Million Dollar Alley

So every year when we head to Ft. Worth, it is for a reason.  That reason is the NCHA Futurity.  So in a nutshell, it is babies (horses) that are 3 years old and never been shown in front of a judge.  The show starts right around Thanksgiving and runs until usually right around this last weekend.  There are only 3 divisions, Amateur (Never won $50,000), Non-Pro (Basically you can be a professional rider but you don’t train other people’s horses, just your own), & Open (The trainers).

This big show is held at the Will Roger’s Equestrian Center there in Ft. Worth.

On Saturday’s there is this thing called Super Stallion Avenue or also known as Million Dollar Alley.  Basically it is a way to promote your Stallion (the male horse to use to breed the mares) but the catch is, the stallion has to have Lifetime Earnings (LTE) of 1 Million Dollars.  The way LTE is figured is not only the stallions winnings from showing, but his off-springs earnings are figured in there as well.

Sorry about the blurry picture, but some promoters go all out.  They have these big booths set up, they give away free things, they cater, One year one did free drinks (alcoholic or virgin), they bring the stallions in so you can see them (and boy do they sparkle and shine), They give you cards that show the write up about that particular horse, etc.  They go all out basically!

Unfortunately I can’t remember which stud this was, but they made his own pillow for his booth.  I got silly glare.

One of the things a few of the stallion breeding stations did was offer free breedings to a particular stud.  Heck hubs and I both signed up, plus signed up dad (b/c he wouldn’t), mom (she wasn’t with us, she went shopping), my mother in law (she doesn’t own a horse, but she’d give it to her loving kids). 🙂  Then once we’d made our way through, we headed off to pick up my mom and head to the Old Stockyards.

Hubs had never been on the Will Rogers show floor, so since the show wasn’t going on, we were able to run in and see the arena from the floor.

You have no idea how exciting it was to be down there.  I’ve never gotten to show here, but I have ridden around in this arena.  My goal is to show here someday!

Isn’t he cute?

Yup I was there too 🙂  Nope, not my hat.  It’s dad’s hat.  You have to wear a hat to be on the floor, so dad gave me his hat for a few :).  I left mine at home (I get bad hat hair!!)

So now that were back in Missouri it’s time to start studying for finals. I’m not going to lie I am sick of bones. So last night I was looking for every excuse not to study. When I heard a new e-mail tone from my phone. Of course I just HAD to stop studying and check it! I read the e-mail and it caught my attention so I walked in to the kitchen and asked Husband which mare we are going to have bred?  He looked at me funny and said what the heck are you talking about? Me: I just won a free breeding to smoother than a cat. Hubs: How do you know that? Me: I just got an e-mail!! Hubs looked at the e-mail and I swear you would think we had just won a Million Dollars!!! So we grabbed the phone and called my dad and went through the same thing with him! However I don’t really think it totally sunk in because about 10 minutes later we got a call from him saying… “I was just thinking about that  phone call and that’s GREAT!!!” You can use ANY Mare on my place… that’s GREAT!! We were all floating on cloud 9!! And I had to go back to studying the bones… but who can study after news like that!!!!!

Isn’t He Gorgeous?

Picture courtesy of http://www.smootherthanacat.com/site.htm