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Les Vogt Biography

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About then, we noticed a couple of very good horses at the shows that had "Chex" in their name, and found out they were sired by a horse from Oregon called King Fritz. One evening, we saw a breeding ad for King Fritz and decided to give his owner, Fritz Watkins, a call. I said "I want to buy your horse" and he said "Good. I just decided to sell him an hour ago." Corolyn and I had saved up $1,000 for fencing at our place, so I sent that up as earnest money for King Fritz and a group of brood mares. We had a month to come up with the other $69,000 for the horses we'd bought sight unseen over the phone. Somehow, I convinced a banker to loan us the money, and we were in the breeding business.

King Fritz was a phenomenal sire. When people found out we owned him, they started sending me some of his older colts to ride and they were so talented I'd load up three horses and go to a show and win first, second, and third. This was in the 70's, in the glory days of the cow horse Snaffle Bit Futurities. We worked hard, but with those horses, winning came easy. I thought I was a great horse trainer, and that all those old guys I used to watch when I was a kid sure had lost their touch. My youthful ignorance was such that I didn't realize it was the horses, not me, that were great.

We paid off our debts and were at the top of the heap of the show horse world, but God was watching my arrogance. King Fritz died, all my pregnant mares aborted, and I got divorced in about 6 months' time. It was back to square one and without all the Chex horses, I had to learn to ride and train horses from scratch almost. Having King Fritz early in my career was both a blessing and a curse, and most days I'm still not sure which was most important.

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