Whether you are looking to take home high-point champion or just have an overall positive experience for your young horse, here are six important items to have in tow for your next show day!
Fleece sheets are ideal to wick away sweat from riding and hauling. They also offer horses warmth and help keep them clean. Our favorite feature of this sheet is that you can customize with a monogram and choose everything from tread color to font and placement of your design. They also serve as a great extra layer beneath winter blankets for the coldest winter weather.
Match to your horse’s blanket or sheet with this personalized nylon halter. You’ll enjoy the many customization options available right at your fingertips, from color to font and more. See for yourself in this video!
This premium leather halter, with the option to engrave your horse’s name, offers a classic look that pairs perfectly with show day. Plus, Perri leather halters are crafted from wide, triple-stitched leather that is supple right from the start.
Everyone is in their Sunday best come show day, horses included! For clipping, look to this kit from WAHL for a smooth and quiet trim. The kit includes:
Organization is crucial during a busy day on the show grounds. Available in several fun colors and patterns, this handy groom tote comes equipped with multiple dividers, sturdy pockets and a padded shoulder strap. See how many items you can tote in this tote, here!
When traveling anywhere, whether for show or play, it is crucial to bring an equine first aid kit with you, should your horse become injured. We couldn’t agree more with the words from one of our customers, “Fortunately, I have not had to use this, but I am happy to have [an equine first aid kit] handy and available, in case of need.”
At Valley Vet Supply, we’re here to help you care for your horses the best way we know how, with great quality products. Visit ValleyVet.com today for your every equine and show-day need.
Join us on StallSide as we dive into the world of recipient mare management with Crystal Howard, manager of the Rood & Riddle Reproduction Center. Crystal provides an exclusive look into the workings of the recipient mare program, shedding light on the care, selection, and vital role these mares play in equine reproduction. Discover the expertise and dedication behind maintaining a top-tier herd, and gain valuable insights into the practices at one of the industry's leading facilities. Whether you're a breeder, enthusiast, or simply curious about equine reproduction, this episode offers a captivating journey into the heart of recipient mare management.
By Nick Pernokas
It was a good day for a fleece lined jacket, or even a quilted down coat, if you had one. The southwestern Oklahoma wind blew cold on that Christmas Eve of 1953. The Christmas party’s host was a roper, so naturally many of his guests were cowboys as well. Famed Oklahoma roper, Dee Burk, was in attendance and he’d brought his brother-in-law, Amye Gamblin, with him. Amye was also a good roper and horse trainer from California. Dee’s talk about the good job that Amye had out west was only reinforced by the new Lincoln parked outside with California plates.
Dee introduced Amye to a young man who liked to rope calves. Amye liked him instantly and invited him out to his car. It was a dark night, but Amye opened his trunk by the light of a flashlight and there, sitting on its side, was a Chuck Sheppard saddle, which had been built by Rowell Saddle Company in California.
“Here’s the best tree I ever rode,” Amye said to Howard Council. “You should try to get some of them.”
“I liked the looks of it,” remembered Howard, almost 50 years later. “It had some swell to it, but it still had just a two-and-a-half-inch cantle. What I liked about the original Chuck Sheppard was that it had some swell, like an Association but lower. I guess that’s what Chuck liked since he was a bronc rider. Later they started calling a lot of saddles ‘Chuck Sheppard’s’ and they weren’t anything like that.”
This Christmas Eve encounter would turn out to be a watershed moment for the calf roping industry, but Howard Council’s story begins a lot earlier.
Howard was born in Durant, Oklahoma, in 1926. When he was five, his family moved to Lawton, Oklahoma, and that would be where he remained for the rest of his life. When Howard was 13 or 14, his family bought a house outside of town. Even though Howard’s family had never been involved with horses, Howard had always wanted one. Then, he bought a horse and built a pen for it.
At the time, southwestern Oklahoma was home to a lot of cowboys who were competing in the sport of calf roping. As a teenager, Howard became interested in calf roping and started learning from some of the local ropers. He fell in love with the sport, but his smaller stature hindered him at a time when the calves roped at rodeos were fairly large.
In 1944, Howard became interested in working with leather. He had wanted a belt with his name on it, which was a big deal at the time. A man came to town and ran an ad in the paper saying that he made belts. The craftsman was just passing through, but he rented a house for a while and set up shop in it. He made Howard a belt and Howard was fascinated with the tooling process. He asked the man where he could get some stamping tools and the man gave him an address of a company in Tulsa. Howard didn’t know what tools to order, but he looked at his new belt and figured out which ones would apply. There weren’t any books available to Howard, so he taught himself how to tool leather through trial and error with his belt as a model.
“I just taught myself to carve leather,” said Howard.
At the time, Howard’s day job was driving a wholesale magazine truck.
“I started making belts and I was roping calves, but I couldn’t beat anybody. It was just a hobby.”
Howard quit roping in 1947, and married Genevieve Thomas in 1949. At night he made belts for many of his roping friends. Genevieve’s uncle suggested that he should open a leather shop. At first Howard was skeptical, but soon his orders were piling up.
“One thing about the roping was that I got to know a lot of ropers and even got to working on some saddles for them.”
The more Howard thought about it, the more he liked the idea of his own shop.
“I was so damn dumb I didn’t know what I was doing. There we were, newly married, me a nobody and I hung my shingle out in the corner of my wife’s uncle’s upholstery shop, and thought I’d automatically start making a living. Boy, it was pretty rough, just making belts, billfolds, whatever anybody wanted.”
One day, a friend that had roped with Howard asked him if he could build a saddle. Howard told him that he’d torn a lot of them apart to repair them, so he thought he could. The cowboy offered to pay for the materials if Howard wanted to experiment. Howard began to build the saddle in his spare time on a Fred Lowery saddle tree. It was a style that many ropers were using then. It had a two-inch cantle, no swell and a Mexican horn.
“That’s what they all rode back then. Well, it worked and it was a full-carved saddle of all things. I should have made it plain since I wasn’t getting paid for it.”
Soon, someone else wanted one built and while Howard wasn’t making a living from it, he was getting a lot of experience.
By the time of the 1953 Christmas party, Howard had the fundamentals of saddle construction mastered. Dee and Amye had handed him a blueprint for the future of roping saddles. In dusty little arenas around Oklahoma, ropers were figuring out new techniques for better trained rope horses and faster runs. They were ready for a saddle built exclusively for the sport. Howard bought two Chuck Sheppard saddle trees from Rowell. One was used to retree a customer’s saddle and the other was made up as a rough out saddle for another customer. The saddle cost $135 and it fit a horse well. Ropers were becoming more aware of how their horses worked with a better fitting saddle and word of Howard’s saddles spread. The ball was rolling and Howard built a lot of saddles on the old CS tree. Howard bought just enough leather for one saddle at a time from a jobber.
“I look back now and I don’t know how we were making a living at it.”
Howard was busy and working all night long when he had to. He tried to make the best saddle he could and still get them turned out. He was able to turn out one saddle a week. Howard started to experiment with other styles of saddle trees. He saw a Toots Mansfield roping saddle that Porter’s Saddlery in Phoenix had made and really liked it. P.Q. Ritter from Portland, Oregon, made the trees for Porters.
“The original was designed by Toots and it wasn’t like the ones you see now. It was leveler on the top and had more swell showing. I try to change mine more like the originals. Toots was my hero so I did a few things like the Porters.”
Howard used an inskirt rigging that was similar to Porter’s on many of his saddles. He felt that they were just as strong as a conventional rigging.
“If you look at these pictures of ropers in my saddles, you can see exactly what I’m trying to do. I want their feet under them, never behind; they don’t have to lean forward to get against the swell. Their feet are locked in under them.”
Howard found out early in his career that one saddle wouldn’t fit every horse. He really liked the original CS Rowell bars, but thought that later tree makers began rounding the bars too much on the bottom. Around 1960, Howard began flattening the bottoms of the bars himself. He wasn’t really doing it for an individual fit, but rather to make them flatter like the old Rowell trees. Howard also began experimenting with fiberglass then. The saddle trees were single covered rawhide and he would recover the bottoms of the bars with fiberglass after he worked on them.
Around 1980, Howard shaped the bars on a tree to fit Barry Burk’s horse, Bandit. Immediately, he was flooded with ropers wanting saddles custom fitted to their horse’s backs.
The racing career of Thoroughbred mare, Miss Hockaday, was an immediate success, with career earnings amounting to nearly $262,000, spanning across Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Iowa.
With a champion bloodline harkening to Thoroughbred greats like Seattle Slew and Northern Dancer, owner-trainer, husband-and-wife duo, Jearl (Ace) and Randy Hare, decided her second career would be as a broodmare, continuing on her legacy.
“To see Miss Hockaday’s racing success, and to continue her on as a broodmare, was amazing,” said Randy Hare, co-owner of Hare Racing Stables in Oklahoma City. “She ran a lot of races and beat a lot of great horses. With such high earnings, we only paid $800 for her. It was a very exciting time, and she retired from racing completely sound.”
With her success on the track, it was a paramount decision to select the best possible sire for Miss Hockaday’s first foal.
“Living in Oklahoma, we don’t have a large pool of premier stallions to choose from,” said Hare. “I got her to the best stallion I could, and that was in Kentucky.”
Miss Hockaday was bred to a leading sire, Shackleford, who after retiring in 2012 with $3,090,101 in earnings, cashed in with an initial stud fee of $20,000. The foal, Hareraising, was sold at Keeneland and soon embarked on her racing career.
A mare’s health leading up to breeding is critical for the success of conception, as well as a healthy foal.
Continue on the legacy. Ensure successful conception through excellent broodmare health and these proven solutions for improved fertility, Regu-Mate and Ovamed.
Read more: Breeding for the Next Champion: 6 Important Considerations for Broodmares
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