The deadline for the first AQHA Regional Experience is fast approaching.

To be in Hurricane (pronounced her-can), Utah, June 15-19, this inaugural event will be in Region 7 and promises to be a unique encounter for American Quarter Horse lovers. It will feature world-class AQHA Professional Horsemen clinics, judged show, Quarter Horse test rides, trade show and educational seminars.

But if you want to enter the show, you’ll have to act fast. The deadline is May 5. Show packets are available now by contacting Debbie Bartholomew at (801) 489-7304.

Regional Experiences are open to Quarter Horse exhibitors and owners residing in the respective states or provinces comprising the region.

Each exhibitor must be a current AQHA member and all horses must be AQHA registered.  You or your horse cannot show the same class at a Regional Experience that you placed in the Top 10 in the preceding calendar year’s FedEx Open, MBNA Amateur, Bayer Select or AQHYA World Championship Shows.  Additionally, horses or people who might advance to another class because of age and have placed in the top- 10 at one of AQHA’s World Shows cannot enter the same class at the regional level.

For more information on the event, click here.

KSU to Build Equine Education/Medical Centers and Event Arena

Kansas State University Veterinary Medicine officials unveiled plans Monday for an equine education center and an equine medical center that would house the only MRI machine for horses in the central United States. Also part of the plan is a proposed “multipurpose event arena” for horse shows.

The K-State Foundation hopes to raise $12 million in private money to build the education/medical centers. But the event arena “is beyond K-State’s capacity” except for donating the land, area developer Mike Shilling, who’s helping promote the project, told The Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury.

“We know what impact visitors (to a sports event) can have” on Manhattan, and horse shows can bring several hundred horses and their owners to town for several days. The arena "will take widespread community support...but the economic impact would be huge,” Shilling told attendees at the monthly intergovernmental luncheon.

Officials at the luncheon said many incoming K-State students have an interest in horses. In fact, the school has a women’s equestrian team that’s only a couple of years old. To continue to attract those students, promoters believe the school will have to have a “substantially” better equine facility than it does now.

The school plans to offer an equine science certificate as part of the new effort. The medical center will focus not only on general care but particularly on lameness.

The timeline for the two buildings is “a little bit up in the air,” Foundation official Mike Smith said. The next step for the arena is a feasibility study.

Magnificent 7 Rides Again this Summer

The nation’s top trainers are headed back to Western States Horse Expo in Sacramento, California, for the Magnificent 7 June 9-10 at the Cal Expo Fairgrounds.

Rod Wiemers and SOR Little Lena (Smart Little Lena x Gay Egypt by Gay Bar King) won the 2004 Magnificent 7 championship title.

Similar to the National Reined Cow Horse Association World’s Greatest Horseman event, one man and one horse for two days will put themselves to the test in a series of four events to showcase their athletic ability and raw stock horse talent. The skill and versatility of both rider and horse will be challenged in herd work, rein work, steer stopping and fence work. By Friday night, only seven horse-and-rider teams will remain to compete for the title of all-around stock horse champion.

The event is based on a 1972 event created by Pro Rodeo Hall of Famers Cotton Rosser and Benny Bennion. The idea came to pass over drinks in Bennion’s Horseshoe Club in Las Vegas when the two men started talking about putting together a competition showcasing horses worth bragging about: the horse that could rope, cut, rein and run a cow down the fence.

When the original World’s Championship All-Around Stock Horse Contest faded into history, it gave way to smaller similar spin-offs at various NRCHA sanctioned events. But, it was the World’s Greatest Horseman that brought the “one man, one horse” all-around competition back to life.

When the World’s Greatest Horseman was suspended for one year in 2002, Bobby Ingersoll wanted to keep the concept alive, and did, with the help of AQHA Professional Horseman Benny Guitron, Ted Robinson, Bill Lefty and Western States Horse Expo CEO Miki Cohen.

Cohen expects this year’s Magnificent Seven to double in size. Thanks to another shuffle in venues at the NRCHA, the number of entries and the amount of prize money winnings has dramatically increased. Along with the return of Reve Records recording artist Templeton Thompson as half-time entertainment, those in attendance will have plenty to keep them on the edge of their seats.

Spectators are invited to watch for free June 9 when the elimination go-round starts at 8 a.m. At 8 p.m. June 10, the final Magnificent 7 will enter the arena.

The 2005 Western States Horse Expo begins at 9 a.m. June 10 at the Cal Expo Fairgrounds in Sacramento, and lasts until 6 p.m. June 12. For tickets or more information, click here.

Horse Dies in ‘Flicka’ Filming

Reuters News Service reports today that a mustang horse broke its neck and died during filming of the 20^th Century Fox movie Flicka. This is the second horse that has died on the set this month.

The horse died Monday during filming at the Hansen Dam Equestrian Center in the San Fernando Valley, California, when it stepped on its own lead rope, breaking its neck. Animal Services has ruled the death an accident.

Animal Services spokeswoman Karen Knipscheer told Reuters that production was not shut down at the time of the accident, and filming resumed Tuesday. She said the production was informed that it could no longer use the horses involved in the incident, which were domestic rodeo horses. Knipscheer said their owner was shipping them home to Montana.

Monday’s accident marked the second time a horse was injured during filming on Flicka. The American Humane Association said a horse broke its leg in an accident two weeks ago, and had to be euthanized.

African Horse Sickness Killing Hundreds

Horses are dying in the hundreds from an outbreak of African horse sickness and the problem is worsening, The Cape Times Web site reported Tuesday. 

It said 586 horses in KwaZulu-Natal’s Midlands area and two horses in the Western Cape had died of the disease in the past two months. KwaZulu-Natal agriculture department spokesperson Vusi Zuma said this year’s outbreak of the sickness was the worst on record.

Boland chief state veterinarian Gary Bührmann said measures were being taken to curb the spread of the disease.

“Since April, we have placed a ban on horses entering the Western Cape from outbreak areas in Natal. We have been doing this for the last three years,” Bührmann said.

Authorities and horse owners had expressed concern that the vaccine for the disease did not offer effective protection against new strains of the virus. One form of the sickness, Strain 5, was unprotected by the vaccine, and had appeared in a number of cases across the country.

Veterinarians were currently working on a comprehensive vaccine to effectively protect all horses, Bührmann said.

African horse sickness is not a contagious disease, but is transmitted by midges (gnat-like fly) that bite infected horses and pass it to healthy ones. The winter cold kills the midges, hindering their reproduction and allowing for a slowing of any outbreak. Authorities generally wait until the first signs of frost in July to lift travel bans.

South African horse exporters are under a two-year embargo imposed by the European Union last year following an outbreak of African horse sickness.

— Tonya Ratliff-Garrison

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005

When I lived in eastern Idaho, one of the things I most loved to do when I drove down to Salt Lake City was visit A.A. Callister’s.

This was the best western tack store around. It had everything from saddles to boots to chaps. It was just a wonder store for horse lovers.

Cruising the Internet today, I was saddened to see that owner and founder Arthur Armitage Callister Jr. died last week. The Salt Lake Tribune reported the 82-year-old Utahan died of natural causes in Sandy, Utah. He was buried Saturday.

"He always made it a point of trying to make the customer happy. They were his friends. He always had time to talk to people," his daughter, Mary Ann Day, told Mike Gorrell of the Tribune.

Callister opened his first store in 1952 with his father, Arthur Sr., near the family farm where he grew up learning to care for horses and livestock. He traded wool initially, but later expanded to include horse supplies, western clothing and livestock feed. “Gear filled the building from floor to ceiling,” Gorrell wrote.

“’Where would we be without Callister’s?’ said Cindy Steel of St. George, Utah. ‘If you had a horse, that’s where you went to shop … I spent a lot of money on horses. To me, going into (A.A. Callister’s) was like being a kid in a candy store.’

“Added Jon Judd, a saddle maker and Utah Quarter Horse Association board member from Castle Dale, Utah:  ‘“Every time we went to Salt Lake, we went to Callister’s. It started out as a necessity and became a habit … Callister’s established a standard other (horse) stores were forced to match.’”

Besides the original store at 3615 S. Redwood in Salt Lake City, there are also outlets in South Jordan and St. George. If you get the chance, stop by. You won’t be sorry.

Gift Establishes Equine Orthopaedic Chair at CSU

A $3 million gift from Carbondale, Colorado, Iron Rose Ranch has helped establish a equine orthopaedic chair at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University. The gift is the largest chair donation in CSU's history. The new chair will support the school's equine veterinary medicine program and specifically support the prevention, treatment and cure of musculoskeletal equine disease and injury.

"Colorado State University is a leader in equine medicine, and our equine orthopedic facility and research are among the best in the world," said CSU President Larry Edward Penley. "This generous gift will allow us to continue to set the pace in finding ways to prevent and cure equine orthopaedic injuries, and to translate those discoveries into solutions for human injuries as well."

The Iron Rose Ranch Chair will allow for the creation of a position in the equine health programs. An appointment to the chair will be announced at a later date. The chair will focus on researching the causes of joint disease in horses and humans as well as effective methods to detect the disease.

Specifically, the person appointed to this position will continue the center's work to isolate mechanisms in joint tissues that induce and further the progression of joint injury and osteoarthritis. The chair will further research into equine orthopedic medicine discovery and treatment methods such as computed tomography, which are layered x-rays of joints; magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs; and joint modeling to develop strategies for early detection as well as to predict joint disease. In addition, the chair will be responsible for educating graduate students, undergraduate students and vet students and will work on clinical orthopedic patients in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Iron Rose Ranch breeds and sells cutting horses. 

New Foundation Quarter Horse Club Founded

The new Appalachian Foundation Quarter Horse Club has been formed to serve American Quarter Horse owners in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. The club is an affiliate member of the National Foundation Quarter Horse Association. For details, call (304) 856-1238.

— Tonya Ratliff-Garrison

It might be time to change the name of the National Reining Breeders Classic to the Dell Hendricks Classic.  

Dell Hendricks and Hit The Lights won the NRBC open championship title on Saturday with 227.5 points.

When the NRBC celebrated its first event in 1998, Hendricks won that inaugural show aboard Boomerjac. And since 2002, he has won three open championships once aboard his stallion Starlights Wrangler and twice aboard Reminic N Dunit. This year was no different. On Saturday night, he took home an unprecedented fifth NRBC open title, this time aboard Hit The Lights (Grays Starlight x Playboys Promise by Freckles Playboy) owned by Adair Reiners LLC.

But Dell’s title was especially sweet this year. Just two days before the win, the Tioga, Texas, trainer was honored as the National Reining Horse Association’s sixth rider to pass the million-dollar mark.

Hendricks nearly didn’t bring the 6-year-old stallion to the NRBC. Last year, Dell spoke with owner Doug Adair about not showing Hit The Lights this show season. The sorrel had made the finals at every major event that Dell took him to but just never stepped up to win a championship. Dell thought the stallion should be retired to stud.

“I got home after the futurity and kind of looked around, and I didn’t have a lot to show. So I just entered him, and I didn’t tell Doug,” Dell said. “So he got his bill for the entry fee and called me and said, ‘I thought we retired that horse.’ And I said, ‘I changed my mind.’ I said, ‘Doug, if he ever has that trip, he’s going to win a major event and it might be this year.’”

Hit The Light’s trip was near perfect with a 227.5 in the pattern. He was the 22nd horse to run out of 25 open finalists in the evening performance. At the time of his run, three horses were tied for first at 225.5.

“He’s awesome, and he’s been that way for so long and no one’s believed in him, including myself,” Dell commented.

With one last chance to prove himself, Hit The Lights entered the arena with full force and showed that he is worthy of a championship title.

“I was trotting around with Duane Latimer in the warm-up pen, and I said, ‘Duane, they’re ready to mark somebody and I’m going to go for it.’ I told everybody this horse can do it; I know he can do it,” he said.

Dell’s title with Hit The Lights added another $60,000 to the trainer’s lifetime earnings and helped the stallion top more than $100,000 in earnings. The pair is headed to the NRHA Derby in Oklahoma City next month in search of another championship.

Wendy Latimer Earns NRBC Non Pro and Intermediate Non Pro Championships 

Wendy Latimer and her mare Diamonds for Chic won the NRBC non-pro title. Wendy is married to reining trainer Duane Latimer.

Wendy Latimer won her first major reining championship on Friday at the 2005 National Reining Breeders Classic.

Almost 100 competitors competed for the non-pro classic championship, which was whittled down to 55 finalists in four divisions with Wendy walking away with both the non-pro and intermediate non-pro titles during the finals competition. She earned a combined $39,931 for the two titles.

Married to NRHA Million-dollar rider Duane Latimer, Wendy just started showing reiners consistently three years ago. Wendy and her 5-year-old mare, Diamonds For Chic (Hickory Chic Olena x Sailwin Sally by Topsail Cody) marked a 217.5 in Tuesday’s Non Pro Preliminaries and then drew up first in the Non Pro Finals to set the winning pace with a 220.5.

“I was nervous, very nervous,” Wendy said of her No. 1 draw. “But I thought there’s no bad draw in the finals; you just go with what you’ve got. That’s the way I thought, to just go out and ride her the way I thought I should and it worked out.”

Wendy and Duane bought Diamond as a coming 3-year-old. Duane trained the mare and then handed her over to his wife to show at the 2003 NRHA Futurity where the pair made the finals.

“She’s super-talented, and she’s a sweetheart,” Wendy said of “Diamond.” “Duane helped out quite a bit at this show and rode her quite a bit. If he hadn’t have done that, I don’t know how I would have done. You know Duane; he’s good!”

Wendy will show Diamond at the NRHA Derby next month.

University of South Carolina wins 2005 Varsity Equestrian National Championship

The University of South Carolina won the Overall National Championship at the 2005 Varsity Equestrian National Championships April 15-16 at the Santa Fe Horse Park in Santa Fe, New Mexico. South Carolina’s win included scores from both the English and western teams. Twelve of the 21 universities with varsity equestrian programs competed for the national title.

The English national champion team was also South Carolina, coached by Boo Duncan with assistant Joe Humphrey. The western national champion team was Texas A & M University, coached by Tana Rawson and assisted by Linzy Woolf and Darla Neisemier.

Teams, comprising four athletes for each event, competed in both western and English disciplines at the championships. The English events included hunt seat equitation and equitation over fences while the western classes included horsemanship and reining. The top three riders’ points in each event are added together to determine the team score.

The VENC will be broadcast on “America’s Horse” June 5 and 12 on TVG. For more information about varsity equestrian and a complete list of results from the championship, visit the official Web site of NCAA Varsity Equestrian at www.varsityequestrian.com.

AQHF Announces the Flashy Zipper Equine Research Challenge

The American Quarter Horse Foundation announces its newest equine research challenge dedicated to improving the health and well-being of horses: The Flashy Zipper Challenge.

The Challenge, created in honor of the late 1982 sorrel western pleasure stallion Flashy Zipper, will fund reproductive research at Colorado State University. Owner Cecilia Hylton of Gainesville, Virginia, will provide $30,000 per year through 2009. The AQHF will attempt to match $1 for every $1 given each year. If the full match is met, this will create $300,000 in research money for reproductive studies at CSU.

Interest from the permanent fund will be distributed annually, and the remaining principal will continue to grow. A $300,000 restricted fund will generate approximately $15,000 each year at 5 percent interest.

“Ms. Hylton has been very generous to CSU and AQHF with this matching grant,” said Edward Squires, professor at CSU’s department of biomedical sciences. “She has provided funds to CSU’s research program for the last three years. When she recently decided to renew her funding with CSU, she chose to go through AQHF as a way to honor her stallion. She’s a very generous lady who loves her horses.”

Thanks to CSU’s reproductive research, “Flashy’s” legacy lives on in future foals.

“CSU has successfully used Flashy’s semen that was frozen in 2002 when he passed away,” Hylton said. “I’ve been saving those 82 straws all this time.”

She explained that CSU has perfected a procedure that involves cutting a fraction of the semen straw rather than using the entire straw to impregnate a mare.

“They’ve produced, with a fraction of a straw, a Flashy Zipper/Cinnamon Seeker baby being carried by a surrogate mare. This is icing on this whole program I’ve set up for Flashy. I’m honored to have owned him and known him for the time that I did.”

In addition to the Flashy Zipper Equine Research Challenge, AQHF houses the Peptoboonsmal Challenge, which supports research of mare reproduction and equine orthopedics, and the Refrigerator Challenge, benefiting trauma-related injury research.

AQHF is proud to announce that two additional challenges – the Shining Spark Research Challenge and the Dogwood Challenge – have met their goals.

Your donations to equine research improve the lives of thousands of horses each year – maybe yours! There are many ways to donate, including online at aqha.com/foundation. Also, you may call Veronica Almanza at (806) 376-5181 or mail your check payable to AQHF t AQHF/Equine Research, P.O. Box 32111, Amarillo, TX 79120. Specify on your check the area in which you wish to donate.

Visit aqha.com/foundation for more information on AQHF equine research grants.

Del Mar National Horse Show Begins Its 60^th Year

The 60th anniversary celebration of the Del Mar National Horse Show in San Diego began April 21 with western week and a spectacular showcase of equestrian talent and entertainment.

One of the nation’s largest and esteemed horse shows, the Del Mar National draws hundreds of North America’s finest horses and riders to the Del Mar Fairgrounds Equestrian Center every year. This year’s event continues through May 8.

For more information on the event, click here.

Horse Bites Pop Star’s Bottom

I doubt this was a Quarter Horse, but I just couldn’t pass including this in Q-Talk today.

Bosnia’s top pop star ended up in a hospital after a horse bit her on the bum during the filming of her new video. Jana was filming the video for her new song at a stables in Bijeljina, northeast of Bosnia.

A horse saw a carrot she had been carrying to feed the horses sticking out of her back pocket and went to eat it. But the horse grabbed a chunk of Jana’s bum as well as the carrot.

She was taken to a hospital where doctors treated the bite wound, area newspaper Svet reported. She left the hospital 24 hours later, vowing never to work with animals again.

- Tonya Ratliff-Garrison