The next time I saw Wyatt was in 2001 in Del Mar, California. Jordy Johns was training him for his new owner. Jordy had moved to Las Vegas and sold him to a local of Sin City, Patty Romeo. I’m not sure why, but I said to Jordy, “You should do trail with that horse.” Jordy just smiled and nothing more was said as he was not a trail guy. In 2002 I judged Wyatt again in western pleasure at the Scottsdale Arabian Show. He was still owned by the lady in Las Vegas, but now Bill Porcher in Santa Ynez, California, was his trainer. Santa Ynez is less than 100 miles from me and, in hindsight, I should have found it peculiar that this unique Half-Arabian gelding kept moving closer to me. 

In early 2003 providence started to reveal itself. I received an email from Wyatt’s owner, Patty Romeo. She introduced herself and asked me if I was familiar with her horse and was I interested in being his trainer. I wondered if this email was coincidence or destiny? Either way, I did not allow my introspection to delay my response, and quickly answered, ”Yes, definitely,” and “Can I teach him to do trail?” Patty replied, “I’ll bring him down on the first” and “I don’t care if you teach him trail as long as you don’t make me do trail.” 

Ten days later, Wyatt was at my barn…but my anticipation soon turned into concern and despair. I called Patty within the first month and said, “I think there is something wrong because after I start working him he has an odd sound to his breathing and a trickle of orange discharge out of one nostril.” I then called our farm veterinarian, Dr. Charlie Liskey, who came out and looked at him for maybe ten minutes. Without saying a word to me he pulled out his phone and called an internal medicine specialist at the famed Alamo Pintado Equine Hospital and said, “I’m sending Michael Damianos up right now with a big Appaloosa gelding that, at minimum, has a guttural pouch infection and possibly other complications.” After he got off the phone Charlie showed me why he could tell what it was and why it was very serious. I loaded Wyatt in the trailer and took him to the hospital. 

The doctors at Alamo Pintado put a scope up his nostril and I sensed an atmosphere of direness among the veterinarians. I witnessed the best internal medicine veterinarian I know call for the best surgeon I know. Wyatt was ultimately diagnosed with a rare fungal infection in his guttural pouch and larynx. They told me they had never heard of this condition in California, and if it traveled to his lungs, it would be terminal.

They inundated me and Patty with questions about where he had been, what he ate, and many other things for days. Neither of us could give them any information that would help determine the cause. His ailment was a mystery and his prognosis was bleak. He would require a regimen of anti-fungal medications and an operation. I left Wyatt at the clinic and felt crestfallen for the horse and all the goals we had set that would probably never come to fruition. Making things worse, he had already developed a fan club at the barn and my clients and staff were melancholy over this turn of events. Fortunately for all of us his constitution was stronger than his illness and four months later I brought him home from the hospital. To this day, twenty years later, when I go to that clinic someone invariably asks me, “How is Wyatt?” 

In February of 2004 we took Wyatt to Scottsdale and he made his debut in trail. Patty earned a Top Ten in Western Pleasure AOTR and I was a strong third on him in the trail championship at the largest Arabian show in the world. I thought that was quite remarkable for a green horse, but I was soon to learn it was a trifle to the horse. He was just warming up. His trail career soared the rest of 2004. He was Champion Open Half-Arabian Trail at Paso Robles, Elk Grove, Santa Barbara Spring, Santa Barbara Fall, Pacific Slopes Championships and the Region 2 Championships. All this success after the prior year of extreme adversity gave me the ammunition to persuade Patty to let me take him to the National Championships in Louisville, Kentucky. 

"I don’t care if you teach him trail as long as you don’t make me do trail.” 

Wyatt skated through the preliminaries in Kentucky. The finals were Friday evening October 14, 2004 which also was Patty’s birthday. In those days only the Top Ten went to the finals, and the finals order was seeded. Wyatt was last to go in the finals as he was the high score horse in the prelims. Two horses already had excellent scores that night when Wyatt Earp took the course. When we finished the pattern I had a smile from ear to ear and a plethora of cheers. The course designer, Lorne Robertson, shook my hand and said, “great ride!” I rode up to Patty, who had a pen and a program to write down the scores of the five judges, and waited for the announcements. After the first two scores Patty’s  hands were trembling, by the third score her eyes teared up and she dropped the pen, by fourth her knees buckled and two of my other clients took a hold of her arms to prevent a fall and after the fifth score I said, “Happy Birthday, Patty Romeo.” The next thing I heard was announcer Craig Christiansen saying, “That is your National Champion.” That first year green Half-Arabian Trail Horse who cheated death a year before just won the U.S. National Championship on his owner’s birthday in spectacular fashion. I cannot imagine a more dramatic comeback. 

I also won the purebred Trail Horse Championship that year on PS Poison (PS Kasenova x Petrovia). Needless to say a group from MDPH went to out to celebrate. It seemed every time I turned around that night in the bar of the Executive Inn West someone was asking me if I was that guy that rode the “big app horse.” People I did not know came by the stalls the next day because they wanted to see him and one of the judges stopped to tell me how impressive that Half-Arab was. 

Wyatt Earp would prove to be no flash in the pan. In the next six years he went on to win three more National Championships and three Reserves in Trail. The lady who said, “Just don’t make me do Trail,” had become a regular in the Trail division. At the regional level Wyatt won numerous championships in Trail, Western Pleasure, and Ladies Sidesaddle. In 2007 he was National Champion in Trail and Trail AOTR, Top Ten in Amateur Western Pleasure and Top Ten in Open Ladies Sidesaddle. He was USEF Horse of the Year in Half-Arabian Working Western multiple times. Sometimes he won the Open Trail Championship and Open Western Pleasure Championship at a show. He was featured on a USEF poster and for years if you looked up “Sidesaddle” on Wikipedia his picture was there. 

I thought that was quite remarkable for a green horse, but I was soon to learn it was a trifle…he was just warming up. 

Wyatt was a confident horse with a big personality. One time, waiting for our turn at Fall Santa Barbara in the Trail Maturity my good friend and one of the best horsemen I’ve ever known, Lou Roper, had a great ride on a dun horse. People were telling him what a great performance he had that received a score of 75. Lou, who is one of the greatest Trail showmen of all times, looked right at me and replied to his fans, “Yeah, we were good, but there is an Appaloosa still to go and he is a professional ass-kicker.” Wyatt went next and scored a 77. That horse knew what was said and decided not to disappoint. Rocker Freddie Mercury once said, “The reason we’re so successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course.” That horse looked at me that day and other days saying the same thing in his head. 

Wyatt accrued a loyal following, and for years people identified me as the guy who rides Wyatt Earp for. Once on the way to the Region 3 Championships in Reno, Nevada, I stopped at a McDonald’s in little Chowchilla, California. I dropped the feed doors and proceeded to walk to that fast food store to get a McMuffin. As I got halfway to the restaurant door I heard a lady’s  voice yell, “That’s Wyatt Earp in that trailer.” I turned around and said, “Yes, it is.” She said, “I would recognize him anywhere. He is my dream horse.” Like his namesake, that horse was identified as a figure of distinction. His last show was in 2012, and people still ask me about him. His owner, Patty, is still one of my dearest friends and has become a popular Arabian horse judge. Wyatt is still with her in Las Vegas at 30 years of age. 

"Yeah we were good, but there is an Appaloosa still to go and he is a professional ass-kicker.” 

I have ridden a long list of successful horses since him, but he is the one I will forever be identified with. Artist/author Erin Matlock wrote, “There are people you meet who become impossible to forget. They were not sent to you by accident, but instead destined to open a doorway to a different version of your life.” 

The same holds true for some horses. Anyone could understand that…if they met Wyatt Earp. 

For over a decade the Half-Arabian Wyatt Earp and Mike Damianos were a formidable team in the trail horse division. As Mike says, Wyatt Earp is the horse he will always be identified with.

Wyatt Earp and Mike Damianos going Champion Western Pleasure at Region Two.

Wyatt Earp and and Mike accepting the roses for two of their three U.S. National Championships in Trail.

Wyatt Earp also carried owner, Patty Romero, to U.S. National Champion Trail ATR, plus a Reserve Championship as well as nine Top Tens at US and Canadian Nationals.

Wyatt Earp is 30 years old and living with his owner, Patty Romeo, in Las Vegas, Nevada.