HA
BOB AVILA LL
OF
M FA
E
A Bit About Bob
Bob Avila has called the American Quarter Horse his obsession for over 35 years. That obsession has led Bob to accomplish a record that most simply marvel at. Bob was born in northern California, and from the beginning his love of horses was inevitable. Both his parents, Don and Pat instilled the devotion to the horse and showing horses, and the hard work required to succeed, which continues today. Bob’s induction into the prestigious AQHA Hall of Fame is August 21-21, in Las Vegas. In his performance career he has accumulated over 37 World Champion or Reserve World Champion titles in events ranging from performance to halter. Acknowledged by his peers as one of the most versatile and accomplished horsemen, he is the recipient of the first AQHA Professional Horseman award and he has captured the prestigious title of Worlds Greatest Horseman twice! His lifetime show earnings exceed 1.7 million dollars! Bob already is in the National Reined Cow Horse Hall of Fame. He is one of only two horsemen to have won both the $100,000 NRCHA Futurity and the $100,000 NRHA Futurity. He is also in the very elite company of only one other horseman that has won the NRCHA Futurity more than two times. Bob has had many of the greats train with him including; Todd Bergen, Andrea Fappani, Duane Latimer, Clinton Anderson, Pat Parelli, and John Lyons.
INTERVIEW
Q - In 1988, You pioneered the
sharing of training tips on video tapes with Todd Bergen, and the late John Slack with Heroes & Friends. Tell us a little about that. A - It was not in 1988, I want to say it was in the early 1990’s. I can’t tell you exactly when it was, but I remember the horses I used in it. I put together a group of people to do the project; it was Cam Essick, Butch Morgan, Todd Bergen, John Slack, Teddy Robinson, and myself. There were six of us that put it all together. Cam was the
brains behind the format, Butch was the marketing guy. Teddy and I had done a lot of things already, we knew we could feed off each other and had a rapport already established. We added John and Todd as the young guns so that we could bring in everybody as the audience. It worked! It worked 150%! We wanted to do something that no one had ever done before, we wanted the quality to be unbelievable. Even the packaging, Cam did the packaging, it was in a cool box with all four videos. We set out to do it right and we did it.
AUGUST 2021
BY TRACY WAGER
We did exactly what we wanted to do, and it cost us a lot of money to do it that way, but it paid off. Back then, everyone was grabbing their camcorder and doing videos out in the barn with the wife taking the video, while holding a baby and the dog biting her leg while telling her husband what to do. We did not want that, we wanted ours to be very professional, very Hollywood and that is what we did. We set the industry on their ear with it. We sold a lot of those videos and it was very successful. I do not recall how many we sold, but we had cases and cases going out the door. We had a distributor and I remember seeing cases and cases come in and it was a lot! Each case was about the size of saddle boxes, it blew me away. Q - Horse & Rider published your book “Win with Bob Avila” in 2002. A - That was my first book and Western Horseman published my second book “Be a Smart Horse Buyer”.
PUBLISHED BY WESTERN HORSEMAN
PUBLISHED BY HORSE & RIDER MAGAZINE
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