In 1979, Kevin Stallings found himself with a broken leg after an accident with a colt. Of course, the cowboy was antsy as he tried to heal up, so when a friend invited him to watch a cow horse show in Kalispell, Montana, Stallings couldn’t get in the truck fast enough to make a break from healing on the couch.

                  “I’m watching this futurity, and I’m thinking, ‘This is really cool—I have to get a colt and come back here next year.”

                  Getting into the cow horse wasn’t a far jump for Stallings. He’d grown up riding on a ranch in Idaho, becoming the “neighborhood colt starter” at a young age. He kept his promise to get a colt for that Montana cow horse futurity in 1980, and against the odds, his first-ever cow horse show worked in his favor.

                  “I’d watched a video or two of Smokey Pritchett, Skip Brown and Jim Roeser—just a bunch of really good hands,” Stallings explained. “I showed in the pro am, which was the starter class, and I ended up winning it.”

                  The win came with an Earl Twist saddle that Stallings continued to ride for many years to come, but more so a fire to learn how to train and show cow horses that hasn’t waned.

                  In his horsemanship journey, Stallings spent time with Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance, relationships that shaped his approach to horses. He also credits his friendship with NRCHA Hall of Famer Annie Reynolds in shaping him as a cow horse trainer, and he started a lot of her horses. But the horses themselves are what taught him the most, including NMSU Truckin Chex and Shining Little Nic. He knew he could count on those horses to get him where he needed to be, which got him noticed by the judges, but also by his peers. But perhaps Stallings’ greatest contributions come in the form of helping other riders.

                  “I’ve always tried to help whoever wanted help,” he said. “I’ve had the opportunity to help so many good hands, and I always felt like I could help them get a little better. That’s a big deal to me: trying to help everybody.”

                  His wife, Karen, concurs.

                  “I can’t tell you how many nights we’d be up all night schooling horses and tired from the day,” she said. “There’d be somebody frustrated out there, and Kevin would just have to lend some kind words and some knowledge. He had a famous line, ‘Can I help you with that?’ A year or two would go by, and that same person would tell him how much it meant that he helped.”