Back in the saddle

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- There was a time Joseph Grant had it all -- a loving family, a successful horse-training business and a 40-acre ranch.

Back in 1998, the 32-year-old Grant gained national press when he exposed a farm in Miami County, Kan., containing 200 starving and neglected Hackney ponies. While many of the horses had to be put down, Grant aided in rehabilitating the survivors.

Popular and gifted, Grant introduced his horse-training talents to Eastern Jackson County in the summer of 2000, when he conducted a clinic in Oak Grove to raise money for the family of the late Mickey Sanstra, who died during heart transplant surgery.

Mickey Sanstra's wife Jean will be forever grateful to Grant for the time he donated and for the $1,200 the clinic raised.

"I greatly appreciate what Joe did at the benefit," she said. "I thought he went above and beyond what he needed to do."

Began to lose patience

Six months later, Grant's life began to change.

Despite lots of work and being surrounded by the things he loved, he began to lose his patience, his temper and eventually his connection to his wife and three stepchildren.

"I lost track of what I really wanted," said Grant, 36. "My kids mentioned that my attitude was starting to change. I would raise my voice."

Perhaps it was the pressure to be a good trainer and a good father that got to Joe Grant, or perhaps it was his perception of how people viewed him as a black man training horses.

When he and his wife, Linda, to Miami County in 1998 from Virginia "we didn't know nobody," he said. "I was in a mixed marriage, and a lot of people thought that was wrong right off the bat."

The road to Grant's eventual breakdown this past October goes back years, he said.

While the 1998 horse rescue remains one of his life's highlights, Grant maintains some people in Miami County connected to the farm's owner, Newman Stern, have shown him resentment for the pressure he put on authorities to clean up the farm.

More than once a carload of people drove by his home in the middle of the night with less-than-cordial intentions.

"They was hollering things and shooting at night," Grant said.

Grant moved his family to Drexel in 1999, under more accepting and friendly terms. He bought a 40-acre ranch and was doing just fine with his training business.

Since learning about horses from his grandfather as a youngster in Virginia, Grant has had the ability take an unbroke -- a horse that has never been ridden -- and train it to trust a rider in about a half-hour. His specialty is curing behavioral problems such as biting, kicking or stubbornness, more often than not in one session.

His own problems paved a destructive path for Grant before he got the chance to see the light.

What normally was a peaceful home life changed. Grant said he and Linda had an argument that dealt a blow to their marriage.

"I said things I shouldn't have said," Grant admits, and out of guilt he decided to leave the farm and live with friends.

Grant said there was no way he could go back to the farm. His wife eventually moved to another part of Missouri.

Bouncing from place to place, Grant ended up back in Kansas in 2002, this time in Olathe, staying with friends Kevin and Angel Hefner, to whom he is forever grateful.

But trying to take steps forward was not easy for Joe Grant. One day in October a tow driver came to repossess his motorcycle and later claimed Grant assaulted him.

Despite Grant's claims of innocence, he was charged with assault and landed in jail in Johnson County, waiting for the bond to be set.

Time to think in jail

Three days turned into nine in the jail cell, as no one came to bail him out. Grant considers his extra stay to be a blessing because it gave him time to think. And time to prioritize his feelings.

"It saved my life," Grant determined. "Since then I have dedicated my life to me. He said nobody can help me until I help myself."

Grant has set out to become the horse trainer he once was, the one featured in the April, 1998 edition of Western Horseman Magazine.

"Back in that article the writer said I didn't know what 'no' meant," Grant reminds himself from time to time. "I want everybody to know that I still don't know what 'no' is. Joe Grant doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no."'

Although Grant has not fully beaten his challenges, he has a much better outlook on life, horse training and earning the respect he used to have.

"I want to take everybody I've ever done wrong and make it right," including his family he said.

Even if it takes 10 years, he said, he would like to make amends with his family and others he has wronged.

The rest will take care of itself, he says.

"People think they saw something at that clinic?" Grant said. "They ain't seen nothing yet."