Kim Dooley claims the non-pro title with Country Custom.

Kim Dooley rides Country Custom through a large fast circle during the National Reining Horse Association Derby non-pro finals Friday in Oklahoma City.

Kim Dooley of Scottsdale, Arizona, had the last draw Friday in the non-pro division of the National Reining Horse Association Derby.

Kim, fresh off her win in the National Reining Breeders Classic non-pro, wasn’t thinking about high expectations or the long wait or even the heat that turned Derby programs into makeshift fans in the stands of the Jim Norick Coliseum at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds.

“I don’t think about that,” she says. “I just came in and thought, ‘I’m going to show my horse the best that I can.’ I wasn’t expecting to win this at all.”

Her horse, Country Custom, is a 2006 bay gelding by Custom Crome and out of JJM Sunny Delight by Bar Money Sunny who wasn’t gelded until recently.

“He’s a special horse,” she says. “We got him in the middle of his 2-year-old year. (My husband) Martin showed him as a 3-year-old and he was always real good but he had a little bobble. He was just a little bowed up, so when I started showing him I said, ‘You know, I think I’d be better off with a gelding.’ So we cut him and he has just really blossomed since he turned 4. He seems to get better every single horse show. He seems like the type of horse the harder you run him the better he is.”

On Friday, Kim knew in the back of her head that Mandy McCutcheon, working earlier in the evening, had marked a 224 on Starstruck Girl.

“I knew that was going to be hard to beat,” Kim says. “Mandy – you can put her up on any horse and she can pull it off. She’s such a great showman and a great rider. She’s a really tough competitor. I said, ‘I’m going to go in and run him hard, and it’ll either work or it won’t, but we’ve got to give it a shot.’”

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So she did. Working the dirt-spraying, stamina-testing pattern five, Kim asked “Charlie” what he could do.

“He just was on in every maneuver tonight,” she says. “He went in there and circled as good as he could have, turned big, did good on his figure-8 and ran down there and stopped hard every time. He just felt like the whole package came together tonight.”

The judges thought the work was good enough for a 225.

“I just wanted my horse to be as good as he could, and this was a big bonus,” Kim says.

To read about Kim’s win at the NRBC, click here.