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Defending champ Schaal hopes to be right as ‘rein’

July 14, 2010

Calgary, AB --- For Dr. Suzon Schaal, a practising equine veterinarian, the prognosis is clear . . . more success in the saddle.

Schaal only began showing at working cow horse events in 2007, but she’s truly had a year to remember. Last July, during her Calgary Stampede debut, she and partner Genuine Brown Gal snared the Non-Pro Bridle division championship at the Working Cow Horse Classic. And seven months later, in February of this year, Schaal and her seven-year-old quarter horse mare hauled all the way to San Angelo, Texas, coming back across the border with the Novice Non-Pro Bridle title at the National Reined Cow Horse Association (NRCHA) world championship.

Hey, just askin’, but what does she do for an encore?

“I’m not sure,” says Schaal, of Millarville, Alta., with a laugh. “I certainly didn’t expect to do as well as I did, but I drew some good cows and everything just kind of worked out for me.

“I don’t know. I’ll kind of see how things go,” adds Schaal. “I’m not very good at making plans; I tend to do things at the last minute: ‘Hmmmm, that looks like fun.’ And if I have time for it, I do it.”

Schaal and Genuine Brown Gal will be defending their Non-Pro Bridle title on Friday, July 16 and Sunday, July 18 as the Calgary Stampede Working Cow Horse Classic wraps up the Stampede’s trio of elite Western Performance Horse events under the Big Top. The Stampede’s Working Cow Horse Classic honours the tradition and heritage of the early 18th-century Spanish vaqueros in California; horse-and-rider teams are judged on their authority, discipline and precision in two distinct areas – reined work, or dry work, and cow work, otherwise known as fence work. Reined work is based on a predetermined pattern of manoeuvres, including figure-eights, straight runs, sliding stops and 360-degree spins. Cow work, the portion of the show that gets the blood pumping, sees the horse-and-rider team first box a steer, then send it at full tilt along the fence, heading it off and turning it both ways, before finally circling it once in each direction in the centre of the arena.

Schaal and Genuine Brown Gal also made waves in San Angelo by finishing as reserve champions in Non-Pro Two Rein, and placing seventh in Non-Pro Bridle. But Schaal hasn’t earned the admiration of her peers merely for her sudden success. During the 2009 Stampede, two fellow competitors, Doreen Koroluk and Roxanne Sapergia, saw their horses fall ill with signs of colic. Schaal not only came to the aid of the animals, she personally looked after Koroluk’s mount Fargo overnight at the Okotoks Animal Clinic until it was out of danger.

“She showed sportsmanship as a competitor, and professionalism as a vet,” notes Christine Sowiak, chair of the Stampede’s Western Performance Horse committee. “And after all that, she still won. It just goes to show the kind of sportsmanship and character she has, and how tough she is as a competitor.”

Schaal won’t be able to defend her NRCHA world novice title next February, since her string of success has ensured she’s no longer a “novice” in the NRCHA’s eyes. And that’s partially due to the talents of Genuine Brown Gal, a product of sire Listo Pollito Lena and dam Genuine Emerald.

“I’ve always liked the reining aspect, which is like dressage, where you need a lot of fine-tuned training and communication with your horse,” she says. “And the cow work is quite a challenge; it takes quite a talented, athletic horse. (Genuine Brown Gal) just gets better and better, and more confident as she goes along. She requires less training all the time . . . it’s just a matter of maintaining her, rather than teaching her stuff at this point.”

The Stampede’s Working Cow Horse Classic hosts bridle and hackamore divisions for fully-trained horses and four- and five-year-olds, respectively, with open, non-pro and novice designations for various levels of rider experience. Six championships will go up for grabs — Open Bridle, Open Hackamore, Non-Pro Bridle, Limited Open Bridle, Limited Open Hackamore, and Novice Non-Pro Bridle — with $10,000 in added money and gold-and-silver handcrafted Stampede buckles on the line. A total of 40 teams are entered this year.

“These riders have to be horsemen, and they’ve got to be able to read cattle. You could say the same for any Western Performance Horse event, but it’s a combination of skills and the partnership you have to have with your horse, because the components of the event are so different,” says Sowiak. “In the dry work, you really need to have the control that dressage does . . . and you also need courage to go 90 miles an hour down the fence chasing a cow. But as soon as that cow comes into the arena, you also need a good sense of how it’s going to react.

“You have to practise enough, and dedicate enough, to it that some of those things become intuitive, second nature. Once the cow comes in, things move far too quickly to stop and think about it.”

This weekend will also wrap up competition for the second annual Elite Western Rider Award, which is presented to the top cowboy or cowgirl competing in the Western Performance Horse disciplines. All riders who take part in at least two of the events — including the Calgary Stampede Team Cattle Penning Competition, the Calgary Stampede Cutting Horse Competition, and the Working Cow Horse Classic — are eligible for the champion’s buckle.

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