It’s one thing to juggle a career and horses. It’s another when you’re juggling three careers. Dr. Kathy Grimes has found a way to marry horses into all facets of her life – as a veterinarian, horse breeder and professional barrel racer.

Her dream – the dream of any barrel racer, for that matter – of making it to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo came to fruition last December in the sweetest of ways. With her at the Thomas & Mack Center were her two homebred mares, second-generation efforts of her family’s breeding program.

Kathy is one of those unique people who has seemingly endless energy, focus and drive. She works with equal zeal in all of her professions. Her path is a truly inspiring lesson to stay the course and pursue your passions.

The Early Years

When i grew up, we always had horses to ride and competed at gymkhanas through high school,” Kathy recalls. “I only competed one year in college rodeo at Washington State University; I really didn’t have any extra time, since I was preparing to go to vet school.

“Ever since I was little, I enjoyed school and loved animals, so from early junior high, I had decided to focus on my path on becoming a veterinarian.”

After completing her veterinary degree, Kathy started a mixed practice out of the back of her truck in rural Colville, Washington, which eventually became a clinic. She enjoyed the variety and the clients she worked with and began carving out a little time so she could resume barrel racing.

“Beaus Scoop Of Sun was a stallion that my dad owned, and I started to run him locally,” Kathy says. “We bred him to a couple mares, including one my sister owned: Jodalito Cielo by Gold Sun Spot, who my sister had barrel raced on successfully but had to retire due to arthritis.”

The result of this cross was Do It For Beau, aka “Moonie,” who earned more than $49,000 in barrel racing at all levels for Kathy. The 2000 brown mare traces back to American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame racehorse sires Mr Bar None, Coy’s Bonanza and Azure Te (TB).

“She is an incredible athlete with explosive speed, agility and a brilliant mind,” Kathy says of Moonie.

Naturally, Kathy wanted to raise some babies out of the mare.

“In 2006, I was running Moonie at the rodeos and I had always wanted to learn how to do embryo transfers, so I decided to try it with her. I chose Judge Cash for the sire because I admired some of the great rodeo horses that were running at the time, such as Amy Dale Coelho’s Quick Judge and Brenda Mays’ Judge Buy Cash. I ended up getting two embryos and I was hooked!”

One of the foals that Moonie produced from that first embryo transfer was KG Justiceweexpected, aka “Issy.” The standout futurity, derby and rodeo mare has current lifetime earnings of $323,000 and took Kathy all the way to the 2017 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo and most recently won more than $35,000 at RFD TV’s The American Rodeo 2018.

Dominating the 2017 Winter Run

The day after Christmas, Kathy left home in Medical Lake, Washington, and headed to Arizona. She had a futurity gelding that she wanted to run in Buckeye, so she set up camp down there before heading to Texas for the winter rodeos.

At the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, Kathy pocketed a hefty $12,817 and came away with the reserve champion honors. She went on to take second in San Antonio, good for $23,474, and she had another stellar second-place finish at Rodeo Houston, scoring $28,000 aboard 7-year-old KG Blazin Nine Oh. “Ruby” is another home-raised superstar out of Moonie. Before her Houston debut, the 2010 sorrel Blazin Jetolena daughter had only made three jackpot runs, hitting barrels each time. She was also coming off rehab for a high suspensory injury.

“Seven long months of rehab from a soft-tissue injury and Ruby makes her return to rodeo at Houston and gets the win!” Kathy posted to social media. Coincidentally, the same day as Kathy’s Rodeo Houston Super Series win, Ruby’s first foal of 2017, KG Money Talks (“Roo”), was born via embryo transfer back in Washington.

When the streak was done, Kathy had won second at three of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association’s leading winter rodeos – Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston – to push her season earnings to nearly $80,000 in only three months.

Kathy’s preferred schedule for rodeoing lasts from December to April. When returning to her veterinary practice in Washington, she gets back to the business of her barrel racing breeding program and equine reproduction-centered practice.

In 2017, Kathy bred a total of 85 mares, which includes 20 of her own. She did 10 embryo transfers and manages recipient mares by having clients bring their own or using some of the herd at Outback Stallion Station. Kathy markets top-notch barrel racing prospects from weanlings to 2-year-olds and has them available for purchase at her place in Medical Lake.

“It is nice to be able to give my barrel horses a break during breeding season,” she says. “Breeding mares is a seven-days-a-week job. By the time breeding season is over, we are ready to go back to rodeoing.”

By mid-June, the breeding season is winding down and Kathy starts going back to some circuit rodeos and bigger rodeos, including Reno and Calgary.

“I think the summer rodeos are harder than the winter rodeos for me; I don’t like the heat and the amount of driving,” she admits. “I went to three rodeos over the Fourth of July run.”

Over the course of the 2017 summer rodeos, Kathy added another $30,000 to her total and retained her top-10 standing in the WPRA and also qualified for the Columbia River Circuit Finals.

Until recently, Kathy had been running both mares in a snaffle bit but made a bit change because she was concerned that she didn’t have enough control at the gate on Issy. She did switch to a short-shank Dave Elliot bit for both mares. She only has three bits in her trailer. Both mares will sometimes “blow” off the third barrel, which does cost extra time. Kathy doesn’t believe this is a “bit” issue but more of her issue. She also ran the mares barefoot until recently.

“When I run, I try to really use my body primarily and try not to pull on their faces because I feel like that slows them down. My goal is to have runs where they are basically turning on their own. It’s no secret that Issy and I don’t always have the prettiest runs. We can make mistakes and get by barrels and blow off the third and still be fast. I don’t quite understand it sometimes, either, but keeping the forward motion and never slowing down works for her.”

The 2016 Columbia Circuit Finals, typically a 12-second pattern, was a wake-up moment for Kathy with Issy.

“We came around the third barrel and she blew off it a little but I wasn’t too worried about it, so I was encouraging her to just keep running. Somehow, on the run home, she dove out and went on the wrong side of the second barrel. There were two women raking and it all happened so fast that I couldn’t do anything about it,” Kathy recalls. “One of the rakers had her back to me and she just barely got out of the way as we ran between the barrel and the wall! I was horrified because I could have severely injured them if we would have run them over!

“To this day, I can’t figure out what caused her to jump out there on the wrong side because she had never done that before. But afterwards, I thought, ‘Oh my God, we need to fix our third barrel!’

“I went back and tried for several months to work on it and ended up making things worse. Then I tried to find a ‘happy medium’ with Issy because even though I don’t totally understand the physics, we were faster when I let her alone.

“Her first barrel is usually not very round; it’s more like a very fast roll back and her second is usually beautiful and round like it’s supposed to be. On our way to the third, I wonder if I get in a hurry to get around it and send more energy into her, then we don’t complete it as tightly as I would like to.”

Just as analytical as she is about how she runs her patterns on Issy, Kathy knows the type of arena that best suits the mare, too.

“I ride Issy the best in small indoor pens. For me, I feel the most comfortable with her and small patterns,” Kathy notes, adding, “Issy is so fast and the challenge for me is making sure my timing is just right. She is so amazing to ride and so quick.”

Travel Challenges and Strategizing

“It’s easy to get worried about the traveling, weather conditions, breaking down, not knowing where you are going and all the details that come with rodeoing, but if you really want to do it, you just have to make up your mind to go,” Kathy advises.

When Kathy arrives at a rodeo, she looks at all the arena’s angles, getting a feel for where the eye is, then gets into some slow work on the pattern with her horses.

“Issy likes to go when she sees an open gate, so I am a little nervous about the alley set-up.”

The benefit of having two horses to take down the road is that when one needs to rest, the other is typically ready to go.

“Both mares have traveled many a mile together and are seasoned to the challenges of the road,” Kathy says. “They are very attached to each other and take a lot of comfort in hauling together.

“One thing I said to myself (in 2017 was) just to make the most of the opportunity, to make it really count and do the best we could. It was lucky for me in the sense that I was able to make our best runs when there was so much money up for grabs. There were times when I was rodeoing where I thought about how much money I was spending, the bills, the responsibilities and wondered if this even made sense.”

Part of Kathy’s strategy to stay home more and have confidence in her breeding-season break was inspired by another pro barrel racer.

“I look up to Lisa Lockhart. I would always watch what she did and see that she didn’t go to that many rodeos, but was so amazing and consistent at the places she did go.”

Reflecting on the 2017 WNFR

“The whole NFR experience was so cool! We got awesome prizes and they made us feel so special,” Kathy recalls.

“I was a little disappointed in our performance there, and it turned out being the kind of ground conditions that Issy had trouble handling. I started to feel concerned for her after so many nights in a row, knowing that the ground conditions didn’t suit her style of running.

“It started to become a mental struggle for me because when you don’t do great right away, you start to second-guess yourself. I was also worried every night about the alley because we have to transition over from the holding area to the alley, and I was very nervous about hitting myself or her on the post on the way in.”

As fits Kathy’s analytical style, she has a list of changes she’d make if she makes it back to the Thomas & Mack.

“First, I will figure out how to get a better start. The holding area where we wait can be challenging; there is so much noise, a stagecoach goes in and out, and depending on the act that night, the lights will go out for a brief amount of time,” she illustrates. “It’s a lot of pressure on some horses to keep calm through all of that while waiting to make a run.

“Also, there is the pressure on us to make sure we are ready immediately to go when it’s our turn to run, and if there is a complication, we can get fined by the WPRA.

“Overall, though, I really appreciated the opportunity to run for that kind of money every night, then the themes they do throughout the week for the military and different causes such as childhood cancer awareness. I was reminded that it’s just three barrels, win or lose, and we are very fortunate to be there.”

The American

Going into last year’s NFR, Kathy had expectations of staying in the top 10, and automatically securing herself an invitation to RFD-TV’s The American.

“I have tried every year since The American started to qualify, and I had never made it,” Kathy admits. “Since we ended up 12th in the world at the conclusion of the 2017 NFR, I had to get in via qualifier races. But the first one I entered, I was 13th and the second one I entered, I hit a barrel to win it.”

As it would happen, Ivy Conrado and Stevi Hillman ran at The American qualifier in Moses Lake, Washington, both finishing in the top 10. This was the same race where Kathy finished 13th. Because Ivy and Stevi were already American invitees thanks to their NFR placings, Kathy’s opportunity to run in The American semi-finals at Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, started to look a little closer to reality.

“That still meant I was one hole out of qualifying for the semi-finals. I was waiting to be notified if anyone was unable to go to the semi’s so that I could get in, but I never heard any news. When I looked at the draw, it appeared as if everyone was going.”

“My friend Leslie Schur, who owns Issy’s full sister, had qualified on ‘Jersey’ (KG Cashin In On Beau) for the semi-finals. We were both down in Fort Worth, so I was going with her and was going to sit in the stands and write down times. She had the draw printed out the night before and was going through it and just happened to notice that the 11th-place finisher from Moses Lake – the place that was keeping me one hole out – was a scratch and wasn’t going to make it. At 9:20 p.m. the night before the semi-finals slack, she called me to inform me of this. So I immediately called the office to check on whether or not I could still get in. Since it was technically a last-minute scratch, the gal in the office told me that they weren’t planning on letting in a replacement, but since I called her, they agreed to let me run.”

The morning of the slack, it was cold and rainy, and by the time Kathy was up, “I was to the point where I was like, just call my name and lets get this done: I was so cold and miserable!” she says.

“When I went to make my run, as I went from the cold holding area to the warm arena; my glasses totally fogged over. It was such a distraction, and I couldn’t see at all until I got to the second barrel! I was happy with the way my mare turned the third barrel; even though we did blow off it on the back side a little, we ended up running the fastest time of the semi-finals slack (more than 270 of the very best barrel horses) to win $10,441!”

By the time of the semi-finals performance, Kathy was starting to feel the pressure.

“I really wanted to make it to AT&T Stadium,” she says. “We ended up finishing second behind London Gorham by five-hundredths of a second, and I was thinking to myself that I shouldn’t have eaten the Snickers, because the extra weight just cost me $18,000!”

Once again, Kathy went into planning mode.

“Originally, I thought I would walk into AT&T Stadium and stand there, waiting for my turn. But it was so loud that I decided to wait in the back where there was a screen we could watch what was going on in the arena,” she illustrates. “I was starting to get sick to my stomach watching some of those good rodeo horses struggle with the ground. I was trying to figure out what I should do because there really isn’t any holding Issy back. I don’t know if she adjusted her speed to take care of herself or what exactly happened, but she made a beautiful run and I was so proud of her; it just wasn’t quite fast enough to make the final four.”

After it was all said and done, Kathy says she honestly wasn’t expecting to win RFD TV’s The American.

“I was just taking it one run at a time and was so grateful to be there. I was so excited to walk away with $35,000 for winning the semi-finals slack and placing second in the semi-finals.

“The whole experience was so special,” she adds. “Being in the stadium, hearing the crowd and having the opportunity to make runs for that type of money was amazing! Everyone there treated us contestants so well, the opening ceremony was so moving and made me proud to be an American. I was proud to be a part of such an awesome event. It got me fired up and reminded me that it has all been worth it and I want to come back to win the million next time.”