A Philosophy Of Patience: Kenny Lakins
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68 – May/June, 2023
By Brittany Vermeer
Kenny Lakins’ dad was raised on Tennessee Walking Horses. “Dad always said that when he got old enough, he would buy a Quarter Horse,” Kenny says. “I rode a bit of those Walking Horses growing up, too. It didn’t really matter what kind of horse I rode, as long as I could ride.”
When Kenny was 12 years old, he started going to horse sales. He had a talent for breaking colts, so he’d run them through the sale pen and make a tidy profit. When he turned 17, he started working after school for a major horse trader named Lawrence Bishop.
“Lawrence gave me a pretty good start,” Kenny says. “Then, I worked for a fella named Jerry Brown, who owned Frisch’s Big Boy restaurants. I started cleaning stalls when I was a senior in high school and worked for him for five years. We would go out at 5:30 in the morning to feed horses, clean stalls, and ride. He taught me a lot about making it a business, instead of just being a worker.”
When he turned 25, Kenny was ready to set out on his own, so he leased a place in Middletown, Ohio from his old friend Lawrence. “I was scared to death, because I didn’t know if I could make it or not. But I ended up getting a lot more horses than I thought. Business got better each year, and the horses got better each year.”
During his youth, Kenny had a plan that if he could pick just one horse each year, and spend a little extra time making it into something truly great, well then, that would be the first step towards getting his name out there.
“I tell these young guys today to try to pick a Junior horse out of the 10 or 12 they have in training and try to make it the best horse it can be,” he says. “The good thing is now they have Green Western Pleasure and other options. Back then, in Ohio, it was so deep because you had 15 great horse trainers. It was the toughest state in the US to show in. I could’ve moved and gone to a different state, and it could’ve been a bit easier. But I think that’s what made me who I am, because it made me work hard. If I did place in the Junior Western Pleasure in the top 5, it felt almost like I was winning.”
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