TEMECULA – Ingrid Vangelos can remember her childhood days in the Bay Area when she and her sister, Ruth Noring, chased one another around the house with horse whips.

“We fought like cats and dogs,” laughs Ingrid. “But then, from the time we were teen-agers on, we’ve been super close. No one was closer.”

The siblings have a horse-riding history, from their first ponies and hunter-jumper action to a point after college where horses vanished for a while. They’ve come full circle after rekindling their horse lives, and now are both active competitors as members of the Southern California Reined Cow Horse Association.

But one thing that has never happened all these years, Ingrid says, is head-to-head competition in the arena. Never. Whether it was the five-year age spread when they were girls, or the different NRCHA divisions in which they compete now as adults because of show earnings (Ingrid in Non Pro Limited, Ruth in 5000 Non Pro), they’ve never faced the same judges in the same arena.

But that could change this month at the SCRCHA Non Pro Saddle Shoot Out, set for Oct. 22 at Casner Ranch in Temecula in a big weekend that will also feature the 2017 Cut For A Cause, benefitting Valley Center 4-H.

“We’ll both be going for the saddle,” says Ingrid, who won the 2013 Saddle Shoot Out on Smooth As A Diamond, her gelding better known as “Slim.”

The year before, Ruth had won the Saddle Shoot Out on Tommy Olena, but Ingrid was showing a reiner that year and did not compete.

“When my husband Jim and I moved to Temecula nine years ago, I got my sister into this, and we have had a lot of good sister time,” says Ingrid. “It’s been a lot of fun. We definitely have come a long way in this whole deal.”

The competitiveness that played out in their childhood home as girls may still exist, but it doesn’t go past the confines of the show pen. It can’t — Ruth, of Laguna Beach, stays with her sister in Temecula all three days of every SCRCHA show.

“She stays with us every single weekend for three days for every horse show, so we’re good,” Ingrid says. “We’re not chasing each other around the house anymore.”

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