Showing American Quarter Horses is about much more than the lucrative prizes you can win, the thrill of competition you’ll experience and the glory you’ll receive.

Learn how to get started showing AQHA and one day you too could win a gold trophy.

There are so many reasons why you should show AQHA. Whether it’s your profession or your pastime, the best rewards you’ll receive from showing AQHA are the ones you’ll carry in your heart for a lifetime.

Here are a few more great benefits:

• You’ll make lifelong friends who share your passion
• You’ll feel the satisfaction of a job well done
• It’s fun for the entire family
• You’ll be competing with the most loyal, responsive, hardworking and willing teammate you’ll ever have – the American Quarter Horse

Show Up!

Are you a novice competitor? Well, AQHA has got the program for you! When you first experience AQHA shows as a novice, AQHA will automatically enroll you in the AQHA Show Up! campaign.

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At the 2005 AQHA Select World Championship Show, three fearless riders and their talented horses combined for an unforgettable jumping finals.

Truck A Buck and Dr. April Speyer sail over a jump in the jump-off for the jumping world championship at the 2005 Select World Show.

By Honi Roberts in The American Quarter Horse Journal

The championship jumping class is usually one of the last at the AQHA Select World Championship Show. The crowds thin as the clock ticks, and people head home. But stalwart fans who stayed to watch the finals in 2005 were thrilled when a jump-off became necessary between three horse-and-rider teams, all either previous world champions or high-point horses. The rides that followed were not to be forgotten.

Ellen Williams of Bon Aqua, Tennessee, was first to go aboard her great jumping mare Earth To Wanda, the 2004 Select world champion. When Ellen, whose background includes steeplechasing and eventing, purchased the pretty bay in 1998, Earth To Wanda (by Earth Station (TB) and out of Wanda Charge) was her first American Quarter Horse.

“I’d just retired my Thoroughbred,” Ellen recalled. “A dear friend who showed Quarter Horses always told me what great fun the shows were and how versatile the horses are. I liked Earth To Wanda the instant I saw her. She was game and would jump anything.”

Ellen and Earth To Wanda covered the jump-off course in :34.271 seconds, a clean round, with no faults.

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Meet some seniors still making a splash in the show pen.

Exquisite Doc, at the age of 28, carried carried Kaila Lorenzen to 10th place in the team penning at the 2008 Built Ford Tough AQHYA World Championship Show.

By Andrea Caudill in The American Quarter Horse Journal

Reining, cutting and cow horse events, they say, are for the young. The futurity and derby horses might attract the most attention, but there are many horses stirring it up well into their teens and 20s.

Here are their stories:

Exquisite Doc
1980 red roan gelding
By Doc’s Sug and out of Bullhide Cowgirl by Zaino King

Exquisite Doc – “Ed” to his friends – this year reached the venerable age of 30. Most horses his age are nothing more than pasture potatoes, but Ed loves his job as a team penner and family mascot too much to quit. Given reign over his owner’s farm at Berwick, Illinois, the son of Doc’s Sug keeps himself busy overseeing the other horses, and, if the possibility exists of his being left behind, he sneaks onto the horse trailer so he can go to a team penning.

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AQHA’s novice program allows even the experienced AQHA member to try something new to develop his or her horsemanship and exhibitor skills.

As an AQHA novice exhibitor, you compete in a separate class to learn new events at your own pace.

Do you want to try a new event but aren’t ready to test the waters against the industry’s leading amateur and youth competitors? AQHA’s novice classes are designed to help you and your horse grow in a new event at your pace. And you can choose to exhibit your horse in one or more novice classes that you are eligible for.

The novice program is available to you in youth and amateur competition. To be eligible, you must not have earned 25 novice youth, youth, novice amateur, amateur or open combined lifetime points in that novice class.

Buying a Horse?

The novice program also allows you to try out a horse you are thinking about buying. AQHA rules allow a novice youth or novice amateur competitor to show a horse in a novice youth or novice amateur class with the owner and his or her immediate family still retaining the ability to show the horse in any class other than the same class as the novice exhibitor. Novice youth and novice amateur exhibitors can also show a leased horse in a novice class.

Novice exhibitors must still request a novice permit to show a horse that is owned by a non-family member at any of the top 10 AQHA circuit shows that allow permit competition. The top 10 shows are determined by the total number of entries the previous year and can change from year to year.
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Find your landmarks in a confusing sea of patterns.

The pattern doesn’t usually tell you whether you need to be two feet or five feet off a cone -- you have to figure that out for yourself.

By AQHA Professional Horseman Tom McBeath with Larri Jo Starkey in The American Quarter Horse Journal

You wouldn’t set off on a journey without mapping out a course. Don’t set off in a pattern course without planning just as carefully.

Think of each new arena as a new territory to be mastered, and you’ll find yourself navigating patterns with ease – or at least with a plan.

AQHA Professional Horseman Tom McBeath has some suggestions on finding your way through tricky, hand-drawn patterns.

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AQHA Professional Horsemen talk about the five errors non-pros make in halter.

In the halter ring, don’t let your nerves get the better of you and help you to make the biggest mistake of all: over-showing your horse.

From The American Quarter Horse Journal

When it comes to showing horses, we all make mistakes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a pro or a novice amateur, you’re going to mess up every once in a while.

But if you know how to keep your eye open for mistakes before they happen, maybe you can prevent them.

The Journal asked a few AQHA Professional Horsemen what the top five mistakes are that most halter amateur exhibitors make, and how to avoid them.

No. 1 – Set Up the Horse Improperly

Know the conformation of your horse and how to show her so she will look her best.

• For a long-backed horse, bunch the horse up a little bit in the set-up, which will round her back. Don’t set your horse up too wide, which also hollows out the back.
• Don’t set your horse’s head too high. Look at where the neck comes out and present the horse’s head so that it doesn’t dip the back.

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Novice western pleasure exhibitors can put these tips to use along the rail.

Everything from your attire to your equipment should make your horse look as smooth as possible. Western pleasure is about making the horse look good.

By AQHA Professional Horseman Louis Hufnagel with Larri Jo Starkey in The American Quarter Horse Journal

This is the last half of a two-part series. Need to review Part 1?

Plan Ahead

Showing your horse to the best of your ability means planning ahead and knowing your horse. In the warm-up pen, pay attention to the other horses so that when you enter the ring, you will know whether your horse is slower or faster than the ones in front of you and behind you at the walk, jog and lope.

If your horse cannot jog slowly and the horse in front of you can, you’ll end up passing the horse in front of you. Passing isn’t bad – it’s better to pass than to crowd – but you can set yourself up better if you get behind a horse that jogs faster than yours so you don’t have to make that decision.

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Novice western pleasure exhibitors can put these tips to use along the rail.

Any time you have a question about how your horse should look in the show ring, don’t depend on fads to tell you, read your AQHA rulebook.

By AQHA Professional Horseman Louis Hufnagel with Larri Jo Starkey in The American Quarter Horse Journal

Only one horse in 100 does all the gaits slowly and correctly on its own every time, and as a beginner, you probably don’t have that horse.

Instead, when you’re showing in western pleasure, you’re trying to do as well as you can with the horse you can afford.

Read the Rulebook

Whether you’re going to be showing in pleasure, horsemanship or showmanship, you need to read the class specifications. It’s going to tell you what’s going to happen in that class. You still need to see a class before you show in it, but you’ll know the basic guidelines.

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International youth riders will battle it out in Oklahoma City for the chance to take the gold, and the glory, back to their country.

To level the playing field, competing team members do not show their own horses at the American Quarter Horse Youth World Cup.

Get ready for the 2010 American Quarter Horse Youth World Cup July 3-10 in Oklahoma City.

The event is held every two years and is hosted by a different country each time. The 2008 Youth World Cup was in London, Ontario.

While at the Youth World Cup, five youth plus one coach and manager from each country will take part in educational seminars, discipline clinics, leadership training and, finally, competition. Five additional youth from each country are invited by each international affiliate to attend the education and leadership portion of the week’s events and to cheer on their teammates.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about reining, and then some.

Shawn Flarida and RC Fancy Step, by Wimpys Little Step out of Sonita Wilson, marked an impressive 232.5 to win the 2009 NRHA Open Derby.

From The American Quarter Horse Journal

Reining has been called the dressage of the western world. As in dressage, a rider pilots a collected horse through a prescribed pattern while being judged on smoothness, control, attitude and finesse.

However, all similarities stop there. Where dressage is slow and measured, reining is a fast-paced thrill ride full of hard-driving runs, explosive stops and dizzying spins.

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Opportunity knocked for learning, big prizes and fun at the 2009 Region Seven Championship.

Samantha Siedentopf, 15, of Santa Rosa, California, won seven buckles in speed events aboard Shell Be First Class at the 2009 Region Seven Championship, in Reno, Nevada.

By Christine Hamilton in The American Quarter Horse Journal

Showmanship – that’s the only reason Bob Fischer, a building contractor from Kelseyville, California, went to the 2009 Region Seven Championship in Reno, Nevada.

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The Region 11 Championship promotes the American Quarter Horse across the Atlantic.

The 2009 Region Eleven Championship in Paaren, Germany, offered clinics and demonstrations, as well as the typical AQHA classes for novice competitors.

By Ramona Billing in The American Quarter Horse Journal

The German Quarter Horse Association brought AQHA’s popular Regional Championship event to Europe for a second time in 2009.

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