NORCO – With the 60th Annual Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show on the horizon, Southern California competitors stormed to the Ingalls Park Equestrian Center Jan. 23-25 for the popular Sierra Empire Arabian Horse Association Show.

Each year – for 40 years now – the SEAHA event serves as a valuable tune-up before heading east for the Scottsdale show that gives trainers, exhibitors and owners of all levels a preview of potential rivals for the fall’s Arabian Horse Association National Championships. This year’s edition, with numbers slightly up, marked its second year in its new home in Horsetown USA.

THERMAL — Olympic Gold Medalist Will Simpson has virtually shut out the field of Grand Prix riders so far at HITS Desert Horse Park. Simpson, riding S.F. Ariantha, claimed his fifth consecutive victory with a first place finish in the $25,000 SmartPak Grand Prix on Jan. 30. S.F. Ariantha, a new mount for Simpson, is owned Olivia Cox-Fill.

Thirty-five riders competed in the class and 11 returned for the jump-off. Simpson took home the $7,500 top prize by cleanly completing the jump-off course in 39.033 seconds — just a tenth of a second faster than second place finisher Karl Cook on Basimodo, owned by Signe Ostby, with a time of 39.130 seconds. A little more than a full second behind Simpson and Cook, to finish in third, was Kara Chad, riding Stone Ridge Farms LLC’s Alberto II, in a clean 40.551 seconds. Both Cook and Chad finished in the top six on other horses, Cook with Ostby’s Tembla in fourth, and Chad on Stone Ridge’s Zamiro 16, in sixth.

TEMECULA — More than 100 of Southern California’s top reined cow horse competitors attented the the Southern California Reined Cow Horse Association banquet Jan. 10 at the Journey’s End clubhouse to honor its best performers of 2014.

Champions and reserve champions were awarded with custom buckles from A Cut Above Buckles, while the Top Five were awarded with custom breast collars created by Trophy Tack. Qualifiers were awarded with custom SCRCHA split reins donated by Thrifty Horse in Norco.
One of the highlights of the evening was the presentation of the Yvonne Mathieu Award, a custom saddle stand by Trophy Tack, to Jimmy Flores.

The Roy Rogers Rangers Mounted Shooting Club and the Silver Dollar Ranch will be host a Beginner Mounted Shooting Clinic on March 21 at the Moreno Valley Equestrian Center. Bring your horse and a good attitude –- they’ll supply all of the other equipment! The clinic will be conducted by expert clinicians and champion mounted shooters Kenny Lawson and Cathy Hendrick. You’ll learn mounted shooting horsemanship, basic gun handling skills, conditioning your horse to gunfire, plus coaching and technique training. Give them a call at (760) 805-6061 to reserve your spot, and see the ad on page 75.

BYARS, Okla. — The National Reining Breeders Classic announced on Jan. 31 the judging lineup for its 2015 show, scheduled for April 13-19 at the Great Southwest Equestrian Center in Katy, Texas.

DEAR DANA: I have a 2-year-old Quarter Horse mare that I bought as a yearling with a goal of making her a futurity horse. Now that it is time to start riding and training her, I’m just not sure if she is mentally and physically mature enough for all that it might take to make her a top futurity horse. Any advice? – Jaime

Eighth in a series
After reviewing reins last issue, we’ll look at how we use our hands in this column and next.

A key component of this program is that you learn to ride with “life” in your hands. What we mean by this is that you never want to just hang on the bit with steady pressure. Any time you pick up (that is, start to take the slack out of the reins) and feel resistance, you’ll want to immediately start working your hands back and forth on the snaffle, or go to soft bumps if you’re using a direct rein, until the horse stops resisting and yields to your hand. If you try to just pull on the horse, you’re really only training the horse to pull back, and in the long run he’s a lot stronger than you are!