At the Montezuma County Fairgrounds, Cortez, Colorado
----- in the shadow of Mesa Verde National Park -----
MOSES WOODSON Being farmers, the Woodson family has always had a deep connection to horses and to the farming and ranching way of life. At times when the family did not own horses and ponies of their own, Moses spent his time learning from others around him. He also studied all the available horse-related literature he could get his hands on. Living in the Four Corners area gave Moses a great opportunity to learn from the ranchers in that part of the country. When he was thirteen, he moved with his family onto a commercial cattle ranch where he learned the cowboy way of life and experienced a kind of horsemanship he had only read about before. Growing up in the Southwest, Moses naturally married a girl from that area. His wife Polly is Navajo, and after they married, they moved to the Navajo reservation. While living there, Moses learned to catch, work with and train the wild horses that run free on the reservations. He also worked for many of the families and ranches in that area, doing day work such as branding, gathering cattle and starting colts. A turning point in Moses’ horsemanship education came when he went to work on the Browning Ranch in Farmington, NM. Bob Browning, the ranch owner, has such a genuine understanding of the horse that it made Moses want not just to be a better trainer but to become a true horseman. When Moses and his family moved back to Tennessee, he started training horses on his own, and there he saw a real need for a trainer who could teach horsemanship to first-time horse owners. Today, Moses teaches his own brand of horsemanship, as he travels the country presenting clinics and demonstrations for anyone willing to learn. Moses’ favorite saying may be humble, but it’s his truth: “I don’t know everything, but I know what I know, and I know it works.”
