Miles and wife Cassie

Miles DeWitt is blessed to have a ranching background. During school he started colts and spent time on the rodeo circuit, roping, riding cow horses, and barrel horses and even shoeing. At one point he shod all of the horses he had in training but now he limits his time at the anvil to tacking on a lost shoe and his personal horses. He broke his first colt at nine years old and in high school he took his first horse in training. He gained valuable experience starting colts for different ranches.

“My dad is probably my biggest influence because without him I couldn’t ride half the horses I do now. He taught me to be tough and ride what they send you,” he said.

He was raised around cow horse trainer Jim Paul Sr. and he worked with reiner and cow horse trainer Cal Cooper for almost a year, and he’s been helped by champion cow horse trainer Corey Cushing as well. At 38, he and his wife Cassie have four daughters and the whole family is very involved in barrel horses.

Dewitt, who trains a variety of performance horses full time, hopes to have a colt for the Snaffle Bit Futurity. He would also like to see one of his daughters or wife make it to the NFR. He tries to always have a personal horse to show but he usually gets the foundation established and then sells them.

He won the Arizona National Livestock Show in 2011, 2017 and 2018.

Why Miles Uses RCHTO:

“I live on a ranch and I’ve been around some very good horsemen but I don’t get a chance to go and ride with them very often…There are so many different ways to train a horse and I am just interested in finding what works for me.

“I’ll see an idea on [RCHTO], try it and if it works for my program then I’ll add it. I think a guy needs to have a lot of tools in his tool belt. There are so many ways to teach them to stop and turn and if you can have two or three ways that you can use to help show them how to do it, then it’s just going to smooth out your process…[RCHTO] is a way for me to advance my riding. Those guys on there are the best at what they do and if I can take a little from each guy and it helps build my own riding – that’s why I use it.”