TEMECULA – When the Non Pro Triple Crown Stock Horse event fell off the schedule after 2009, Southern California Reined Cow Horse Association leaders Laura Edwards and Jimmy Flores, Jr., decided in September to pick it up. Remarkably, two months later on Nov. 18-19, the region’s top Non Pros brought Casner’s Ranch to life in a competition so successful that folks are looking ahead to next year.

With $10,000-added and more than $17,000 in payout, 22 prize buckles and other custom awards, the 2011 Triple Crown has returned, thanks largely to the Southern California’s swelling ranks of Non Pro competitors.

At the top of the list was John Farris and his 7-year-old Boomba Chic, who outpointed Dick Hershman on his Tuff Sliding Peppy and Laurie Ward on Kiss Me A Little for the Non Pro Bridle championship, earning $900. Farris needed every one of his 429 cumulative points to outduel Hershman, who notched the high score of 148 under judges Mark Matson and Jim Paul, Sr. He finished with 428, and Ward totaled 425.5.

Farris, who grew up working cattle on a Lassen County ranch, acquired the Boomernic gelding just prior to the 2007 NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity, where they were finalists in the Amateur (third place) and Intermediate (10th). In December that year, he took him to Temecula trainer Glen Aspinall, who liked the horse.

“Glen started all over with him — we started retraining him completely because Glen has a very specific way of doing it,” said Farris, frequently found with Boomba Chic atop the results of SCRCHA events. “That trip to the Snaffle Bit as a three-and-a-half-year old, not being prepared, just scared the daylights out of him.”

The last four years have been spent “calming him down and giving him time.” They spent a whole year in the two-rein and showed him in the snaffle and hackamore his 4 and 5-year-old years.

“His whole 6-year-old year, we just did two-rein and stayed local, so we didn’t travel, wear him out,” said Farris, who studied Animal Science and pre-veterinary medicine at University of California Davis en route to a Master’s degree in nutrition with a minor in biochemistry. “Then we started cutting on him, and this is his full year of showing.”

In August, Farris took him to the National Stock Horse Association Futurity in Paso Robles and won the Non Pro Bridle championship.

“To be successful, a horse has to have three things, and this horse has four,” Farris said. “He has to be relatively handsome or attractive. He has to be very positive in his mental attitude — wanting to do things, wanting to be trained, wanting to do it right and not fight you. He has that. The third thing is that they have to have very high natural athletic ability, and he has that, too.

“The fourth thing,” he adds, “is that he’s also very comfortable to ride. My horse is smooth as glass — you don’t get all four of those combinations very often. You might get two of the three, but you have to have three of the three to make a really good horse. Four of the four makes a phenomenal horse, and he has it.”

Farris plans to campaign Boomba Chic more extensively during the 2012 show season. A dream would be to see him in the World’s Greatest Horseman competition with Aspinall.

“I just want to thank Glen my trainer, and the whole barn,” said Farris. “They’ve all helped make this possible because it’s such a group effort. And Glen is the most amazing trainer with his background both in dressage and cow horse. He puts so many buttons on these horses that they will do whatever you ask them to do, when you want them to do. All you have to do is push the right button and the horse does it. He’s very special.”

MORE RESULTS: http://bit.ly/112B_SCRCHA