The Road Back: John Daugherty Revels in a Life Transformed

A good barber knows how to create conversation. After years of standing over his chair trimming hair and chatting with clients, John Daugherty has always prided himself on his ability to talk to just about anybody.

“It didn't matter if it was a doctor, the mayor, or the homeless guy around the corner, I could talk to everyone,” he said.

So when Daugherty found himself in a prison staring at the adolescent faces of his two sons at a loss for words, his inability to find the right thing to say was just as shocking as the somber place they had all found themselves. It was the first and last time his children ever visited him in prison.

“I don't know if it was embarrassment or if it was about the emotional level you had to keep in there to survive,” he reflected. “I think it was mostly the embarrassment of not knowing what to say. I had failed my kids in a lot of ways and it hurt. It truly did.”

Daugherty's life has not been an easy one, but it was during his darkest moments that he finally saw a spark of hope.

Born in Indiana, Daugherty was one month old when his father died and his mother put him up for adoption. Extended family members took him in and he moved to Owensboro, Kentucky. Growing up, his adoptive parents fought incessantly so he found himself alone most of the time. He was allowed to go where he wanted, when he wanted. Some members of his family were involved in biker gangs so he had easy access to alcohol, drugs and plenty of reckless parties by the age of 15.

When he was in high school, he got married. His drug use continued. After 10 years of marriage and the birth of his two sons, he got divorced. As his career as a barber gained momentum, so too did the drug use. He was sober during the day, but at night and on weekends all bets were off. He went through another failed marriage, lost touch with his family, and eventually started selling drugs and catching charges.

Daugherty was in jail, having just been sentenced to 15 years in the penitentiary, when he hit a new low.

“I was still in the Davis County jail when they came and told me my dad was going to die,” he recalled. “They got me from my cell and I went to the hospital to see my dad. I got to spend 30 minutes there. Then they took me back to jail and I was shipped to prison three days later. That was the last time I ever talked to my dad.”

During his time in prison, Daugherty started reading the Bible and became a Christian. His life was transformed in many ways, but it was still far from perfect. When he made parole, he bounced from different halfway houses and rehabs, oftentimes reverting back to drug use.

John and his doting sidekick Remi | Katie Petrunyak

On April 18, 2023, it was his son's birthday and Daugherty had found himself back in a jail cell for absconding parol. It was the first day of his journey to sobriety. When he got out of jail, he went to the faith-based Isaiah House Treatment Center. While there, he heard about Stable Recovery.

“When I was reading the Bible later that day, it started talking about King Solomon's horses,” said Daugherty. “Everywhere I looked, it would say something about a horse again. I never in my life had thought about a horse. I'd never even touched one. From that time on, I felt that God had led me to Stable Recovery and there wasn't anything that was going to get in my way.”

Later that spring, Daugherty started the Stable Recovery program and began learning the ropes of becoming a groom at the Taylor Made School of Horsemanship. He started off working in a barn with two and three-month-old foals and fell in love with them straightaway.

“One day I was out there picking up rocks in the field,” he recalled. “A foal came up and just laid her head on my shoulder. It changed something in me and I had a connection with them after that.”

After graduating from the School of Horsemanship, Daugherty was hired on at the training center at WinStar Farm. It was a big jump going from working with those placid foals to rambunctious racehorses.

On his first day, he encountered one colt that seemed to have a mean streak. The 2-year-old was kicking the walls, foam spewing from his mouth as he pinned his ears back at Daugherty. The barn foreman placed a pile of tack by the stall.

“What am I supposed to do about that?” asked Daugherty him.

“You're supposed to go in there and put the tack on him,” replied the foreman as he started walking off down the barn aisle.

Daugherty figured he could either give it a try or quit the job on the spot, so he went for it. It didn't take long before that seemingly aggressive colt was Daugherty's favorite charge.

“Nobody else liked him, but I loved him,” said Daugherty. “It didn't matter what kind of mood I was in, what I felt like or what I was thinking. When I got there every morning, that horse demanded me to be at my best.”

“Horses don't judge you,” he continued. “You walk in there with a clean slate with them and ya'll better figure it out together. He didn't care if I had graduated from Yale or if I was a Catholic priest. He was going to try to bite me either way.”

Daugherty has been a groom at the training center for the past year, honing his horsemanship skills while also taking on more responsibility with the Stable Recovery program. Four months ago, WinStar added a house on their farm exclusively for School of Horsemanship graduates. Daugherty signed on as the house manager. With five men at the house filling various jobs at WinStar from night watchman to maintenance crew, Daugherty's role is to make sure everyone is adjusting to their new jobs while also keeping up with their Stable Recovery meetings.

Having a sense of purpose and a community that supports him is all completely new to Daugherty, but it's what gets him up at 4 a.m. every morning.

“I wake up every day and I'm thankful that I have a job that I love,” he shared. “I was at WinStar the other day and I looked around and there wasn't anyone else in the barn right then. I realized Bob Baffert had horses there, Todd Pletcher, Brad Cox, the biggest trainers in the world, and I'm sitting here with these horses taking care of them. I guess I started doing things His way. I got myself to prison. He's got me working with the best racehorses in the world in less than a year.”

Daugherty's personal life has transformed too. He has been in touch with both his biological mother and his adoptive mother. His relationships with his sons, now ages 21 and 18, are almost unrecognizable from what they were just a few years ago.

“It went from me not knowing what to say to them, to them actually being able to talk to me about their problems,” Daugherty said. “My son actually said one time, 'When did you start giving good advice?' To tell you the truth–and don't get me wrong, in a way I always loved my kids–but I honestly didn't know what love was. I liked my kids more than I liked everybody else, but I truly believe that I didn't love myself and I believe you cannot give anything you do not possess. I didn't possess love so I didn't know how to love my kids. And now I do. That right there is the biggest change in my life. It's hard to put into words, but it's pretty amazing. God used horses to talk to me and get me to the right place.”