Growing pains are to be expected. After all, ranch pleasure is in only the second year of competition at AQHA shows. One such growing pain is this: Horses aren’t being shown with enough forward movement.
The problem, says Alex Ross, AQHA senior director of judges, is that some AQHA exhibitors have never seen a ranch horse at work in a pasture. Those exhibitors don’t understand the long, free-flowing stride that a horse needs to get a hungry rider from the back pasture to the supper table in time for hot chicken-fried steak.
“Exhibitors who have shown in mainstream western pleasure classes have been showing their horses differently,” Alex told the Journal. “Now we just need them to stretch those horses’ legs out even more, so their horses look like ranch horses and not mainstream pleasure horses.”
A few words come up repeatedly when top exhibitors discuss ranch pleasure horses. One of the most common descriptors is “broke.”
“To succeed in ranch pleasure, the horses have to perform well at basic maneuvers taken from trail, western riding, horsemanship and reining,” explains AQHA Professional Horseman Bill Bormes of Castle Rock, Colorado. “This class is, right now, producing an educated horse, capable of moving on in his careers, successfully competing in any number of events.”
