horse people Natural HORSEMAN 14 M ARCH-APRIL 2012 AMERICA S HORSE

Transcription

1 horse people Natural HORSEMAN 14 M ARCH-APRIL 2012 AMERICA S HORSE

2 Caton Parelli and his mare, Mango, practice on some cattle. COCO Caton Parelli overcomes obstacles to achieve show-ring success. S By Holly Clanahan summer 1983 pat parelli and his then-wife, Karen, were heartsick, watching as their 3-monthold son, Caton Ryder, went into a coma. He d been born with a condition known as hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, and the pressure inside his tiny skull had become too much to bear. Doctors put in a shunt to drain the fluid but warned them that if he lived, he d likely never walk or talk and would need to be institutionalized. AMERICA S HORSE M ARCH-APRIL

3 COCO Twenty-eight years later, Pat now an AQHA Professional Horseman and renowned clinician is grateful to have a much different situation with his son. He s riding by right now, Pat says, explaining how active Caton is. I ll just hand the phone to him. And with that, an introduction to a gregarious young man whose name means wise horseman and who rides about six hours a day and shows successfully. Horses, to me, are one of the greatest teachers, Caton says as his horse clears its nose, relaxing as Caton talks. For me, they teach me how to maintain my balance, they teach me to be more flexible, which is a challenge, they teach me a lot of things. They teach me so much I can t even put it all into words. But for someone not expected to speak, he s well-spoken, passionate and effusive when it comes to talking about his American Quarter Horses. And for someone not expected to walk, well, Pat, taking the phone back, describes him best: As you can see, he can walk and talk, and he rides and slides and spins and wins and turns and burns and drives everything on the ranch, including his dad crazy. But it has been a long road. At 6 months old, Caton had to have surgery to correct his crossed eyes, caused by the pressure in his brain. And although the shunt was working, preventing more cranial fluid from building up, Caton had already sustained enough damage to cause cognitive and motor skill issues. He really couldn t walk, Pat says. He could stumble around, but he couldn t get up and walk somewhere. And when he was about 5, I started putting him on a horse, and I d seatbelt him on. King Gray Lynx, nicknamed Sparky, had taken Pat to Pat and Caton, working on the bridle of Liberty Belle, get plenty of father-son horse time every day. the National Reined Cow Horse Association s Snaffle Bit Futurity, and he became legs for little Caton. Caton would ride that horse everywhere. It just seemed like he finally got the idea that if he could get the message from his brain down to his legs, that the horse could feel it, and the horse would go across the arena where he wanted. It became true hippotherapy. The horse was really therapeutic for him. He has been riding ever since then and hasn t quit. He just rides and rides and rides and rides. At age 12, Caton suffered a stroke unrelated to the hydrocephalus, and he lost all function on the right side of his body. You get the sense, though, that not much could keep this young man down, and today, he has about 75 percent mobility on his right side. When he turned 18, Caton went to live with his dad and stepmother, Linda, and there are lots of opportunities for quality father-son horse time. It s really cool, Pat says. Basically, he gets to the barn (near Ocala, Florida,) every day at 7 o clock. He does about an hour and a half s worth of harrowing arenas and tracks, and then in the afternoons, he gets on another tractor and gets the water wagon going and waters the arenas and tracks, plus he s got five horses to ride every day, and then helps saddle and unsaddle and groom and all those kind of things. The biggest thing is, I try to empower him to be a problem solver and make decisions and give him lots of tasks that you have to kick your brain in for. If I ve got 200 head of cattle down there, I ll say I want between 16 and 20 (brought in). So I ll send him down there, and I don t care how long it takes. I want the cows, but what s more important is that it s a job where he can go down and figure out how to set the gates and which pastures to ride into and how to get them 16 M ARCH-APRIL 2012 AMERICA S HORSE

4 out and how not to bring too many or too few, and how to call if he s having trouble. When Caton first began riding, Pat made sure he was always mounted on well-trained horses like Sparky, horses that would give him a good experience. As he got better and better, he always had a natural way of being with horses, Pat says. Horses respond to him really well, they relax with him. He has gone from riding push-button horses that would stop and spin and slide and do lead changes and now he has ambitions to teach horses how to do that. He has started three or four of his own colts, was the first person to put rides on them, and he has now competed with those horses. He took one of our mares out of the broodmare band that hadn t been ridden since she was 2 or 3, and he competed on her in working cow horse and cutting and won quite a bit on her. It s indeed quite a progression. About three years ago, Caton told his dad he d be interested in competing in reining. Pat responded, Sure, that sounds good. On board the Major Bonanza stallion Liberty Major, Caton began competing in National Reining Horse Association events around Ocala. The first couple of times, he d mark a 60 or 62, Pat says, and then finally after about six months, he came back and won a reining class. Caton now competes in NRHA, NRCHA, National Cutting Horse Association and AQHA events, as well as some ranch horse competitions. Among his competition horses are Liberty Major; Sailing Smart, a top-shelf reining stallion the Parellis co-own with Craig Johnson; and Sanjo Bolero, who came from family friends Jim and Patricia Kier and who had won more than $60,000 in NCHA competition. Caton won his first belt buckle in April at the Orange Blossom Spectacular reined cow horse show, Pat says proudly. Caton, here with Sanjo Bolero, competes in reining, cutting, reined cow horse and ranch horse competitions. A young Caton learned to ride on board King Gray Lynx, who took Caton s father to the Snaffle Bit Futurity. Last summer, he won about $700 in NCHA events, and his goal is to reach the $2,000 mark, at which point he ll earn another buckle. Pat believes that as Caton has stretched his comfort zone, working to become more independent, that s the kind of stuff that really is making him into what he s turning into, (allowing him) to make the kind of split-second decisions you have to make in reined cow horse and in cutting. You ve really got to think fast and move slow. They re not easy KAREN HAGEN JIM DAVIS AMERICA S HORSE M ARCH-APRIL

5 CoCo events at all, and he s pretty good at it. He s also good at making friends, and as he has moved into the horse-show world, Caton s list of friends just keeps growing longer. Everybody knows him at every show we go to, Pat says, everybody likes him, everybody talks to him. When they first started going to cuttings, Caton couldn t get a run down to save his life, Pat says, and other competitors and spectators were very encouraging. Then when his abilities expanded to holding his cattle for the two-anda-half minute run, the whole place just cheered and went crazy for him. And now, he s marking 70s and 72s, and people are really going crazy for him. When Caton won his belt buckle, he had the audience in tears, Pat says. He s got a charismatic way about him that people really get attached to. I think that has been one of the coolest things, to see how other people respond to him. It takes just a few minutes of talking to Caton for that charisma to shine through. He loves to talk about his goal of breeding good cow horses. Basically, what I m going to try to do is use our great stallions and our great mares to produce great babies to improve the standards of the American Quarter Horse industry, Caton says. The mare that I m riding right now is out of one of the greatest cutting horses I think I ve ever ridden in my life, and her name was Roan N Royal. We called her Caton is a regular at his dad's clinics. Caton and Sanjo Bolero Bryan Morgan Scamp, because she just scampered everywhere, from one end of the pen to the other on a cow. She was one of the horses that got me passionate about cutting. Liberty Major has produced some good foals for Caton, and he says, I m trying to find Liberty Major s old owner, so I can thank him personally for producing one of the greatest reining stallions I ve ever ridden in my life. So, with all these good horses, which one has been his favorite? I don t pick favorites, Caton says quickly. Whatever horse I happen to be astraddle is my favorite at the time. They re like kids, you can t pick favorites. He can, however, pick a favorite truck. I know that Ford trucks are an AQHA sponsor, and I would just like to say that I also am a proud owner of a Ford SuperDuty pickup. Six hundred stampeding stallions under the hood, and I always like to say, Ford stands for First On Race Day, Caton says. He mostly drives his truck around the ranch, or sometimes into town following his dad, who s connected via CB radio, advising him what to watch out for. We have a beautiful relationship, Caton says of Pat. To my dad s credit, he has been very patient with me. And believe me, I need people with a lot of patience. I learn at a different rate than most people. Sometimes my passion gets in the way, but I m trying to learn what it takes to improve the quality of the horse industry one horse and human at a time. And that fact that Caton learns differently than others has shaped Pat as a teacher. You feel terrible when your child has anything wrong, Pat says. But after getting over that, you start to realize what the gift is. And for me, I think the gift is that it helps me if it takes 10 steps for one of my students to learn something, it might take him more than 100 steps. I ve learned to be a better teacher by breaking things down in even smaller chunks, which then helps me even understand more of what it is that I do. The more I help him, the more I m actually able to help my other students who want to learn how to show. I always tell people, he s God s gift to me. In many respects, he s the gift that keeps on giving, the wise horseman who keeps on riding toward his goals. I m doing all these things, Caton says, because I want to be the best cowboy ever was born. 18 m arch-april 2012 AMERICA S HORSE