2025 Nutrena Head Horse of the Year

This year, Clint Summers is roping at his fifth Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, December 4-13 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Clint breathes his own rare rodeo air, being an NFR switch-ender who’s handy enough to head and heel at the highest world-class level. He made his first NFR heeling for 2017 world champion header Erich Rogers in 2018, and will now head at the Finals for the fourth time in the past five years. Clint has called on his 2011 brown gelding, Mr Joes Shadow Bar, aka “Joe,” non-stop in his regular-season campaign. And now as the 2025 Nutrena Head Horse of the Year presented by AQHA, Joe is breathing rare roping air, too.

Since the inception of ProRodeo’s Horse of the Year program in 1989, where each event’s top 25 in the world vote on which horse they think is most deserving each year, only two head horses in history have won this award more than twice : Charles Pogue’s legendary Oklahoma Top Hat, aka “Scooter,” won it six times, and the Tryan family’s 2015 ProRodeo Hall of Fame head horse, Precious Speck, aka “Walt,” was honored four times.

Joe, who’s owned by Clint and Darren Summers, is by Mr Joes Bar Song and out of Princess Hailstone by Nick Eyed Cody. Joe, who was bred by Randy and Treva Smyser of Sheridan, Missouri, also was voted the 2023 Nutrena Head Horse of the Year (and finished third in the 2024 voting), and is now one of only three horses ever to win the award twice. The other two include Richard Eiguren’s pretty palomino, Smoothly Anchored, aka “Calhoon,” who took two titles back-to-back in 2001 and 2002, and Riley Minor’s great horse RK Tuff Trinket, aka “Bob,” who was voted head horse of the year in 2018 and 2020.

“I told some people it was pretty cool when he won it the first time. I was excited, but it means more to win it the second time. I’m always trying to have good horses, and it means a lot that my peers look at Joe the same way I do,” says Clint, who calls Lake City, Florida, home with his wife, Brittany; son, Claxton, who’ll turn 3 on January 25; and baby girl, Cora, who’ll be 1 January 8. “All year, it was me and Joe, and Jade (Corkill, Summers’ three-time world champion heeler) and (Jade’s horse) ‘Bodak’ (Bodak Yello). We rode them everywhere.”

Clint and 14-year-old Joe’s chemistry paired perfectly with Jade and Bodak’s, as they parlayed a lights-out summer run into heading to the NFR ranked fourth and third in the world standings, respectively. That kind of chemistry with his equine partner is something Clint does not take for granted.

“Joe is so awesome,” says Clint, who bought Joe from 33-time National Finals (22 team roping and 11 steer roping) qualifier and American Quarter Horse Hall of Famer J.D. Yates in the fall of 2022 after first noticing him several years prior. “I think it’s his heart. He’s so tough, he takes all the miles and still does the same thing over and over. He still scores, runs, pulls and faces every time, and if he didn’t have a big ol’ dang heart, he wouldn’t be great. That’s just Joe – it doesn’t matter what situation we’re in, he’s going to give everything he has. You don’t find them like that on every corner, and another thing is that he fits me so good. No matter how good they are, if they don’t fit you, it just doesn’t work sometimes. He has been nothing but great for us.”

Riley Minor’s RK Tuff Trinket was voted this year’s reserve head horse of the year, and Tyler and Jessi Wade’s 2024 head horse of the year, Espuela Bro, aka “Spur,” finished third in the voting.