When I was a kid, back in the nineteen sixties, most boys wanted to become a pilot. Not so me: I wanted to be a cowboy. I watched all the western movies, read as many cowboy books as I could, played with my friends sheriff and gangster and loved nothing more than being outside in the woods, getting dirty and be around animals. When I got older I became a business man. I had to wear suit and tie, had to behave and of course had not to get dirty…

But deep inside a dream was built: I wanted to have a Ranch in the Wild West! So on every US-vacation I kept looking around for land, for horses and cowboys. Instead I found Manhattan, where I lived for more than a year in my business environment; but no wild land, no horses and no cowboys – at least not the ones I thought of! What a disappointment: now I was so close but so far away from a cowboy like horse ranch in the US!

Back in over civilized Switzerland the years went by and when I just wanted to give up, my good friend Susi Dubs who has been riding western horses in Switzerland for ever, gave me new hope: She has met a horse trainer in Oklahoma who wanted to built a Ranch! On my next US vacation I looked for this gentleman, who worked on a Ranch near a little village called Guthrie in the state of Oklahoma. That was not so easy for a Swiss businessman who has never before been in the wide countries of the mid west. But this time: no disappointment! Jody Brainard and I went along very well from the beginning – although my English was not very western like…