Shooting Horse

Shooting Horse

 

Rock Clark’s Joker

 

Name: Flash Me A Wild Card, or Joker.

 

Owner: Rock Clark, Men’s Level 6, has owned Joker since 2006. He bought the horse from SL5 Joyce McKinney, who raised and trained Joker in mounted shooting.

 

Particulars: Nine-year-old black overo registered Paint.

 

Wins: 2008 CMSA National Championship; 2008 CMSA Easterns Championship; 2008 Mideastern Classic Reserve Championship; several other overall championships. 2009 Behlen Classic Overall Champion.

 

Partnership: “For the first year, I’d ride Joker and then I’d switch back to Dragon, and I didn’t win nothin’ in 2007.  It finally hit me that I needed to ride just one, so I started riding Joker. And one weekend I’d just love him. And the next weekend, I’d have given him away. He was young and he wasn’t completely finished. But from that time on, we’ve gotten closer, we’ve gotten better. By the end of 2007, we started to become more consistent. And in 2008, I won more overalls than I did with Dragon.

 

What Makes Him Special: “He’s so fast and so quick, you’ve really got to ride him because there’s just no catching him right before he does something. He’s a real sprinter. He’s long and lean in his body build. He never gets fat; it’s just like he’s in shape 24/7. He’s also very docile with everybody. People don’t believe this, but he is truly laid back.”

 

Workouts: “Whenever it starts getting pretty outside, in spring, and you feel like taking ‘em out and exercising, we’ll ride him on the circle at the front of our lot, which is about a third of a mile around. We circle it twice at a fast trot, then we short lope them around twice, and on the very last stretch we’ll really open him up. And we might do that three times a week through October.”

 

Diet: “I feed him Strategy twice a day and Bermuda hay when we’re out on the road. And during the week, we turn him out to pasture.”

 

Future: “He’s nine, he’s in his prime. And if I do my part and hit the balloons, there’s nobody that can touch him. He’ll win a lot of championships.”

 

Photo by Lucinda Wood

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