REINING

SUCH A GOOD GIRL.

BY CHRISTINE HAMILTON, FIELD EDITOR

Kelly Gully of Newell, South Dakota, qualified two horses to the reining finals of the 2006 Bayer Select World Championship Show. Jim Babcock of Valley View, Texas, and Linda Hamilton of Scottsdale, Arizona, also qualified two horses.

Kelly rode Sailors Luv Freckles third in the go and set the bar with a 212.5.

But by the time she rode in on her mare Whoa Fritzie Whoa six horses later, there were two horses ahead of her, and last year’s Bayer Select reining world champions, Linda Hamilton and Lenas Taxman, had the best score at a 214.5.

“I think that with my second run in the finals, I was really concentrating on running to the stops,” Kelly said. “And I think we got that done.”

Sure enough, the team that had the highest preliminary score (a 216) topped itself with a 217. No one else followed with anything better. Kelly ended up taking fourth with her other mare.

“She’s just such a good girl, such an easy horse to ride and show,” Kelly said of her winning mare. “She has a lot of personality.”

A 1995 sorrel mare by Master Boot Jac and out of Melissa Parker by Bull Parker, Whoa Fritzie Whoa, aka “Dottie,” was bred by Winifred Hover of Parker, Colorado. She has almost $6,000 in National Reining Horse Association earnings.

Kelly Gully of Newell, South Dakota, and Whoa Fritzie Whoa took home the 2006 Bayer Select world championship in reining. She also placed fourth on Sailors Luv Freckles.

Dottie’s dam, Melissa Parker, was a top-10 finisher at the 1982 AQHA World Championship Show in junior reining and junior working cow horse. She’s also the dam of the earners of more than 750 performance points in all divisions, including Daniel B Boom, 2001 world champion in junior tie-down 2001.

“I showed a lot as a youth,” Kelly said. “Then I started again in 2002 when I got this mare. I showed two years, and then I bred her two years, and then I couldn’t stand it, so I had to bring her back out to ride again.

“Dottie has her own little idiosyncrasies: She’s a little cinchy; you can’t tie her; she won’t walk over water,” she added. “She just has her own little things. But I don’t mind working around them.”

This is Kelly’s first world championship. She showed both her mares at the inaugural Region Two Experience in Rapid City, South Dakota, earlier in the summer, winning the amateur reining on Sailors Luv Freckles and Select reining on Dottie.

Sailors Luv Freckles is a 2001 mare by Cee Blair Sailor and out of Plain Spring by Just Plain Colonel, bred by David Connor of Ocala, Florida.

“(AQHA Professional Horseman) Carol Metcalf helps me a great deal with my younger horse,” Kelly said.

Kelly and her husband, Jack, own and operate the K Bar J Leather Company.

“The majority of our business is making chaps, and that’s how we keep in touch with the reining business and working cow horse, cutters and the everyday cowboy,” Kelly said.

In fact, Jack had to work and couldn’t be on hand to watch Kelly show. He did catch it on the show’s Fort Dodge Web cam at www.aqha.com.

But who’s the person Kelly’s thinking about most with this win?

“Probably my husband,” she said with a smile.