feels unreal. There are days that feel long, but the team that they have now Jona genuinely loves.
The other big part of his internal peace was that he started setting up boundaries on horses. He made a public announcement was that he was no longer going to take problem horses and now has 25 nice horses in his program that are ready to go. The sponsors that he has have all reached out to him and the sponsorship with Bob Saddlery because they are a staple in the western industry so to be a part of that team is unreal. To be even associated with those names is not something he ever thought would happen.
Recently, a friend that also trains horses, told him that he should be so grateful because he would have missed out on so much. Traveling around the east coast in clinics and doing large expos, he got to ride with big name specialists, purchased a horse from one of his mentors and icons, and competed in his first NRHA derby as well. Not everything has been all positive in the last three years, but mindset is a big part of that.
Handling Burn Out
“I like my space. I like being on my own. I can go to a restaurant and have dinner on my own,” says Jona. At the time of burnout, friends and family wold invite him to events and to gatherings and he would push people away more than normal. He was irritable, not sleeping and lost a lot of weight from stress. “I think that the moment I realized I needed to walk away, I was on a horse and the horse didn’t do anything that I would have normally focused on, but at the time the horse did what it did and I remember getting frustrated. I remember, and not a proud moment, that I took it out on the horse and them I remember catching myself and realizing it wasn’t the horses fault. I got off the horse, tied him in the stall and took a walk - that was the moment I knew I shouldn’t be doing this.”
One of the hardest thing sin horsemanship is controlling your emotions and that was something Jona had always been good at. That moment, he was not. It wasn’t anything bad, but he remembers getting into the horse more than he normally would do. That was the huge red flag. The lack of sleep, loss of weight, isolation, etc. that was adding up but when he caught himself heavy handed with the horse he absolutely stepped away.
There are a lot of people that train a couple horses or full barns and all of those trainers, at some point, have stepped away. Colt starting specifically can be a very thankless job if the ground work isn’t done. There are always expectations that are completely unrealistic.
Rules when working with colts:
I don’t take horses for 30 days, I have a minimum of four months. It already sets a timeline that is longer and I don’t feel like I have that 30 days timeline.
I tell clients that I may not put a foot in the stirrup for the first 3-4 weeks if the horse is touchy. I always say it may take a little bit longer where before I would try to push things to keep clients happy. That was a mistake for myself and the horse.
Taking my time and being slower with stuff.
If I catch myself thinking I’m going to get heavy-handed, I check myself way before it even goes that direction.
In working with so many horses a day, it offers the opportunity that I get to read day-in, day-out. When I m starting a colt, I can start doing this with my eyes closed because I can feel stuff as it gets easier. At the Road to the Horse, it’s similar but you do have a time constraint of one hour and forty-five minutes in three sessions before you have to preview them in the competition. At that point, you can see with some of the competitors, get into the pressure of the competition and things are starting to go really quick when either the competitor or the horse start to shut down.
As soon as I start thinking that way, the horse will start going that way. Telling yourself to slow down.
Road to the Horse
This year they had six competitors and the people selected are like American Idol where they select a certain amount of people and narrow it down to another certain amount of people. Road to the Horse was something he had wanted to be a part of ever since he knew about it but he didn’t know how to get his name into it. One of his clients had VIP tickets to watch it every year so when he got the call that he was in the finals of the people selected, he had to call and tell them.
There were fifty to start with and then they narrowed it to twenty and then went to twelve. This whole thing behind the scenes, Jona was freaking out because he knew that he had been a part of the final people but it wasn’t something he would publicize or market. He still couldn’t announce it even if he wasn’t announced because he had a non disclosure agreement signed. They told him they’d call him within two weeks while the panel of judges selected the six contestants.
“I broke down and started crying,: “says Jona. I knew about two months before he announced it publicly which kind of killed him because he wanted to announce and tell people but he couldn’t. The six competitors were all over the globe; New Zealand, Brazil, Kentucky, Texas, etc. Jona is the first person chosen from the west coast to be in the Road to the Horse.
The first call he made was his non-horse person mom and while she kind of knew what it was, she was excited for him knowing it was a goal for him. When he got off the call with her, he ran in to the barn to tell the assistants and clients where they were all hugging each other and excited.
The Contest
It’s a random draw out of a hat and that’s the order of selection for the seven horses they brought. The horses came in on Wednesday with the competition starting on Friday so they got to see the horses for a few days before the contest. The horse Jona took he didn’t want. He looked mean in the pictures and was pushing horses around in the pens and he had a big gash on his nose with stitches in his nose from a gash hauling in.
They did such a good job stitching him up that people couldn’t tell he had been stitched - which is what they named the horse: Stitch. The horses that Jona wanted kept getting picked. There were two horses left; the other horse was kicking at the other horses and knowing he had to pick up back legs as a part of the contest, it was Stitch.
It turned out well with Jona being the first person on his horse at the competition. These horses were all three years old and had never been handled. They were big boned, strong horses, that looked like four and five year olds. To be able to touch a horse, get on a horses back, within 25 minutes was a big move. A lot of people were claiming he drew an easy horse despite being the second to last pick.
Part of what you are judged on is the difficulty of the horse “I am really confident in what i do, but sometimes I do think I make it look easier than what it really should be so I don’t get the full points of difficulty,” says Jona with a laugh. As this was happening, we could hear comments here and there about drawing an easy horse. The last round the horse started bucking with me and Jona was actually on the microphone so he showcased that the horse wasn’t easy, he was just easy about moving that horse around and navigating in tough moments. As a part of that, Craig Cameron a legend in Road to the Horse himself, called to compliment him on it.
“If I had approached that horse with more energy, he would have shut down on me,” says Jona.
In the first two rounds of three, you get one hour and forty-five minute run with mandatory breaks. If you don't take those breaks, you will get docked points. Meeting day in and day out for the days leading up, Jona and his assistants had binders full of notes, notecards, and more with information on how they were going to handle the strategy. Lots of great other clinicians reached out and offered advice on how to handle the strategy and things to watch out for.
“My team had a huge role in this whole thing. All I had to worry about was the horse itself. I didn’t have to worry period,” says Jona. Callie had two stopwatches to watch for the events, her ten minutes in the round pen, and that she didn’t touch the horse - there were almost twelve pages of rules with information on docked points.
Three competitors went in a heat and you had five judges that were standing around the center of the three round pens. One judge was assigned to watch each pen the whole time. The point system was by the five judges but they dropped the highest and the lowest for the point section to take out the outliers. Knowledge of the scoring was a big part of the strategy.
A meeting prior to the competition with the judges was interesting because it wasn’t just the starting the colt. You also had interviews with RFD-TV, meet & greets, questions and press stuff - the four or five days that you had there, there was always something. It wasn’t just hanging out and starting your colt.
“My assistants had never been a part of that, so I think that was a bit overwhelming for them,” says Jona, who loved having them be a part of it. “The hardest part was the last day.”
The Last Day
Ahead by 42 points, Jona is super competitive so he had the numbers engraved in his head. In these competitions, it’s not a whole lot of spread. On the last day, they went one-by-one, with 20 minutes in the round pen and 30 minutes to complete the obstacle course. Sequestered back behind the stadium with a room with no tv, no cell phone and no electronic anything. They had the rule book and books they could read.
Since he was the last one, Jona was back there for probably five hours. He could hear, next door, the stadium when people were going. You’d hear them call a name, the footsteps, and then the reactions of the crowd. Trying to not focus on the scorers that coincided with the cheers, he was alternating between praying, stretching, and going through the rulebook.
They didn’t know certain obstacles that would be in that portion of the challenge which is why they had them back there. When they finally called his name, they came in and grabbed him. As he was walking out, the bodyguard that was with him opened the door, and she ushered him through the door. Through a ton of tunnels and then coming into the stadium through the side door and people were trying to high five and wish him good luck but the security guards told him to put his head down and keep walking because they didn’t want people to tell him what had happened.
“I go to the side of the arena and Dan James was there, he shakes my hand and he pulls me up,” says Jona. “We were nose-to-nose and he goes, ‘This is yours to win, don’t eff it up!” No pressure.
That was the first time through the whole competition that I had been nervous because of the lock up. Walking into the round pen, that was the first time that Stitch had shied away from me instead of being near me. He had walked in with a lot of energy that th horse wanted no part of but after ten minutes of talking to the crowd he calmed down.
A lot of people watching felt like he was giving a clinic and Jona put on a show. “I was doing rollbacks on the wall, he was getting back into leads, starting to spin, and wanting to stop. For a horse that had had three and a half hours under saddle and doing these things were unreal.”
Jona was one of the only or the only person to win all three rounds of the Road to Horse competition since they have been doing it this way. Listening to what people and what they were saying, what Chris Cox was saying about him, was a very humbling and amazing moment for him.
Before Jona had even found out that he had won, his clients had purchased Stitch to bring him back to Oregon. Now he gets paid to work with him!
Kentucky Contest
Fourteen colts have been selected already for the four competitors in Kentucky in March. “My plan is to take Stitch with me and he’ll be my saddle horse, in the round pen with me, getting to start that next colt.” While this isn’t a requirement, it’s something that Jona thought would be really cool. This is the first time that all four competitors in Road to the Horse history are bringing colts from previously competitoins to the finals. Contestants this year are Guy McLane, Mike Majors, and Cole Cameron.
DEEP THOUGHTS ON THE RODEO TRAIL
For a lot of people trying to get in this industry, that as much as we are working with horses and the animals themselves, each animal has an owner and accepting that is big because clients are a big part of the industry. Sometime people suck. Even for Jona when he posts something and there are negative comments, he’d be lying if he said it didn’t bother him. “I could have 99 positive comments and 1 negative one and for some reason, I’ll hold on to that negative one,” says Jona. “I have done a better job this year of letting it go.”
Prepare yourself for that kind of negativity because the more success that comes your way, the more negativity you will get. You have to run a business with 25 horses, plus 5 assistants, plus traveling the country for clinics, expos and competitions. Being able to have some sort of balance is key. Work ethic has to be second to none and work your butt off and it pays off in the end.
The way that you treat people is huge. You never know who you are going to run into where that at some point you may want to do business with. Always treat someone with respect, even if they don’t treat you the same.