Emerson "Bud" Dunn (May 15, 1918 – January 11, 2001) was a Tennessee Walking Horse trainer from Kentucky who spent most of his career in northern Alabama.

Dunn moved to north Alabama from Georgia in the 1950s, and bought out another trainer who was quitting the horse business.

[15] In total, Dunn personally showed 108 horses at the Celebration, and several hundred others which he trained were shown by other riders.

[8] Despite Dunn's success, he did not ride a winning horse to the World Grand Championship until 1992; fellow trainers felt that he was blackballed because he did not live in the Shelbyville area, where the Celebration is held.

[4] With his eventual success, he twice became the oldest rider ever to win the World Grand Championship, the first time at age 74.

[3] Steve Dunn also became a successful horse trainer, winning two World Grand Championships, the first before his father won one.

"[9] Bud Dunn died on January 11, 2001, at the age of 82,[6][27] following two heart attacks brought about by complications from knee replacement surgery.

[6] Dunn trained and rode his first World Grand Championship on the bay stallion Dark Spirit's Rebel.

[20] In 1992, the horse and rider pair won at most of the shows they had entered,[19] including the World Grand Championship at that year's Celebration.

[4] The new owners moved RPM to trainer Sammy Day's stable in Shelbyville, with the intention of entering him in the Celebration.

Shortly before the Celebration, Day was convicted of bribing a judge, fined, and put on a five-year suspension.