Progress Forces Horse Stables to a New Home

It’s a hot midmorning at the Two Winds Ranch in Newbury Park with just a tease of a breeze to blow the dust and flies around as Bully Caddin does what he has done for nearly 40 years: taking care of horses.

Only this Wednesday morning, Caddin isn’t feeding horses or renting them out or even stitching them up; he’s moving them.

Forced out by the massive Dos Vientos housing project, Caddin is tearing down his dilapidated landmark of 25 years, and building a newer, nicer set of stables on the other side of Potrero Road.

There, at least for a while, he will continue to board and train horses, rent them to riders, hold weekend riding events and operate a petting zoo for kids.

“It’s what you call movin’ west, doing what you got to do,” he said. The 50-year-old Caddin, clad in his blue cap, plaid shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, leaned against his pickup, looked down and shook his head.

“That’s progress, I guess,” he said.

Then he was back driving down the dirt road in his blue Dodge truck, caked with the layers of dirt that mark a working vehicle. “What you want and what you’re going to get are two different things. So you never fret over what you can’t control.”

On either side of the roadway at the west end of Newbury Park are rolling hills, dried to the color of wheat in the summer sun. On the old property, horses not yet moved poke their heads out of various stables and pastures, peering between the gray-green shrubs and over dirt brown rocks.

Caddin drives past one set of stables on the old property slated to be torn down in the next few days.

“It’s going to be hotter than a hijacker’s pistol,” Caddin says, having quickly shrugged off the more serious moment.

The bits of philosophy and one-liners are sandwiched between instructions in Spanish for the three men helping him move the horses. One young hand hired for the move walks straight toward a skittish horse, which starts and runs.

Caddin hops out of the truck. “Da me, da me,” he says, reaching for the rope lead. He continues in Spanish, his voice even. “You can’t run at her, you walk up next to her from the side, don’t look her in the eye.”

He slips the bridle over the horse’s head and hands the lead back to the hired help. “That was easier than I thought it would be,” Caddin said.

He stops for a few minutes to chat with Kathy Liggett of Newbury Park, who has boarded horses at the stable since her 35-year-old daughter was a child. Why board at Two Winds?

Liggett starts to say because it’s close to her home and the people are nice, when Caddin cuts in.

“Because she’s secretly in love with me. Why else?” He shoots a quick smile at Liggett, his eyes crinkling at the edges of a friendly face lined and darkened from years in the Southern California sun.

Caddin climbs back in the truck, his canine companions Dolly the Queensland heeler and Lou the mut at his side, and they head across the street.

Caddin plans to complete the move of about 100 horses and 30 head of cattle used for roping in the next two weeks, culminating months of discussions over the development and the fate of the ranch.

Two Winds Ranch was forced to relocate after the landowners from whom he leased won approval to build the Dos Vientos project, a massive 2,350-home development on 4,500 acres about a mile west of Reino Road in Newbury Park.

When horse lovers who visited the Two Winds Ranch or boarded horses there objected to the development, one of the developers, Operating Engineers, agreed to foot some of the expenses to relocate Two Winds.

To keep the ranch operating, the city agreed to allow it to move across the street to about 20 acres on Broome Ranch, owned by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. Caddin has a two-year lease, with payments starting at $1,100 and rising to $3,000 within three years if he renews the lease.

Once the land is annexed by the city of Thousand Oaks, the property will be transferred to Conejo Open Space Conservation Authority, an agency jointly operated by the city and the Conejo Recreation and Parks District, city Planner Mark Towne said.

“The city, the parks and COSCA are working together to preserve a community resource,” he said.

After the annexation in about a year, the city will decide whether an equestrian center is the appropriate use of the land. If they decide it is not, Two Winds may be forced to move again.

But for now, Caddin wants to make the new location a nice facility, not “thrown together” like the ranch he has leased for so many years.

“Over there, we knew we were on borrowed time,” he said.

He has already moved about 30 horses, including three that are aggressive animals that he put into a separate corral.

“We call that the shark pen,” he said. It’s not that the horses have been abused, or that they are aggressive with their owners, he said. “They’re just aggressive with us and other animals.”

The animals already moved are all horses that Caddin boards for horse owners. He has another 45 of the boarded horses that will have to be led one by one across the street.

His own horses, which he rents out, can be moved as a herd, he said.

Two Winds horses rent for $15 an hour, including a guide who goes out with every group to ensure the safety of the riders and the horses. But that hourly fee represents a kind of progress in itself, he said.

“When we started here, we rented the horses for $1 an hour and hay was $27 a ton. When hay went to $32 a ton, I told my wife, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to make it.’ Today, hay is about $160-$165 a ton.”

And he is still making it work.

While Caddin does not relish the move and the encroachment of homes, neither does he expect many problems from the new homeowners. The prevailing ocean breezes generally carry ranch odors down the road and away from the development site, he said. But there will always be someone who is unhappy with the ranch, he said.

“Some people would [complain] if they were hung with a new rope,” he said. “You always get that kind of people.”