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GOING THROUGH THE GATEWAY “I JUST WANT TO FEEL THAT FEELING.” BY CHRISTINE HAMILTON, FIELD EDITOR Do you remember the first time you pulled into the Oklahoma State Fair Park for an AQHA World Championship Show? How about the first time you rode or led a horse through the Gateway of Champions, the same alley that more than 30 years of AQHA world champions have walked through? Then you know how Juli and Dale Brown of Winner, South Dakota, feel. The Browns, along with good friend, Beth Till, hauled their homebred stallion, Guns On Deck, down to Oklahoma City from Winner, South Dakota, so Juli could show in the amateur aged stallions on November 12. “I wanted to lead him through that gateway. I wanted to feel that feeling,” Juli said with a smile. The Browns ranched for 25 years before Dale started driving a truck. They have one daughter, Misti, and a grandson, Cooper. Juli mans the home front and takes care of their small herd of American Quarter Horses. She showed in her first AQHA show in 1981. They have always trained and fit their own horses out of an old tin garage that Dale made into a barn. They raised Guns On Deck, aka “Barncat,” out of a mare they bought and made into an open and amateur AQHA Champion, Gunrunners Image. And Barncat himself is an open AQHA Champion; he has open and amateur performance Registers of Merit with points in halter, trail, horsemanship, barrels and western pleasure. “It’s hard to get those amateur halter points,” Juli said. “We show in South Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Nebraska.” The Browns knew their horse deserved the chance to show in Oklahoma City, and he wasn’t getting any younger. They FedExed the entry two days before the deadline. There was a winter storm behind them when they left on November 10; Juli had been chipping ice out of the water buckets. When they climbed out of the truck at the State Fair Park, Beth literally jumped into the air when her feet hit the pavement, and Juli could barely contain the smile on her face. “Beth said to me, ‘I can’t believe you’re holding it back!’ And I was like, ‘I’m old,’” Juli said with a laugh; she turns 50 in December. The Browns hope to take Barncat to the Bayer Select World Championship Show in 2009, and show him in performance halter stallions. “I don’t have any second thoughts,” Juli said, and Dale nodded. “I can’t wait to walk up there and get whatever they hand me. I can’t wait. It does not matter.” Do you remember that feeling?
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