Trainer’s passion for horses unbridled

By Brendan Buhler

Friday, April 17, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Jon Wall has spent more than half a century training and breeding Arabian horses, with every horse he bred attaining the rank of champion.

He imported the first Egyptian Arabian horse to Las Vegas, a stallion named Almudaffar that he called Muddy — a huge horse, for an Arabian, 16 hands high, or 64 inches to the highest point on the back — and he rode it through what today is an urban city. Wall has a photo of himself sitting on Muddy outside the newly built convention center 50 years ago.

The silver dome of that convention center has long since been torn down, but as it happens, Wall works at the convention center these days. Has for the past 20 years, working at the visitor information booth.

Just because horses are often a passion of the rich, it doesn’t follow that having a passion for horses will make you rich, not by a long shot. And Wall didn’t start rich.

Wall bought his first horse when he was in high school. He had to keep it a secret from his widowed mother, who thought horses were a foolish use of money. So he saved the money himself, bought the horse in secret and stabled it near where Cashman Field is today. His mother never would have found out, either, had his little sister not ratted him out. Although, possibly at some point, she might have seen him riding Little Bit (that was the horse’s name) down the street as he went about his paper route.

(Wall needed to pay the stable fees somehow.)

It was a horsy town in those days, rangy and friendly. Wall was raised in a house his mother built on a dirt lot just north of downtown. There were weekend trail rides through town with Roy Rogers and Gabby Hays.

Those trails are paved now, though Wall has not moved away. For about 35 years he has lived near the home his mother raised him in.

(“Horse Lovers Are Stable People,” reads a throw pillow in Wall’s predominantly horse-themed living room.)

He doesn’t know any of his neighbors these days. He’s always socialized with horse people, and development has pushed all the horse people away. His own horse — his only horse these days — is a stallion named Premier, stabled about 25 miles from his house. He goes over two or three times a week, with carrots.

What he loves about Arabians, Wall says, is their hot-blooded but even temperament. It is the oldest purebred line still living and the foundation of all other horse breeds. Wall used to breed and sell them. He had to be very selective and careful because he couldn’t afford to breed a horse that wasn’t valuable. So every horse he bred was a champion.

Wall still trains horses and riders, and he is active in most horse associations known to man (although all are probably unknown to beast). Wall is attending the Arabian Breeders World Cup at South Point. And in February he was in Oman for the World Arabian Breeders Association meeting. He’s been all over the world for horse shows: Egypt, Australia, Poland and more. Unlike wealthier horse fanciers, he has to save up and try and get time off work.

But then, unlike some, Wall says he sticks around after the show to tour the country.

“I figure if I’m going halfway around the damn world, I’m going to see the place.”