Kaleb Driggers is the roping industry’s high-end horse-broker extraordinaire. It’s no secret that if you’ve got a good one, Driggers will find a way to make you an offer you’ll find hard to refuse.
In that role, he’s had great horses like Yahtzee, the gray he won The American aboard; Fast Time, the fancy palomino Luke Brown and Colby Lovell also rode to NFR success; Dre, the horse he went 3.3 on at the Finals with Junior Nogueira back in 2018; and many, many more. Driggers likes a good horse.
But the bay horse Driggers rode at the 2021 NFR wasn’t as famous or flashy as the rest. Remis Gays On Ofadoc, coming 15 in 2022, wasn’t the soundest, the fastest or the strongest horse Driggers has ever ridden in Las Vegas—but he’s the horse that helped Driggers get his long-deserved gold buckle nonetheless.
“He doesn’t do anything that really catches your eye,” said Driggers, 32. “But he does the same trip every single time. He scores great and runs straight toward the steer.”
“Reminic”
Driggers calls Remis Gays On Ofadoc “Cuervo,” but his first owners, Britney and Hunter Knowles of Kingston, Oklahoma, called him Reminic.
“My parents bought Reminic’s mom as a prospect for the cow horse in Reno at the Snaffle Bit sale,” Britney said. “We brought her home and started her and had her going, but she got hurt. She was by Flynns Gayson Ofadoc, and we’d had another one of those mares that was really good. So they bred her to Reminic N Dunnit and got this colt.”
But two days after the mare foaled, she died unexpectedly. So Britney’s dad brought home a milk goat, and pretty soon the colt was nursing without a problem.
“She took him in and got super protective,” Britney said. “She’d chase my dog out of the pen. They were hooked at the hip. He never had that orphan attitude because he didn’t know any different than being with the goat.”
Britney’s dad, Brian Adams, gave Reminic to her as a 2-year-old, and the Knowles went to work on him under saddle.
“He had a mind of his own for a long time,” Britney said. “He got gelded as a coming 2-year-old but, for a long time, he thought he was the dominant guy. But once we got him broke, he was really fun. We have four kids and, when he was 4, our oldest was 2 or 3 at the time, and I was doing chores. I look over and my boy had walked into the pen with him and my boy had given him a bear hug on his back leg. Reminic just turned around and looked at him and put his head back in the hay.”
Britney and Hunter did everything in and out of the arena on him, but pretty soon they figured out he had natural talent that deserved to see the bright lights.
“My husband knew he was a rodeo horse,” Britney said. “He can put a person there really quick. He had such a good mindset for it. My husband had even said at the time, ‘This is an NFR horse.’”
New Beginnings
In 2018, two-time World Champ Matt Sherwood bought the horse and used him on both ends. But he wasn’t the perfect fit for Sherwood, so he sold him to Idaho young-gun header Jeff Flenniken.
“My horse was crippled, so he loaned him to me and I rode him in the summer of 2019,” Flenniken said. “I bought him at the end of the summer, and I rode him all 2020 to make the Finals with Tyler Worley.”
Flenniken won Dodge City and Phillipsburg, Kansas, on Reminic, securing that first NFR berth in August. But come October, a deep flexor tear took him out of service for the Finals in Arlington, Texas.
“I tried to inject it and gave him two weeks off, but he was still hurt,” said Flenniken, who won second in the average riding Billy Bob Brown’s horse that year. “I tried to get on him for the fourth round, and he was still too lame to ride. It killed me not to ride him there because he’d done so well all year and been such a big part of me making the Finals.”
Tough Choices
With Reminic coming back from injury, Flenniken wasn’t planning on hitting the rodeo trail in 2021. That’s when Driggers stepped in and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“Kaleb had been trying to buy him for a while,” Flenniken said. “He had a torn deep flexor tendon, so I did it because I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance to sell him again. Sometimes I regret it. But the horse has a good home. I feel like Driggers has made him better. He fits Driggers to a T. My grandpa loves it because my brand is on him winning the world. It’s really exciting for me. I love seeing him ride him. I love seeing him do well on him. I really do.”
For Driggers, the gamble on the not-so-sound horse who he dubbed Cuervo paid off.
“He’s not really a horse that sticks out and looks badass,” Driggers said. “But Jeff is a really consistent roper, and he rides so consistent. We just clicked. It’s been a blessing to get to own him. He’s done a lot for me.”
