OklahomaHorses Magazine March 2022

20 OklahomaHorses • March/April 2022 Wilcox was only six years old when his older sister found her way from draft pull- ing to junior rodeo. Just like little brothers do, he followed suit. “My dad had roped as a kid, so he knew a little bit about it,” Wilcox said. “It was a really drastic change from drafts to roping, so we had a lot to learn. We relied on a lot of friends for help in earning how to rope and knowing what horses to get.” Much like his wife’s horses, the horses that Wilcox and his sister competed on often found their way into multiple events all through junior high and high school rodeos. “We had to learn how to make that work for us and cross-train those horses that maybe weren’t used to or weren’t bred spe- cifically for a certain event,” he said. “That was difficult on certain horses because we were buying older horses who knew how to rope, but then we were asking them to go into goat tying or barrel racing.” Without even knowing it, that gave Wil- cox insight into the importance and value of cross-training a horse from the ground up. His experience growing up helped to mold him as a professional horse trainer just as it has done for his wife as an aspiring professional breakaway roper. Wilcox Performance Horses It was never a question of whether cross-training should be included in the program — it was simply a natural progres- sion of everything CD and Alexa Wilcox had learned. Moving more than 2,000 miles after high school graduation landed Wilcox at New Mexico State University, where he compet- ed for the rodeo team and found his way to Philip Berry Performance Horses/Berry Livestock. “I learned a lot from Philip, but one thing that we always did when starting colts in the round pen was that we didn’t break them for one specific thing,” Wilcox said. “We would get them soft, show them all the mechanics, and give them everything they needed in their foundation to excel at just about anything.” The Wilcoxes’ program for performance horses relies on the ability to take a young horse outside the arena and just ranch and to use the horses in their most natu- ral habitat. The pair now lives in Sunset, Texas, which is the perfect setting for their operation. “We build a foundation in a horse to do a lot of things, maybe at a slow or very basic level, but we’ve seen a lot of benefits from it,” Wilcox said. “One example is taking a rope horse and putting it on the cutting flag. We can give that horse a lot more movement and feel from that work. And when you’re making a finished rope horse, those maneuvers and techniques really overlap.” Flesh It Out More than just starting at the foundation of a horse’s training, taking it out of its main event provides an ideal brain break. Just a few years ago, Ms. Wilcox started to use one of her husband’s calf horses on barrels, and now that experience is paying dividends. “I was riding that calf horse around the barrels, and he was pretty stiff in the bridle,” she said. “Using him in another event revealed some gaps in his training. If we had just run calves on him, we wouldn’t have noticed that.” Going around the barrels allowed the gelding to use his body in different ways. He was picking up his shoulders more and learning to control his body through a curve instead of just a straight line. As ropers, both of the Wilcoxes spend a lot of time in the calf lane for practice. But they both agree that barrels, cutting, and ranching are all great cross-training options for their program. Growing up as the daughter of a pro- fessional horse trainer, Mike Major, Ms. Wilcox was and is always thinking about body control. It’s a major cornerstone of her father’s program, and it has become the same for the Wilcoxes. “No matter what you do, you should have enough body control of your horse to complete any challenge,” Ms. Wilcox said. “When you break down the horse’s body and understand where your feet and weight are and how the horse will respond, that translates to any event or discipline.” Even though practice makes perfect, the Wilcoxes agree that repetition can be det- rimental at times. Taking the pressure off finished and green horses occasionally can still allow a rider to accomplish his goals. “You can be teaching the foundation of good horsemanship in any event, so taking a horse away from what it is used to and making it a little bit uncomfortable but still being able to work it through that is only going to help improve it overall,” Ms. Wilcox said. “I want to be able to take any horse that we say is finished and do whatever I need to with it. It might not be as talented as other horses that were maybe bred and trained for that event, but I want to still be able to get a score and be proud of that horse for responding to my cues no matter the situation.” In the next issue, Part Two of this series will address how a rider can get in on the benefits of cross-training. CD and Alexa Major Wilcox use cross-training as a major component of their training program based in Sunset, Texas. Photograph courtesy of Jo Haigwood Photography.