About Me
ERIC THOMAS
Eric grew up with horses, trailing mustangs and cowboying in Eastern Nevada. In high school, he rose to the top of the Thacher School horse program, where he learned to shoe, pack, train and show a horse. After Thacher he put himself through UC Davis and UC Berkeley, and Graduate Business School starting and training horses.
Eric has trained and shown reiners, reined cow horses and cutters professionally for over twenty five years, but has also trained, shown and won professionally at Dressage. He holds titles as Pacific Coast and West Coast Champion, has won numerous circuit, year end and aged event championships in the National Reined Cow Horse Association, National Reining Horse Association, National Cutting Horse Association, and American Quarter Horse Association, where he holds lifetime memberships and retains Professional Horseman status.
In addition to the performance horses he has finished, Eric has started hundreds of young horses, and is known for retraining troubled horses in which other trainers have lost confidence.
Two of his past assistants have gone on to become world champions.
Eric has given clinics on reining, working cattle, starting young horses, and horsemanship in the U.S. and Europe. He counts himself particularly privileged to have worked extensively and given clinics with the late Tom Dorrance, and with other mentors such as Hall of Fame trainers, Les Vogt and Ken Wold,
As a trainer and educator, Eric Thomas represents a unique blend of horsemanship ethics, classical dressage education and Stock horse technique, that results in well prepared, thoroughly educated horses and riders. For a glimpse into his thinking, Please see this article on Balance first published in Western Times in March of 2003.
THOMAS RANCH
Thomas Ranch is 60 acres located in the small community of Briones and surrounded by 12,000 acres of regional park and watershed. The ranch is equal distance (7 miles) from the East Bay towns Orinda, Pinole, Martinez and Laffayette, just 15 minutes from the nearest BART station and only 30 minutes from Downtown San Francisco.
Though close to urban life, the ranch has a rustic, rural, and natural feel. Deer, coyote, herons, red tailed hawk, and numerous other wild species share the ranch with the Thomas’s, their horses and other livestock. Some of the barns and dwellings date back to the early 1900’s. And cattle graze the hills just as they did when the ranch was headquarters to the Garcia land grant.
As a horse training center, the ranch boasts a covered arena, two outdoor cutting arenas, one devoted to a Cuttin’ Critter (the world’s most effective mechanical teaching aid for cutters and their horses), two round pens, 43 stalls and various turnouts.
Riding out is easy at Thomas Ranch. Other than a short ride through the cow pastures, gravel roads lead up the valley to Briones Regional Park; and less than five minutes in a trailer can deliver horse and rider to one of several entrances to either the park or Briones Reservoir. Once on the trail, rides can go for a couple of hours or all day. Either way, the horses love it and learn a lot about life outside the arena.
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