Horse Shows and Rodeos
Today, people show American Quarter Horses in a variety of competitive events, including, but not limited to, halter classes; western style events such as Western Pleasure, Reining, and cutting; English riding events in the hunt seat style, such as Hunter Under Saddle, working hunter, and hunter hack. Driving classes are available at some shows, as are some timed games. There are also equitation and halter showmanship classes for non-pro exhibitors.
The annual AQHA World Show, the largest AQHA-sponsored event, is held in November of each year in Oklahoma City.
In the show ring, the AQHA awards a number of year end awards, including Rookie of the Year (awarded at the state, regional, and national level); Year End Top-Ten awards in for the Open Junior Horse, Open Senior Horse, Youth and Amateur divisions; Year End High Point awards in the same divisions; Year End High point all around and reserve all around in the same divisions, and a few miscellaneous awards to novice and limited riders. As lifetime awards, the AQHA awards Register of Merits in Performance and Halter, AQHA Champion, AQHA Performance Champion, AQHA Versatility Champion, Superior Event Horse, Supreme Championships in the three showing divisions (Youth, Open, Amateur), and a Supreme Performance Champion.
Read more about this topic: American Quarter Horse Association, Competition and Awards
Famous quotes containing the words horse and/or shows:
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)