Notable Non Pro: Mike Lundy

NOTABLE NON PRO

Mike Lundy takes his own path through reined cow horse while he lives out his childhood dreams.

By Larri Jo Starkey

At age 14, growing up in California, Mike Lundy had a dream of becoming a reined cow horse trainer. At age 18, he steered into a different career path. And now, in his 40s, he is making that 14-year-old’s dream of success with cow horses come true. Since 2020, Lundy has earned more than $22,000 in the show pen.

“At [age] 10, I had a trainer, Gene Martin, who was like a second father to me for over four years,” Lundy said. “His son, Billy, was winning everything in the bridle and hackamore classes, and I watched him win the Stock Horse Triumph at the Cow Palace in front of a huge rodeo crowd.”

Martin’s barn was a social mecca, where people played darts, harmonicas, cooked and bantered before going out to ride horses.

“It was a blast,” Lundy said. “We’d brand cattle, rope dummies and start Connemara ponies when I was maybe 12. I had experience such as drive-lining them around with a saddle.”

Lundy showed his half-Arabian mare in pleasure and equitation classes before joining the ranks of cow horse exhibitors, even getting to ride at the Cow Palace and Reno Livestock Events Center. Later in his teens, he gravitated into business endeavors.

“I was very entrepreneurial and started businesses from the time I was getting out of high school,” Lundy said. “And then with my best friend, when we were 23, we started our company, Diversified Solutions. It became a successful company focused on cost containment and overcharge recovery for large corporations. We were in the Silicon Valley when we started the company in late 1997. I just worked really, really, really hard and had a lot of naïve enthusiasm and figured I’d be able to get back into horses later.”

“Later” kept becoming later and later, and one day, Lundy realized he was in his 40s.

As a child, Mike Lundy dreamed of becoming a cow horse trainer.

COURTESY OF MIKE LUNDY

RECONNECTING WITH HIS DREAM

Lundy moved to Texas and, finally, bought two horses at the Winter Premiere Sale held with the National Reined Cow Horse Association’s World’s Greatest Horseman in 2017.

“I had been going to the horse sales, and so I just hadn’t gotten to the point where I could raise my hand,” Lundy said. “I bought two horses.”

One of those was Cee These Guns, a 2013 bay mare by Colonels Smoking Gun and out of Dun It In The Bay. Lundy planned to ride through the backcountry of New Mexico’s Pecos Wilderness on her.

“I was just looking for something that had good handle, and she was reiningtrained,” Lundy said. “I really liked her and got her for a good deal. I didn’t think I would ever show. I didn’t know anything about ‘Gunner’ at that time.”

So, Lundy and “Sasha” started going packing.

“I did a lot of that Man from Snowy River stuff where I’m up at 11,000 feet in the midspring going through snow drifts where my horse is up to its belly in snow and navigating tree fall, and this is the same horse that’s a Superior Reined Cow Horse now,” Lundy said with a laugh.

Lundy’s path to competition was just as unconventional as his path through the mountains. In 2019, he was at the World’s Greatest Horseman and met a new friend who kept encouraging him to come to a Stock Horse of Texas event.

“It was in Belton, Texas, and I just decided to load up my two horses and go there,” Lundy said. “In the back of my mind I thought, ‘If it seems interesting, maybe I’ll even enter.’ ”

Spoiler: He did enter.

“There are four classes in Stock Horse of Texas,” Lundy said. “The first class

COURTESY OF MIKE LUNDY

When he first purchased “Sasha,” Lundy traveled to pack into the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico and still enjoys trail riding today.

was reining, and she was reiningtrained. All I’d ever done out in the pasture was practice some lead changes and turnarounds, but I had never run a pattern on her, and I hadn’t run a pattern since I was 17.”

His score of 69 tied him for first place out of 30 in the Novice class, so Lundy was feeling pretty good about his chances. He had mixed results in the next two classes, but then it was time for boxing, and that’s when he confronted the idea that Sasha had never seen a cow before.

“But I figured, ‘Hey, she has good handle and I’ve worked lots of cows in my life, so I’ll just will myself through her and we’ll get it done,’” Lundy said. “We didn’t do a half bad job. But that was the start. That was when I started to get addicted.”

That’s also when the entrepreneur who started a business at age 23 embraced the challenge of training his own horse to move better and work the cow correctly.

TAKING ON COW HORSE

Lundy started going to clinics, reading every book, watching every video and tuning up his horse. At his second show, Lundy earned a buckle as Reserve Champion. He spent more time at Stock Horse of Texas shows before deciding that he preferred rein/cow classes to the other classes.

“I jumped into NRCHA and showed for my very first time at the very last show of 2019,” he said. “And that was my horse’s first time ever working a cow down the fence.”

His takeaway was they needed to work on rate and circling up higher on a cow.

“Because when we stopped, we slid past the cow a little too much because we were going faster than it was,” he said.

Lundy took every lesson from every time he went in the pen and showed all of 2020 with fanaticism, going as far as Montrose, Colorado, to find shows. He also started to buy young horses

Left: In 2022, Mike Lundy captured the Limited Open Bridle Reserve World Champion title. Right: Earning higher scores in herd work is Lundy’s goal for himself and his mare.

PHOTOS BY PRIMO MORALES PHOTOGRAPHY

and break them himself—starting them bareback.

“It works beautifully for me,” Lundy said. “I don’t recommend it to somebody just to try, because there’s a whole process that I go through.”

Lundy entered 2021 with the same audacious confidence that had always worked so well for him, but a big blow was around the corner.

“My dad was my biggest fan, and we lost him about a week before the 2021 Stallion Stakes, days before what would’ve been my parents 53rd wedding anniversary,” Lundy said. “His parting advice was ‘be kind,’ something with which I remind myself regularly. His belief in me is a huge part of my belief in myself.”

Lundy began entering Limited Open Bridle classes to give himself another go in every show pen and found himself Reserve World Champion at the 2021 NRCHA Celebration of Champions World Show and fourth in the year-end national standings.

“When I was a kid, the Open was the Open, and anybody could go in it,” “My dad was my biggest fan, and we lost him about a week before the 2021 Stallion Stakes, days before what would’ve been my parents 53rd wedding anniversary. His parting advice was ‘be kind,’ something with which I remind myself regularly. His belief in me is a huge part of my belief in myself.”

Lundy said. “I think a lot of Non Pros are scared to go into it, but if you’re training on your own horses, go enter up in the Limited Open Bridle.”

These days, Lundy is training Sasha and himself to be better in herd work for the Bridle Spectacular three-event class. He’d like to see his herd work scores go up. And he’d like to get Sasha to $25,000 in earnings.

Lundy also plans to pull embryos from her and breed at a level to get his young horses more competitive in the show pen. He plans to show two of them in the Tres Osos Cow Horse Derby at the Kalpowar Quarter Horses Celebration of Champions.

He has also started roping on his allaround mare.

“I roped a lot as a kid in breakaway and with the dummy,” Lundy said. “I tune myself up here at my place on a hay bale with a dummy head.”

The dummy stands no chance against him, he said with a laugh.

“It’s fun; that part’s fun,” he said. “But it was another challenge. I think I’d practiced roping live steers maybe once, and then I went and entered one of those Super Spectaculars [at the DT Horses Western Derby]. I didn’t get it on the first loop, but I did get it on the second loop.”

This whole experience has been his second loop—his second chance at reined cow horse—and he has made that catch good.