My take on the 09 Snaffle Bit

Well I made it home from Reno, from the Snaffle Bit Futurity, and the experience I have to say was very interesting at least. The conditions as always were good, the weather was good. Since I hadn’t shown there in four years, I forgot what a grueling experience it is and it’s very very difficult for anybody that takes one horse and has to stay 16 nights in Reno if you make the finals. Whether you make the finals or not, it’s a long long and very very expensive time. I calculate if you bought a futurity horse as a two-year-old for $20,000 its going to cost you at least another $10-12,000 to get him to the Snaffle Bit Futurity; so you would have $30,000 plus in him and by the time you pay for him to go to the Paso Robles Pre-Futurity and then Reno; if you pay entry fees, motels, mileage, and all of the other expenses you’d have right at $40,000 in each one of these colts. Now who says there is an economic recession in the horse business, I think it looks like it’s pretty darn healthy there. The sale looked like there was a lot of good horses that sold for what they were worth and I don’t know how the averages went, but there were a lot of horses that sold fairly expensive.

But speaking of the $40,000 investment, some of the things that were a little bit disappointing to me was one of them was the cattle. The cattle were steers and they were real soggy and slow to cut, however once you got one cut, which was a little bit difficult for a lot of us, some of them ran, some of them ran through you – they did not have a lot of feel, they weren’t fluffy and bright. At Paso Robles at the Pre-Futurity we had heifers, they were cross bred or Mexican heifers, and they were wonderful. Everybody got to show their horse, and I don’t think anybody lost a cow at Paso Robles. However at Reno, many horses lost cattle. The cattle I cut – I cut the shape (in other words, I cut what stepped out in front of me) so that I had the advantage or opportunity to cut and cut safely. The cattle I cut ran pretty hard and were very challenging, but definitely not cattle that I could mark up on. So I wasn’t really, really happy with that situation, you’ve got to have music to dance and there wasn’t much music out there. In other words, the cattle that I cut were not much good, but there wasn’t hardly any good cattle left in my bunch being late in the herd as I was.

Then the other thing was, these same cattle down the fence were – please don’t mistake that I’m crying sour grapes, I’m not – but I do have a complaint and that if you are going to drop a years work into a horse or $40,000 whichever you want, either way it’s still worth $40,000 – if you going to do that, doesn’t it sound like maybe you should have the opportunity to exhibit this horse’s skills on a fair basis? And having really, really sorry cattle for the herd and if these same cattle are even worse down the fence, that doesn’t give you the normal or level playing field that you could or should have for this investment. It just doesn’t seem quite fair. Some of those cattle were pretty decent down the fence; however a whole bunch of the super star trainers got eliminated. I only had one horse, I had all my eggs in one basket which was a foolish thing to do, and I will never do again, because of these factors, where you draw bad cattle, you’re done, load up and go home!

And I was not alone; most of the trainers that I know that have been around for a while, and are big names that are always at the finals with two or three horses, and I could name five or six quickly – (Jake Gorrell, John Roeser, Doug Williamson, Bob Avila, Russell Dilday) on down the line, there were a bunch of us that just didn’t make it for the sake of sorry cattle. Those guys all had between 4-6 horses to show, I think Doug Williamson had 7-8, but there’s just one reason they didn’t make it, and it wasn’t because they’re poor hands, it was because the cattle were really sorry, and they drew bad cattle.

If it is a drawing contest – if you draw the right position and the right cow, then you have more opportunity to win – then don’t you think it would be just as well for you to take your $40,000 and put it on one of the tables in the casino in Reno, and you wouldn’t have to go through the stress, you wouldn’t have to stay there for 16 days, and you would either win or lose, and your odds would be about the same! Well anyway, I don’t mean to be crying sour grapes, that’s not what I do, however, fair is fair and good conditions are good conditions, and this really wasn’t a good situation.

The finals were very good, there were some stoppin’ horse there that’s for sure! Everybody rode really, really good. I saw a couple of guys that were going to win big slip in the dirt, I don’t know if that’s anybody’s fault or not, but the dirt gave away, once for John McCarty in the Non-Pro, and once for Todd Bergen in the Open finals. Both guys were on their second circle and within less than a second of finishing up a winning run, and their horse fell, in that case they get a “zero”. That would be a real heartbreaker, having gone through the luck of the draw and been very lucky and rode really good all the way through and then get to the end and have a disaster like that happen.

There are lots of new trainers, young trainers, they looked really good. This crop I always talk about it like a water wheel turns when it turns it picks up water and takes it to the top and then starts down the other side and starts dumping water, it’s starting to pick up some new guys and it’s kind of dumping some old guys, it doesn’t mean they’re done or through forever, it just means that they are not just as hot as they once were, at least at this show. You’re only as good as the livestock that you got; this is something that a lot of people don’t really think about. When they see the show and see the contest going on, they attribute a lot to the trainer, of course the trainer has to be at the top of his game and riding good, and understand how to win. There’s a whole bunch of trainers that do understand how to win and ride really good, both the young and old guys, but the big criteria there is who has the magic horse. There were some magic horses, trust me, it was a good show. I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of attendance that we had at the futurity. We’ve seen other years where there were a lot more people at the finals and I wonder if all the time devoted to the sales over the last three days is making the finals weekend less appealing to pure spectators. All in all it was a great futurity, but I think it could be better with better cattle. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Next I’m headed to Sweden for a couple of clinics with all my good friends there!

Thanks for reading …