Jodee Miller has carved out a name for herself as a top barrel horse trainer, but she took to the ProRodeo trail in 2024 with M R Im On Fire Guys and banked a big win in Ellensburg, Washington, before turning her rig back to Texas and closing out her season.
Miller, who lives in Lipan, Texas, with her fiance, went 17.50 in the first round of Ellensburg Rodeo and earned $259. In the second round, she turned heads when she broke the arena record in 16.59 seconds on Ellensburg’s standard pattern. That run earned her the $2,724 second round win. M R Im On Fire Guys, beneath Miller, was rock solid in the finals to end up as the aggregate champions on three runs in 51.54 seconds, earning $4,086 and bringing their event total to $7,069.
“Fuego,” is by Miller and her sister, Jayme Robinson’s late stallion French StreakToVegas and out of N Fuego by Walk Thru Fire.
“I bought him out of the Texas Best Sale sale as a weanling owned by Larry Coats,” Miller said. “I had no intentions of buying one for myself. But they led this ugly horse into the ring by the stud we had just purchased and nobody was bidding on him. I got my sister on board and we ended up getting him bought.”
Fuego lived up to his blazing birthname from a young age.
“He was challenging from the start,” Miller said. “My colt starter, Robbie Sharp, had hell getting him safe enough for me to ride. He was so sensitive. I rode him once when I got him back—he took off, and it took me a while to get him stopped.”
Sharp took the gelding back for extra riding, but otherwise, nobody in Miller’s program was able to handle being on the insecure roan gelding’s back.
“I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t be unsafe for anybody else,” Miler said. “Even in exhibition lines, my helpers would have to stay off of him and hold him from the ground. He wasn’t dangerous, he was just so insecure.”
Once Miller got Fuego solid on the pattern, she knew the journey to the winner’s circle was far from over.
“He didn’t have that ‘it factor,” confidence that horses need to show out during their futurity year,” Miller said. “But at the end of that first year, he started to come on. At the end of his first derby year, last year, he went on a rampage and figured it out. Last time I looked, his lifetime earnings were approaching $150K, and most of that came within the last year. He was like a little hermit crab that needed to come out of his shell, and now he’s here.”
Although the gelding smoothed out at the jackpots and futurities, the rodeo road proved challenging at first for Miller. Although her sister showed her the ProRodeo ropes at a young age, her rodeo days happened before she picked up training horses full-time and found herself mainly on the futurity and jackpotting path.
The path from Fuego’s first rodeo, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo qualifier back in Uvalde, Texas, to Ellensburg wasn’t the straightest path. The younger horse lacked experience in outdoor arenas, and struggled to adapt to the ever-changing environments at rodeos. She made adjustments throughout the weeks in order to fight her way through the seasoning hurdles.
“He was just going through the motions and trying to figure things out,” Miller said. “He’s a horse that likes consistency and doesn’t flourish with a lot of change. Out here there’s different setups, alleyways, ground types, there might be barrels right on the fence or in the middle of nowhere. That fed his insecurity. I had to get out of trainer mode and try not to pick on him.”
In Ellensburg, Miller finally felt all the pieces fall together as the was en route to breaking the arena record.
“I knew that for the first time this summer he felt like he was locked in and running,” Miller said. “All summer, it’s been slow and placing in the middle of the pack, or going too fast and not placing becasue he wasn’t catching his spots. When I made that run, I knew it was one of my best all summer. I had no idea it was going to be a 16.5, though.”
Just as Fuego and Miller picked up their momentum on the road and approached the $60,000 mark in earnings on the year and find themselves ranked around the No. 30 position, Miller’s turning her rig back Toward her new home in Lipan, Texas, to reunite with her fiance and settle back into her training routine. As she prepares for fall futurities, she reflected on her renowned respect for the rodeo road after trying her hand at the summer run.
“My heart will always lie with training,” Miller said. “But I’ve learned a lot and been grateful for the opportunity. I found that it’s pretty testing to go to these rodeos. I didn’t think the rodeos would try me as much as they did—I thought it couldn’t be harder than training 3-year-olds—but I have to give these girls a lot of respect for what they do.”
