Tom and Mandy McCutcheon both grew up in the horse world, but it’s a big world. Their backgrounds, geographically close in Minnesota, were light-years apart. Worlds Apart

Mandy McQuay was the quintessential horse show prodigy, born into a world of great horses and total focus. Her parents, Tim and Colleen McQuay, early on, found a balance between showing in the hunter and jumper world and in American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) competition. Colleen kept a barn full of world-class hunters and jumpers and Mandy began showing at the age of six in pony classes. She also competed at the AQHA shows in horsemanship and showmanship.

Horses were the way of life for the McQuays. One year at the All American Quarter Horse Congress, they had 40 different horses entered in an array of all-around classes. Colleen garnered extensive AHSA (now USEF) titles, numerous Congress wins and five AQHA world championships.

It was during those early years that Tim’s business transitioned to specializing in reiners, and Mandy showed her first reiner at the age of 10.

From the beginning, the horses she rode were exceptional and it never occurred to Mandy to want any other lifestyle. “I can’t imagine my life without horses. I don’t know what I’d do.”

At 12, she began showing in reining.

Mandy topped her first NRHA Futurity in 1993 on Hollywoods Striker. Now, her total stands at three NRHA Non Pro Futurity wins and one Open Futurity finals qualification. That goes along with four NRHA Derby titles and three National Reining Breeders Classic championships.

Being home-schooled helped, but Mandy has always been ultra-busy, moving between Reining and the hunter-jumper world. Concurrently, with showing reiners, she was also garnering championships at some of the most elite hunter and jumper shows in that world. She was the reserve junior hunter champion at the Harrisburg National Horse Show, and also won the Winners Stakes there. She won the United States Equestrian Team (USET) Youth Talent Derby at Gladstone, New Jersey, and came back a few years later to win the USET Futures Championship there. She also won two AQHA jumping world championships.

Like Mandy, Tom had grown up in the horse business. But his was not a world of elite specialties, although each of the McCutcheon boys would grow to prominence in the horse world. Back then, Tom’s father, Bob, and brothers Scott, Jimmy, and Terry were always training and showing. Bob McCutcheon was known for being able to salvage horses that others couldn’t make work.

Tom remembers, “We trained everything that was marketable at that time. If barrel horses were hot, we trained barrel horses. If rope horses were hot, we trained rope horses. We rode a lot of cutters.”

Tom, the youngest of the McCutcheon brothers by 10 years, rodeoed from an early age and qualified for the National High School Rodeo Finals in calf roping, bull dogging, and cutting.

By the time he was 18, Tom had gone into business for himself, renting his own place. The fledgling horse trainer needed a plan. “Anything that involved cattle seemed too expensive, so I chose Reining because it was cheaper.”

He trained some horses for the public and for survival’s sake, he learned to buy and sell horses. “I guess I took the long way around, never working for another reining horse trainer.”

He went to work riding pleasure horses for trainer Jim Dudley (now an NRHA Professional) a couple of years later. “I kept some reiners there and actually ended up riding as many reiners as pleasure horses.”

The Italian Connection

A few of those reiners were nice enough to get him noticed by some Italians, and he accepted their offer to train in Italy.  “That turned out to be probably the best thing I did for my career,” he says. “I worked for a lot of guys over there, and it gave me the opportunity to get on a lot of horses and show a lot.”

It also provided a valuable learning opportunity. “All the people I rode for over there were pretty big-time businessmen. Since we didn’t have a covered arena at the time, when the weather was bad, I’d follow them around and watch them do business. Career-wise, that helped me as much as the training.”

Italy in the mid-1990s was fun. Tom’s friends Duane and Dean Latimer, Dale Harvey, Jim Kiser, Mike Davis and his brother, Jimmy McCutcheon, were all in Italy at the time. “We all still have customers from Italy and people who come to ride with us or work with us from over there.”

Tom remembers, “The first year I didn’t learn the language. Then, the second year, I took some horses over to sell. I had a horse some people seemed real interested in, and then all of a sudden they backed off and didn’t do the deal. Later, when I talked to some other people, they told me that the potential buyer said that $25,000 was too much money for that horse. I was only asking $15,000 and the interpreter, unknown to me, had added $10,000 for himself. So I started learning to speak Italian right away!”

The Road Back Home

Even as he became more comfortable with the language and with his friends there, he wanted to be in Texas. “Scott (McCutcheon) was doing a lot of winning. I was missing all of that. It was fun calling home hearing about it, but I was ready to be here. This is the major leagues – if you wanted to be in the horse business, this is the place to be.”

By then, the McCutcheon clan had relocated to north Texas. “My parents even live down here half of the year.”

Tom knew where he wanted to be, and he also knew what he wanted to do. He had some money in the bank after he came back from Italy, and he decided to do whatever it took to get on some nice horses. “I felt like I’d ride for free if I had to, but I finally got some customer who could afford some nice horses. I did give them a good deal. My priority at that time was not making money but getting on good horses. I thought the rest would come later.”  

Enter Lil Ruf Peppy

With that conviction, it took Tom less than five minutes to decide that he had to have the good sorrel two-year-old when NRHA Professional Gary Putman showed Lil Ruf Peppy to him. Tom’s customers Antonio and Lia Foti purchased him, and Tom bought him from them a year later.  He remembers, “I took him everywhere, and he got me noticed. He was more horse than I was ready for at the time but he got my foot in the door, and it went from there.”

He had a great horse, and he had found some good clients. “Pete and Gail Furniss, Curtice and Betty Jane Burlin and Ed and Nancy Pickett believed in my program and kept me mounted early. It’s not like any of them had just one horse. They all bought enough horses and jump-started the whole thing for me,” says Tom. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without them in the beginning.”

Thinking about early support made him add one more thing. “My parents were always there for me. Dad taught me how to be a horseman. Mom had to raise all us kids – she never gets enough credit for what she did.”

With the new visibility, people were more willing to do business with Tom and more nice horses came. But concurrently, Lil Ruf Peppy (who turned out to be an NRHA Million Dollar Sire) got Tom into the breeding business. “I wouldn’t have been into that without him. All in all, he created a lot of traffic and a lot of business.”

The Dynasty Begins

And there was Mandy. Tom and Mandy had grown up in the same area in Minnesota. When Tom came back from Italy and settled in Texas, the McQuays had moved there, too. Ultimately, in 1998, the pair started dating.

Tom found Mandy to be smart and fun.  “I liked her personality from the start. She was always smiling,” he says.  “I really had never had any interest in spending my life with anyone until I met her.”

They became engaged the next January and married April 3, 1999.

How was it for Tom to marry into the McQuay family? After all, not only were Tim and Mandy the All Time Leading Open and Non Pro riders at the time, but McQuay Stables, also home to the incomparable NRHA Hall of Fame and Five Million Dollar Sire Hollywood Dun It, had become Mecca to the industry.   

“I think you need to have a certain amount of confidence and be pretty comfortable with what you do,” Tom says. “Both Tim and Colleen are big personalities and icons in this world. Probably the thing that made it easiest was that it wasn’t an issue to me, and they’ve never made it an issue.”

Mandy married into another set of strong personalities, as well. “It was a little intimidating to have all those brothers everywhere,” she laughs.

Rocky Road

Along with learning to live with the in-laws, there was a blending of two strong personalities playing out in the new McCutcheon household. Not only were the two going through the normal just-married time, they were doing so while competing at world-class levels. “Plus,” says Mandy, “we were only married five months before we found we were expecting Cade, so we both went pretty quickly from being single to being married parents!”

Admittedly the route was rocky at times. “We were raised way differently. At my house, my father helped with dishes or dinner or whatever,” says Mandy. “Tom’s mom, Jan, did everything for Bob and the boys. So we expected different things from each other.”

Even riding with her new husband was a challenge. Riding horses trained by Tom was different than riding those trained by her dad. “With my parents’ horses, I do what I’ve always done so it almost doesn’t register, but Tom’s horses have a different style, plus he’s two feet taller than me. When he trains one it takes a while to get them used to where my heels are. I guess it’s never perfect. Horses always make you keep working to figure things out! In the past few years, though, we finally figured out a system that works for us, and I really enjoy our working together on the horses.”

Tom nods and adds,. “The horses were a problem. In the beginning, I couldn’t put her on the horsepower she was used to being on. She felt she needed to show some of ours but besides not having that level of horses, I never had to get horses ready for someone besides myself. Ultimately, having to think of getting them more broke helped my whole program.”

Along Came the Kids

Both Tom and Mandy agreed on the importance of family and wanted to start their family as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, that had to work around their NRHA show schedule. Their son, Cade, was born in May of 2000 on the Monday after the Derby and Carlee was born in late October of 2005, a month before Mandy won the NRHA Futurity.

Although she continued to show hunters and jumpers for a while after her marriage, she finally sacrificed that activity on the altar of motherhood. “I want to do it again, but there are just not enough hours in the day.”

She continues, “I couldn’t do it at all and keep up with Cade in his sports now, anyway.” Cade is currently playing football, basketball, baseball, and soccer, although he says he’s not going to do soccer in the coming year because it overlaps baseball.

It’s evident that both parents enjoy their kids. Tom smiles and says, “At Cade’s games everyone shows up – both our families, friends. We’re unbelievably lucky to be in this situation. Every day I realize how fortunate I am. With my family down here and Mandy’s parents and grandparents, everyone is within 20 minutes. My brothers and I were involved in sports growing up – Scott was more into football and Jim and I were more into hockey. We love sports.”

And does that competitive mindset emerge when watching his son? Tom notes, “I enjoy Cade’s stuff but make sure I stay out of it. I see other parents who live through their kids. My dad was always there for us but we had to fight our own battles. We learned that if the coaching was bad we had to play harder. We had to figure it out, and I’d like for my kids to be able to do that. I don’t want to be the one telling my kids that if the ref or the coach had been different, they would’ve won. That’s just a condition of the game. At the current level, we appreciate everyone who volunteers time to coach or officiate, and even if they’re not the greatest technically, they’re doing the best they can.”

“I’m not a loud mom,” notes Mandy. Then she laughs, “Okay, my sister-in-law Kathy (McCutcheon) would probably disagree. Maybe I do get excited but Tom pretty much sits there and watches him and doesn’t say anything.”

Tom laughs, “Mandy would say I’m really not an excitable person. She says you can’t really tell the difference between happy or not on me. I suppose there’s only a small degree of difference on that.”

Cade competes in the new NRHA short stirrup class. Tom muses, “Watching Cade compete is lots of fun. He has a huge advantage over where I was. He gets to ride a lot of nice horses and has a jump start if he decides this is what he wants to do.”

Mandy adds, “Now that Cade has started to show, there’s a whole other area of horses to look forward to. It’s a new way of being nervous and excited.  And, I guess it’ll only get better. Carlee already stands on the porch yelling ‘Momma – ride!’ until I put her up on a horse.”

Would she prefer a horse career for her children? “I want Cade and Carlee to do whatever they want to. It’d be fun if they decided to be in the horse business, but I just want them to be happy whatever they do. I know how hard this business is. I wouldn’t mind if they had other careers and just enjoyed the horses for fun. But, I do know that if horses are your passion – no matter how hard it is to make a living, you don’t care.”

Life Beyond the Arena

The horse world is also a lifestyle where, much of the time, your work has to be your play, but the McCutcheons enjoy getting together with friends for Texas Hold’em on weekends. They also take a vacation skiing or to Hawaii every December, with good friends, Dell and Terri Hendricks, Todd and Missy Bergen, Dean and Bunky Latimer and Troy and Andrea Heikes. 

Tom still enjoys playing basketball, although the glory days of the reiner team winning the North Texas Men’s Basketball League Championship have passed.  “That was really fun, our team was me, Scott and Jimmy (McCutcheon) plus Pete Kyle, Casey Hinton, Michael Moore, Joe Schnell, and we won that two years in a row.”

What does Mandy do for recreation? “I do the same thing —horses and kids— all the time. My husband would tell you I love to shop but, honestly, I don’t even have time to do that!”

Looking Back

The years have mellowed the couple. Tom says, “I think it was harder when we were first married. We’ve both adapted. There’s a lot of pressure at those major events – no matter what, when you’re all by yourself.  When you’re trying to consider another person, as well, it makes things more difficult. But with some time and age and considering the kids and other aspects of our lives, I think we have more perspective, now.  For sure, we want to finish first, and we’re probably two of the sorriest losers I know, but we do put things into perspective faster than we used to.”

Mandy adds, “Since I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to be more grateful for the horses and the wins. I’ve always been appreciative of the horses I’ve had and the things I’ve been able to do. But I think, now, that every win is more precious. I know how hard it is, and I think it’s become harder – the people and horses showing have gotten better over the years. The first time I won the NRHA Non Pro Futurity I didn’t realize what I did. Looking back, it amazes me, now.”

There for Each Other

Even if they’re more mellow, they’re still highly opinionated. When asked their best advice for one another, Mandy notes. “All my advice is good, but sometimes Tom ignores it. Seriously though, if I give my opinion on something, whether it’s the horses, the barn, or the house, he’ll usually argue with me, then later, change a little.”

Tom replies, “In general – my advice always is to not take life as seriously any more. Mandy is still pretty competitive – pretty intense – and I tell her to relax and enjoy life. I’m also 10 years older and have a completely different background. She came up with no worries and when I went out on my own, I was looking under the couch cushions for change.”

He adds, “I appreciate what life has given me. So I tell her ‘Don’t sweat the little things. That’s what I’m here for!’” Tom and Mandy McCutcheon both grew up in the horse world, but it’s a big world. Their backgrounds, geographically close in Minnesota, were light-years apart.

Worlds Apart

Mandy McQuay was the quintessential horse show prodigy, born into a world of great horses and total focus. Her parents, Tim and Colleen McQuay, early on, found a balance between showing in the hunter and jumper world and in American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) competition. Colleen kept a barn full of world-class hunters and jumpers and Mandy began showing at the age of six in pony classes. She also competed at the AQHA shows in horsemanship and showmanship.

Horses were the way of life for the McQuays. One year at the All American Quarter Horse Congress, they had 40 different horses entered in an array of all-around classes. Colleen garnered extensive AHSA (now USEF) titles, numerous Congress wins and five AQHA world championships.

It was during those early years that Tim’s business transitioned to specializing in reiners, and Mandy showed her first reiner at the age of 10.

From the beginning, the horses she rode were exceptional and it never occurred to Mandy to want any other lifestyle. “I can’t imagine my life without horses. I don’t know what I’d do.”

At 12, she began showing in reining.

Mandy topped her first NRHA Futurity in 1993 on Hollywoods Striker. Now, her total stands at three NRHA Non Pro Futurity wins and one Open Futurity finals qualification. That goes along with four NRHA Derby titles and three National Reining Breeders Classic championships.

Being home-schooled helped, but Mandy has always been ultra-busy, moving between Reining and the hunter-jumper world. Concurrently, with showing reiners, she was also garnering championships at some of the most elite hunter and jumper shows in that world. She was the reserve junior hunter champion at the Harrisburg National Horse Show, and also won the Winners Stakes there. She won the United States Equestrian Team (USET) Youth Talent Derby at Gladstone, New Jersey, and came back a few years later to win the USET Futures Championship there. She also won two AQHA jumping world championships.

Like Mandy, Tom had grown up in the horse business. But his was not a world of elite specialties, although each of the McCutcheon boys would grow to prominence in the horse world. Back then, Tom’s father, Bob, and brothers Scott, Jimmy, and Terry were always training and showing. Bob McCutcheon was known for being able to salvage horses that others couldn’t make work.

Tom remembers, “We trained everything that was marketable at that time. If barrel horses were hot, we trained barrel horses. If rope horses were hot, we trained rope horses. We rode a lot of cutters.”

Tom, the youngest of the McCutcheon brothers by 10 years, rodeoed from an early age and qualified for the National High School Rodeo Finals in calf roping, bull dogging, and cutting.

By the time he was 18, Tom had gone into business for himself, renting his own place. The fledgling horse trainer needed a plan. “Anything that involved cattle seemed too expensive, so I chose Reining because it was cheaper.”

He trained some horses for the public and for survival’s sake, he learned to buy and sell horses. “I guess I took the long way around, never working for another reining horse trainer.”

He went to work riding pleasure horses for trainer Jim Dudley (now an NRHA Professional) a couple of years later. “I kept some reiners there and actually ended up riding as many reiners as pleasure horses.”

The Italian Connection

A few of those reiners were nice enough to get him noticed by some Italians, and he accepted their offer to train in Italy.  “That turned out to be probably the best thing I did for my career,” he says. “I worked for a lot of guys over there, and it gave me the opportunity to get on a lot of horses and show a lot.”

It also provided a valuable learning opportunity. “All the people I rode for over there were pretty big-time businessmen. Since we didn’t have a covered arena at the time, when the weather was bad, I’d follow them around and watch them do business. Career-wise, that helped me as much as the training.”

Italy in the mid-1990s was fun. Tom’s friends Duane and Dean Latimer, Dale Harvey, Jim Kiser, Mike Davis and his brother, Jimmy McCutcheon, were all in Italy at the time. “We all still have customers from Italy and people who come to ride with us or work with us from over there.”

Tom remembers, “The first year I didn’t learn the language. Then, the second year, I took some horses over to sell. I had a horse some people seemed real interested in, and then all of a sudden they backed off and didn’t do the deal. Later, when I talked to some other people, they told me that the potential buyer said that $25,000 was too much money for that horse. I was only asking $15,000 and the interpreter, unknown to me, had added $10,000 for himself. So I started learning to speak Italian right away!”

The Road Back Home

Even as he became more comfortable with the language and with his friends there, he wanted to be in Texas. “Scott (McCutcheon) was doing a lot of winning. I was missing all of that. It was fun calling home hearing about it, but I was ready to be here. This is the major leagues – if you wanted to be in the horse business, this is the place to be.”

By then, the McCutcheon clan had relocated to north Texas. “My parents even live down here half of the year.”

Tom knew where he wanted to be, and he also knew what he wanted to do. He had some money in the bank after he came back from Italy, and he decided to do whatever it took to get on some nice horses. “I felt like I’d ride for free if I had to, but I finally got some customer who could afford some nice horses. I did give them a good deal. My priority at that time was not making money but getting on good horses. I thought the rest would come later.”  

Enter Lil Ruf Peppy

With that conviction, it took Tom less than five minutes to decide that he had to have the good sorrel two-year-old when NRHA Professional Gary Putman showed Lil Ruf Peppy to him. Tom’s customers Antonio and Lia Foti purchased him, and Tom bought him from them a year later.  He remembers, “I took him everywhere, and he got me noticed. He was more horse than I was ready for at the time but he got my foot in the door, and it went from there.”

He had a great horse, and he had found some good clients. “Pete and Gail Furniss, Curtice and Betty Jane Burlin and Ed and Nancy Pickett believed in my program and kept me mounted early. It’s not like any of them had just one horse. They all bought enough horses and jump-started the whole thing for me,” says Tom. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without them in the beginning.”

Thinking about early support made him add one more thing. “My parents were always there for me. Dad taught me how to be a horseman. Mom had to raise all us kids – she never gets enough credit for what she did.”

With the new visibility, people were more willing to do business with Tom and more nice horses came. But concurrently, Lil Ruf Peppy (who turned out to be an NRHA Million Dollar Sire) got Tom into the breeding business. “I wouldn’t have been into that without him. All in all, he created a lot of traffic and a lot of business.”

The Dynasty Begins

And there was Mandy. Tom and Mandy had grown up in the same area in Minnesota. When Tom came back from Italy and settled in Texas, the McQuays had moved there, too. Ultimately, in 1998, the pair started dating.

Tom found Mandy to be smart and fun.  “I liked her personality from the start. She was always smiling,” he says.  “I really had never had any interest in spending my life with anyone until I met her.”

They became engaged the next January and married April 3, 1999.

How was it for Tom to marry into the McQuay family? After all, not only were Tim and Mandy the All Time Leading Open and Non Pro riders at the time, but McQuay Stables, also home to the incomparable NRHA Hall of Fame and Five Million Dollar Sire Hollywood Dun It, had become Mecca to the industry.   

“I think you need to have a certain amount of confidence and be pretty comfortable with what you do,” Tom says. “Both Tim and Colleen are big personalities and icons in this world. Probably the thing that made it easiest was that it wasn’t an issue to me, and they’ve never made it an issue.”

Mandy married into another set of strong personalities, as well. “It was a little intimidating to have all those brothers everywhere,” she laughs.

Rocky Road

Along with learning to live with the in-laws, there was a blending of two strong personalities playing out in the new McCutcheon household. Not only were the two going through the normal just-married time, they were doing so while competing at world-class levels. “Plus,” says Mandy, “we were only married five months before we found we were expecting Cade, so we both went pretty quickly from being single to being married parents!”

Admittedly the route was rocky at times. “We were raised way differently. At my house, my father helped with dishes or dinner or whatever,” says Mandy. “Tom’s mom, Jan, did everything for Bob and the boys. So we expected different things from each other.”

Even riding with her new husband was a challenge. Riding horses trained by Tom was different than riding those trained by her dad. “With my parents’ horses, I do what I’ve always done so it almost doesn’t register, but Tom’s horses have a different style, plus he’s two feet taller than me. When he trains one it takes a while to get them used to where my heels are. I guess it’s never perfect. Horses always make you keep working to figure things out! In the past few years, though, we finally figured out a system that works for us, and I really enjoy our working together on the horses.”

Tom nods and adds,. “The horses were a problem. In the beginning, I couldn’t put her on the horsepower she was used to being on. She felt she needed to show some of ours but besides not having that level of horses, I never had to get horses ready for someone besides myself. Ultimately, having to think of getting them more broke helped my whole program.”

Along Came the Kids

Both Tom and Mandy agreed on the importance of family and wanted to start their family as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, that had to work around their NRHA show schedule. Their son, Cade, was born in May of 2000 on the Monday after the Derby and Carlee was born in late October of 2005, a month before Mandy won the NRHA Futurity.

Although she continued to show hunters and jumpers for a while after her marriage, she finally sacrificed that activity on the altar of motherhood. “I want to do it again, but there are just not enough hours in the day.”

She continues, “I couldn’t do it at all and keep up with Cade in his sports now, anyway.” Cade is currently playing football, basketball, baseball, and soccer, although he says he’s not going to do soccer in the coming year because it overlaps baseball.

It’s evident that both parents enjoy their kids. Tom smiles and says, “At Cade’s games everyone shows up – both our families, friends. We’re unbelievably lucky to be in this situation. Every day I realize how fortunate I am. With my family down here and Mandy’s parents and grandparents, everyone is within 20 minutes. My brothers and I were involved in sports growing up – Scott was more into football and Jim and I were more into hockey. We love sports.”

And does that competitive mindset emerge when watching his son? Tom notes, “I enjoy Cade’s stuff but make sure I stay out of it. I see other parents who live through their kids. My dad was always there for us but we had to fight our own battles. We learned that if the coaching was bad we had to play harder. We had to figure it out, and I’d like for my kids to be able to do that. I don’t want to be the one telling my kids that if the ref or the coach had been different, they would’ve won. That’s just a condition of the game. At the current level, we appreciate everyone who volunteers time to coach or officiate, and even if they’re not the greatest technically, they’re doing the best they can.”

“I’m not a loud mom,” notes Mandy. Then she laughs, “Okay, my sister-in-law Kathy (McCutcheon) would probably disagree. Maybe I do get excited but Tom pretty much sits there and watches him and doesn’t say anything.”

Tom laughs, “Mandy would say I’m really not an excitable person. She says you can’t really tell the difference between happy or not on me. I suppose there’s only a small degree of difference on that.”

Cade competes in the new NRHA short stirrup class. Tom muses, “Watching Cade compete is lots of fun. He has a huge advantage over where I was. He gets to ride a lot of nice horses and has a jump start if he decides this is what he wants to do.”

Mandy adds, “Now that Cade has started to show, there’s a whole other area of horses to look forward to. It’s a new way of being nervous and excited.  And, I guess it’ll only get better. Carlee already stands on the porch yelling ‘Momma – ride!’ until I put her up on a horse.”

Would she prefer a horse career for her children? “I want Cade and Carlee to do whatever they want to. It’d be fun if they decided to be in the horse business, but I just want them to be happy whatever they do. I know how hard this business is. I wouldn’t mind if they had other careers and just enjoyed the horses for fun. But, I do know that if horses are your passion – no matter how hard it is to make a living, you don’t care.”

Life Beyond the Arena

The horse world is also a lifestyle where, much of the time, your work has to be your play, but the McCutcheons enjoy getting together with friends for Texas Hold’em on weekends. They also take a vacation skiing or to Hawaii every December, with good friends, Dell and Terri Hendricks, Todd and Missy Bergen, Dean and Bunky Latimer and Troy and Andrea Heikes. 

Tom still enjoys playing basketball, although the glory days of the reiner team winning the North Texas Men’s Basketball League Championship have passed.  “That was really fun, our team was me, Scott and Jimmy (McCutcheon) plus Pete Kyle, Casey Hinton, Michael Moore, Joe Schnell, and we won that two years in a row.”

What does Mandy do for recreation? “I do the same thing —horses and kids— all the time. My husband would tell you I love to shop but, honestly, I don’t even have time to do that!”

Looking Back

The years have mellowed the couple. Tom says, “I think it was harder when we were first married. We’ve both adapted. There’s a lot of pressure at those major events – no matter what, when you’re all by yourself.  When you’re trying to consider another person, as well, it makes things more difficult. But with some time and age and considering the kids and other aspects of our lives, I think we have more perspective, now.  For sure, we want to finish first, and we’re probably two of the sorriest losers I know, but we do put things into perspective faster than we used to.”

Mandy adds, “Since I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to be more grateful for the horses and the wins. I’ve always been appreciative of the horses I’ve had and the things I’ve been able to do. But I think, now, that every win is more precious. I know how hard it is, and I think it’s become harder – the people and horses showing have gotten better over the years. The first time I won the NRHA Non Pro Futurity I didn’t realize what I did. Looking back, it amazes me, now.”

There for Each Other

Even if they’re more mellow, they’re still highly opinionated. When asked their best advice for one another, Mandy notes. “All my advice is good, but sometimes Tom ignores it. Seriously though, if I give my opinion on something, whether it’s the horses, the barn, or the house, he’ll usually argue with me, then later, change a little.”

Tom replies, “In general – my advice always is to not take life as seriously any more. Mandy is still pretty competitive – pretty intense – and I tell her to relax and enjoy life. I’m also 10 years older and have a completely different background. She came up with no worries and when I went out on my own, I was looking under the couch cushions for change.”

He adds, “I appreciate what life has given me. So I tell her ‘Don’t sweat the little things. That’s what I’m here for!’”