Ms Peppy Cat, the NCHA’s 2008 World Champion, showed why she’s leading the 2010 standings with a rousing win in the $25,000-added Open finals of the Mercuria NCHA World Series of Cutting at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo on March 5. Pete Branch (pictured) marked 227.5 on Ms Peppy Cat for Lonnie and Barbara Allsup’s El Cid Land & Cattle Co., topping the 227 that Jeremy Barwick had posted earlier with CD April Fool, owned by Flying A Ranch.
“On her, you’re never out of the cutting,” Branch said. “It doesn’t matter what they put up there, if I do my job and get out of her way, she’s going to do her job. She gives everything that she has every time she goes out there.”
During the regular season in 2008, Ms Peppy Cat broke Cash Quixote Rio’s all-time earnings record for a World Champion, and by the time the World Finals were over, she’d piled up $131,516. She’s setting a similar pace this year. Her $6,850 check from Houston will take her over $23,000 so far for the 2010 point year.
“The reason I went to hauling her (in 2008) was she was green and needed to be seasoned,” Branch said. “I didn’t intend on winning the World with her, but the further we went, the better she got and everything fell in line, so I went for it. I didn’t show her much last year, and then came back this year on her and she’s smarter and better than she’s ever been.
“These (World Series) shows are the best thing that’s happened to open cutting,” he added. “(NCHA President) Chubby Turner should be commended for the job that he’s done to get this put together.”
In the $25,000-added Non-Pro finals, Kelsey Conn, a home-schooled 16-year-old from Houston, marked a career best of 227 with WSR Lano Badger Cat to earn $7,449, which will move her into the Top 10 in the 2010 Non-Pro standings. Kelsey was World Champion in the $50,000 Amateur in 2008 on the son of High Brow Cat, which she got as a Christmas present at the 2007 NCHA Futurity.
The win took WSR Lano Badger Cat’s earnings over the $100,000 mark. “He doesn’t get excited about anything,” Kelsey said. “He comes in there and does his job. The louder it gets, the better he likes it.”
Even after marking 227 as the fourth rider in the 13-horse finals, Kelsey wasn’t sure she had won. “There was tough competition in there,” she said.