Parting Shot

Parting Shot

 

Kix Brooks - A love for horse and a final tour.

 

Country star Kix Brooks and his wife, Barbara, are involved in breeding and showing Quarter Horses and Paints, and are seen regularly on the cutting horse circuit.

 

Through Barbara’s love of horses, Kix became involved in horses himself. But he hadn’t found that one perfect horse to bond with until he went to a remote location in South Texas to film the music video for “My Maria.” There he fell in love with a big, black horse with a distinctively narrow white blaze named Prieto, whom he rode in the video.
“This horse is so athletic,” said Kix. “It doesn’t matter what you ask him to do, he just gets it done.”

 

Kix was so impressed with Prieto that he eventually bought him. Prieto, whose name means “dark” in Spanish, has since developed his own group of fans. Kix is not surprised.

 

“There is just something special about this horse,” Kix said. “I still am amazed at everything this horse can do. He also has this presence that I can’t quite describe. In a person it would be called charisma. It’s that extra something that makes you sit up and take notice of him. Prieto is also very smart and very well-trained. I just had to bring him home because he provides everything I ever thought a horse should provide—companionship, intelligence, fun, beauty—it’s all there. I can’t tell you how glad I was to have gotten him. Very glad, because from the moment I saw him I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

 

Kix said that each horse he spends time with grows on him. One horse in particular, Playboys Lil Peppy, came to him as a three-year-old. Barbara showed the mare at a number of cutting horse events, and not only consistently ended up in the finals, but won a number of the events. But after one competition, the mare kicked through her stall wall and injured her hind leg.

 

“There were some cuts on her leg, but nothing that led us to believe she couldn’t continue her training,” said Kix. “We all thought she was going along just fine.”

 

But several weeks later, her trainer noticed a hesitation when he asked the mare to back.

 

“We took her to the vet and found she had a small fracture to her cannon bone,” Kix said. “We were heartsick. This horse had done so well and we were very concerned. But we rested her and fortunately she healed up well. A few months later she was back at it.

 

“You really can’t help but get attached to these horses,” he said. “Each has a personality that makes them unique and special, and it is very easy for them to become like family.”

 

With the release of their new album, #1’s and then some, one of Country Music’s most successful duos are going separate ways. “After 20 years of making music and riding this trail together, we have agreed as a duo that it’s time [to] call it a day," they say. “This ride has been everything and more than we could ever have dreamed.”

 

Brooks & Dunn will hit the road one final time for a farewell tour in 2010. Cowboys visiting the WNFR in Vegas can see the duo when they perform for three nights, December 4-6 at the Las Vegas Hilton.
 

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