What’s in a Name?
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By Delores Kuhlwein
It wasn’t so long ago, it seems, that a few horses with the initials “RV” in their names began to make their mark at some of the most prestigious shows. Yet, it was actually almost two decades ago when the first RV horses rose to the top of the game. Since that time, multiple Congress and NSBA Championships and money-earning rides have been earned under the iconic RV moniker.
Behind the names stand Ronnie and Vickie Kent of RV Quarter Horses of Graceville, Florida, who have developed their highly recognizable “RV insignia” breeding program over the years by matching great stallions with their renowned mares, such as Miss Good Cookie and Ill Be Dun Won It, their late top producing mare whose offspring earned just under $500,000 in winnings as of November 2020.
How they came to establish their successful breeding program involved more than just talent, however. The recipe for success of RV Quarter Horses came from years of family involvement in the industry, hard work, and a true love for the broodmare.
Two Paths Converge
Before they were married in 2001, Ronnie and Vickie Kent each developed a lifetime of equine experience on their own. Little did they know that later down the line their combined knowledge and broodmare bands would become the perfect formula for raising horses together.
Vickie had raised her own daughters, Christie, Michelle, and Jamie with their homebred American Quarter Horses as a way of life for their family, competing together at open shows beginning when the girls were young. She made the girls’ show clothing and trained the horses herself. Eventually, Vickie wanted a change.
She says, “The open shows were a lot of fun, but they tended to run late, and, as the girls got older, I wanted a different environment, so we moved them over to the Quarter Horse shows.”
Then, in 1992, she raised Zips Dun Won It (a full brother to Ill Be Dun Won It), by Zips Poco Pine and out of Dun Won It. After twenty years of breeding Quarter Horses, Vickie knew the colt was a great prospect, and she campaigned him as a two-year-old to win most of the major AQHA and NSBA futurities in the southeast. In the meantime, Ronnie was raising two sons, Brad and Brian, and a daughter, Gina. Gina began showing at open shows and then Ronnie and Brad joined in as they moved to AQHA, showing Miss Pressive and a stud, Cee James Caan. Ronnie’s next horse, the infamous Miss Good Cookie, earned a Superior in both Amateur and Open Western Pleasure, and she was the first horse Ronnie qualified for the AQHA World Show.
“I had several mares, like everybody else who was trying to breed mares to their own studs,” Ronnie says, whose experience with breeding had begun with the purchase of Cee James Caan. “Then, when Brad and I started showing together, that’s how we met Vickie and her girls at the AQHA shows. Our kids were all showing together.”
And the rest, as they say, was history as Ronnie and Vickie Kent became both family and partners in a collaborative breeding program.
The Renowned RV Program
