Whitesboro’s Dr. Paul Queen balances role as local chiropractor, accomplished horseman

There’s a reason most cowboys in their 50s and older walk with a slight limp, breathe with permanently bruised ribs and live with various fractures that never quite healed correctly. There’s also a reason they are able to keep saddling up the next morning. 

It takes a cowboy to mend a cowboy, and Whitesboro chiropractor Dr. Paul Queen is no stranger to the achy joints of a horseman – nor how to repair them. 

Born in southeast New Mexico, Queen has ridden horses for as long as he can remember, competing in 4-H sanctioned cow horse and reining events, as well as team roping, while growing up. 

“I was around 15 when I started showing competitively,” Queen said. “I had met a man named Bob Curtis, and he lived in Carrizosa, New Mexico. I would move over there during the summer and learn to ride and show horses through him.” 

Considering his family owned an oil and gas distribution business, at the time of high school and competing in youth horse shows, Queen was well set on the path of becoming an electrical engineer by trade. 

Queen went to New Mexico State University, where he majored in electrical engineering. However, soon after graduating, chiropractic care was heavy on his mind. 
“Chiropractic chooses you; you don’t choose it,” Queen said. “You have to have that passion, you have to have that knowledge and drive because it’s a hard career. It’s the equivalent of medical school.”

Queen attended chiropractic school in Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas, and it didn’t take long for him to begin making a name in that space following his 2013 graduation. 

“We were down there at the NRBC (National Reining Breeders Classic), and I had just graduated from chiropractic school,” Queen said. “I had my license, I took my table and started seeing all the horse people there. It started growing from there, and it was all word of mouth. I didn’t advertise at all.” 

Although Queen’s passion of owning a chiropractic practice took shape while he was in school, his love for showing horses—particularly in reining—slipped away amid the pile of exams and rigorous studying required to become a certified chiropractor. 

So, when the chance to return to the show ring came along, Queen grabbed onto the opportunity. 

“I started showing again when I graduated from Parker,” Queen said. “We were down at the NRBC, and my mom had been showing a horse named Outta Dough. And I said, ‘Hey, there’s one class left – can I get in it?’ I borrowed some chaps, I borrowed some spurs, I borrowed a hat and went in there and won the class. The rest is history, and that’s when it really took off.”

His niche for reining wasn’t the only thing that took off at this time. 

Queen had started a pediatric practice in McKinney, Texas, as well as a practice in Whitesboro under the name Straight Up Chiropractic. However, his Whitesboro practice wasn’t a traditional office.

“My original office in Whitesboro was in a horse barn,” Queen said. “The waiting room was the breezeway between the stalls, and it would be standing room only a lot of times. During the summer, it was a hundred and something degrees out there, and in the wintertime, it could be 30 something degrees. It was just wall-to-wall people, and there was just no way we could keep up with that flow and that traffic in the horse barn.”

Around the time COVID-19 hit and the lease for the building in McKinney neared the end, Queen decided the growth of his “barnyard practice” justified more attention. 

“My practice in Whitesboro just kept growing and growing and growing. And when I decided to pull the trigger and move up to Whitesboro full-time, it just exploded,” Queen said. 

The relocation of his practice to a historic Whitesboro building might have helped fuel this explosion. What was once an old Mobile station on Whitesboro’s downtown Main Street back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and later a law office, was revamped into Straight Up Chiropractic’s new homebase – giving his loyal customers new accommodations while also allowing for new faces. 

“Even now it’s still mainly horse people, and it’s through that referral system of the horse community that I see a lot of people. I still have all my same customers, but being downtown and having this visibility has really increased our traffic,” Queen said. “I’ve been here for 10 years, but people just didn’t know it. Now I’m up in front of people’s faces. It’s created a bunch of growth for me.”

Beyond his career, Queen strives to make connections not only in his chiropractic office but also throughout the Whitesboro community. Luckily, he has just the platform to achieve that. 

“Starting the (podcast) program called ‘What’s Up Whitesboro,’ where I feature businesses, has really boosted who I am,” Queen said. “My intent in life is always to help other people grow and help them be successful – I’ve always been like that. Me and a friend do almost a ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ of businesses in Whitesboro on ‘What’s Up Whitesboro.’ That’s also expanded how people know who I am.”

As a man of many hats, Queen simply wants to make a difference in the town of Whitesboro and beyond, no matter the stage on which this mission is achieved.   

“In order to grow in these small communities, you’ve got to be part of the community,” Queen said. “And part of my goal is just to make sure that people know who I am. And if I can help someone else grow, more power to them.”

On the patient side of his mission, Queen’s community involvement comes into play when prioritizing his customers – even if that sometimes means at the price of his time spent with his horses. 

“I have to pick my time between work and horse shows because I have patients I’m responsible for. I have to pick and choose where I go and what I do,” Queen said. “Putting several hundred people on hold for a week is kind of hard.”

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the mornings Queen consistently sets time aside to hit the arena dirt, but even if that block of time wasn’t carved out, horses would still have a permanent place in his life.  

“I love horses, and I love what I do. It’ll always be a part of who I am,” Queen said. “It’s something that’s bred into you from the minute you hit the ground, and you just don’t walk away from it — that western lifestyle will always be a part of me.”

Staying rooted in the western lifestyle is naturally easy for Queen, but the close proximity of it in his office certainly helps, most often taking the form of cowboys in need of adjustments. 

“I keep these cowboys and hardworking people that are out there on their jobs going,” Queen said. “And that’s something a lot of people don’t see. But I see people that are hurting coming in and people that aren’t hurting going out the door.”

Sacrificing his own personal time to be on a horse is well worth it if it means improving that cowboy’s time spent on the back of his own horse. And that improvement is what Queen aims to foster, day in and day out. 

“To see those cowboys come in—scared to death I’m gonna break them—and leave ready to go ride again, that hits your heart and is worth every penny that I spend, every moment that I’m in that office,” Queen said. “Making a difference in people’s careers and lives is what’s rewarding. I can tell what’s going on in people’s lives that they don’t even reveal to you, just by the energy transfer that comes between the chiropractor and the human.”

With these tired bones and twinging muscles, the characteristic of being tough is undoubtedly woven into the fibers of every cowboy. 

Cowboys, by definition, are subject to long hours, severe physical demands and backbreaking labor.

But perhaps the toughest cowboy of all is the very one that not only mends these cowboys back together after a week of grueling work, but often does so at the expense of his own time in the saddle.