BY TONYA RATLIFF-GARRISON, INTERNET MANAGER
When Jim and Michele Holland purchased With All Probability in 2001, their son, J.D., took one look at him and knew what to name him.
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| With All Probability is the winner of the 2005 Sooner Trailer Superhorse award. |
“Ticket,” Jim Holland said with a laugh. “He said we’ll call him Ticket because he’s our ticket to the big time.”
And that’s exactly what Ticket has become for the Bucyrus, Kansas, family.
After three disappointing years of going for the Sooner Trailer Superhorse award, Ticket finally won it this year when his owners had finally decided it wasn’t the ultimate goal. They didn’t even think they had a chance at it this year when Ticket missed the finals in senior tie-down roping and senior working cow horse.
“It has always been a goal of ours before but it wasn’t really this year,” Holland said. “We came here just to win a world championship, which we did in the (senior) heading and we got reserve in (senior) heeling. So we were pretty happy with that.”
But when a friend approached them a day later and told them they were in first place for Superhorse, Holland’s first reaction was disbelief.
“I said there’s no way,” he said. “We were out of two events. I didn’t think we had a chance.”
But with 36 points from his heading and heeling classes, no horse was able to catch him.
“It just worked out this time,” Holland said.
The 1997 bay stallion is by Taris Catalyst and out of Jack E Eleven by Zan Parr Jack. The Hollands and trainer Brad Lund, an AQHA Professional Horseman and Team Wrangler member, campaigned the stallion heavily in 2004, making him the AQHA All-Around Horse and All-Around Senior Horse, as well as the top point earner in heading and heeling.
“Another honor that we think is really good is that he has won more AQHA points in the show arena than any stallion that has ever lived,” Holland said. “And he’s only 8 years old.”
Lund said Ticket is an exceptional individual that took to roping “like a duck to water.”
“It was easy for him,” he said, adding that when the stallion was purchased as a 4-year-old, he had been trained in reined cow horse. “He’s just an exceptional individual. He’s athletic. He’s got a real good work ethic. He’s easy to train. He’s just got a big heart and tries hard every time. He really deserves being named Superhorse.”
Holland agrees, saying Ticket’s personality is the best thing about him.
“He comes and loves on you,” he said. “He’s a big teddy bear.”
But Ticket does have one weakness?
“Doughnuts, cinnamon rolls and candy,” Holland said. “He loves sweets. When us boys walk by his stall, he knows we won’t give him anything, and he won’t pay any attention to us. But when the girls walk by that’s been feeding him doughnuts, he just nickers and puts his nose through the stall because he knows where’s been getting his doughnuts from.”
But will Holland relent and let the new Superhorse have a dozen Krispy Kremes as a reward?
“He can have all he wants,” he said with a laugh. “Even I might give him one.”
