Cranbrook area’s “Buckskin” Ali Massi won colt starting trainer of the year and was also named the free style champion at the 2019 Rocking Heart Ranch Colt Starting Challenge in Alberta.
“It actually felt pretty amazing,” she said of her win at her fourth Rocking Heart event she’s competed in. “I was pretty happy that we won and I actually wasn’t expecting to win it.”
Rocking Heart Ranch fields applications from trainers from across Western Canada all throughout the year, and the family who owns the ranch selects ten up-and-coming trainers to compete. The trainers are then notified by email and a pickup day for their horses is arranged.
From the archives: Fort Steele equestrian headed to Alberta competition
The horse selection process his year, Massi explains, was a little different. Trainers had to draw a number from an old cowboy hat at random. That number determined the order in which they were able to pick their three-year-old horse. Massi drew the number eight and decided to pick a horse called DQH Frenchman’s Della, or Della for short.
After the section process, she and all the other trainers have six weeks to prepare their horses, and they are required to send in a video to the Ranch every two weeks to document their progress.
Each trainer puts their selected horse through their own tailor-made program, ensuring the animal has the foundational techniques and patterns down.
On the day of the competition, the trainers are given ten minutes to demonstrate the animal’s newfound abilities. Next, they head back out into the ring for a two minute freestyle exhibition, dubbed the Wow Factor. This is how Massi described her freestyle:
“I came into the ring with a great big orange tarp wrapped around me that flowed out behind me and the horses and I asked her to lope off with just a halter and a lead rope on and I let the tarp go so it flew behind us.
“Then I continued to lope a little bit and then I went over and I had this big cart made of barrels that I pushed. So we pushed the cart and then I trotted over to a half cylinder set up there for side passing. Right before I went to go and side pass her, my lead rope came loose so I was actually side passing her one handed and one reigned, which was a surprise, but she did it nice and smoothly.”
For her grand finale, Massi asked Della to lay down, drawing a round of applause. She then had the horse sit up and then, with Massi holding on to her, Della stood up on to all fours.
“When they called my name it was a surprise and the even more surprising part was that I won the Wow Factor,” Massi said, “because there was lots of different varieties of the Wow Factor that were going on so that was even more of a surprise.”
After the event, the horses are all auctioned off. She said that because of how much hardwork and dedication that’s required in the 60 days leading up to the event, a bond is formed with the horse and it was very hard to see Della go at the end. She would have bought her herself, but she wound being out of Massi’s price range.
Messi said beyond the competition world, she still has a very active horsemanship teaching program that she runs out of Cranbrook and Windermere that is going very well. She is actually hosting a show two weeks from now in Windermere showcasing all of her students.
“I made a new program where I focus on a lot more ground work and softening and getting the horses to trust you a lot more,” she explained, and she added that although she’s made a career out of training horses, training “doesn’t feel like a job, because it’s my passion.”
You can find Buckskin Ali Horsemanship on Facebook.
