The 2012 Professional’s Choice Professional Horsewoman of the Year, Deanna Searles of Scottsdale, Arizona, is a true role model for the industry’s youth and professional horsewomen. She brings her passion and professionalism to the Arizona and NSBA youth programs. A dedicated member of the AQHA Professional Horsemen program, she is also a presenter at the Association’s Ride the Rail/Ride the Pattern clinics at shows across the country.

Searles has trained horses for 25 years, helping many clients to achieve the highest honors at AQHA world championship shows. Her positive and patient teaching style brings out the best in both horses and riders.

She placed in the top 10 at her very first AQHA youth world show at age 11. She is now known for training AQHA world champions and high-point winners, including: 2012 Equistat Leading Hunter Under Saddle Sire Allocate Your Assets; 2011 Congress Masters Winner Lastcallfour Alcohol; Heza Radical Zip; Majestic Scotch; and Just Burning Money.

Besides training and showing, Searles is dedicated to her family. The wife of an AQHA Professional Horseman and judge, Jim Searles, and the mother of two, Trent and Taylor, she carefully balances her time between horses and her family.

Flashy Attraction wins at his second world show for the Searles family of Arizona.

by Holly Clanahan
The American Quarter Horse Journal

As Taylor Searles was waiting for the placings to be called in western riding August 7 at the 2012 Built Ford Tough AQHYA World Championship Show, she and the last two competitors shared hugs. She, Samantha Bayer and Kaylee Mellott were good friends, and Taylor teared up a bit thinking about how amazing it was to share such a moment.

Her horse, Flashy Attraction, however, was tossing his head and pinning his ears at the other horses. “He’s like, ‘Come on, hurry up, let’s place this thing,’ ” Taylor said of the veteran show horse. “He’s just so funny.”

As it turned out, Taylor and “Ryder” were the last ones left in line with a score of 227.5 that earned them the gold trophy. Last August, Ryder and Taylor scored a reserve youth world championship in western riding, and at the 2011 Adequan Select World Championship Show, Taylor’s grandmother, Mary Lou Searles won her western riding class with Ryder.

No wonder, then, that the horse Taylor described as “Dennis the Menace” is a family favorite. Her parents, Jim (an AQHA Professional Horseman) and Deanna, are trainers who have worked with Ryder since he was a junior horse.

Katherine Tobin was his previous owner, and “I’m just so happy and blessed that she let me have him,” said Taylor, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Sonoran Trails Middle School in Phoenix.

Preparing for the western riding finals, Taylor said, “I just was praying and hoping that I could get this done. I rode and just kept on practicing and practicing, and it worked.” Show nerves plagued her earlier in the day, but as she was preparing to ride in, confidence in her horse took over.

“It was just amazing,” she said of her championship ride.

She planned to give Ryder “a lot” of his favorite Mrs. Pastures horse cookies as a reward, and she’s hoping special treatment like that will keep the 16-year-old gelding going strong for years to come.

“I’m definitely going to keep showing as long as he’ll let me show him.”

Click here to read about Taylor’s Winning Run

GoHorseShow also posted an article about Taylor’s reporting

Taylor Searles Becomes Reporter for Local News at Sun Circuit

The AQHA World Show was a huge success this year and was a great last show of our show season! Jeff was 3rd on More Radical and 9th on Heza Radical Zip in the Amateur Western Riding. Jeff was also 4th on I Gotta Good Name in Amateur Trail.

Deanna was 9th on “Troy,” Heza Radical Zip in the Senior Western Riding and Jim was 10th on “Ryder,” Flashy Attraction, in the same class. He was also 13th on HRZ Make Mine Gold. In the Senior Trail, Deanna placed 4th on Heza Radical Zip.

By: Brittany Bevis

Last night at the 2011 AQHA World Championship Show, Jim and Deanna Searles, along with Kathy Tobin, presented a $2,500 check on behalf of Allocate Your Assets to Shorty Koger of Rein In Cancer. This generous donation will go towards the Rein In Cancer charity, which will use the funds to help run the Shirley Bowman Nutritional Clinic at the OU Cancer Institute in Oklahoma City.

Koger, along with good friends, Cheryl Magoteaux and Tracie Anderson, created the Rein In Cancer charity in 2007, in memory of family members and close friends who have been affected by the disease.

The Searles and Tobin families first came up with the idea that they wanted to donate a portion of Allocate Your Assets breeding fees to Rein In Cancer and the Shirley Bowman Nutritional Clinic last year.

“When we started this deal, we wanted to try to give back, and we were looking for the right charity to give it to,” Jim Searles says. “Then, we met Shorty and Bobby, and this is such a great foundation. We have seen pictures of the work that is done, and it’s just great.”

Beginning last year, Allocate Your Assets now donates $50 of each breeding fee to the Rein In Cancer charity. Following the conclusion of this 2011 breeding season, the total amount for their donation this year was $2,500.

“We have had some friends who had been affected by the same disease,” Searles says. “We have been really blessed not to have been affected by it personally, but we have some good friends who have been diagnosed. One that stuck out to us the most was when Kelley Roberts was diagnosed. Also, when our good friend, Jill Newcomb, was diagnosed, that was a shock because she is close to our own age.”

Because the Searles and Tobins wanted to keep the donation within the “horse family,” the choice of Rein In Cancer as the recipient charity fit in perfectly with their vision.

“Shorty and Bobby are such great people anyways that this was perfect,” he says. “Kathy does the breeding mostly for her own personal interest. It’s not all just about the money. She loves seeing the babies grow up and raising them herself. Everything else is just a bonus.”

“The look on Shorty’s face when we presented the check said it all. That’s what this is all supposed to be about.”

The promising young sire, Allocate Your Assets, will continue to donate $50 from each breeding to the Rein In Cancer charity for the upcoming 2012 breeding season. Coming off an amazing 2011 Quarter Horse Congress with five Congress Champions, 4 Reserve Congress Champions, 18 Top Ten finishes, and the winner of the Equine Chronicle 2-Year-Old Hunter Under Saddle Masters class, “Al” is sure to be one busy boy in 2012.

The 2011 Congress is finally over and we are headed home for a quick break before the AQHA World Show. We all had an incredible Congress, winning 3 Congress Championships, 3 Res. Championships, and 16 top ten awards. Allocate Your Assets also had a great Congress, with his offspring winning 5 Congress Championships.

Flashy Attraction & Taylor Searles
Overall Youth All-Around Champion
Novice 13 & Under Youth All-Around Champion
11 & Under All-Around Champion
Congress Champion 13 & Under Western Riding
3rd 11 & Under Horsemanship
4th Novice Youth 13 & Under Horsemanship
4th 11 & Under Hunt Seat Equitation
Reserve Champion Novice Youth 13 & Under Hunt Seat Equitation
3rd 11 & Under Trail
4th 13 & Under Novice Youth Trail

Al Be Sweet On You & Taylor Searles
Congress Champion Youth 11 & Under Hunter Under Saddle
3rd Novice Youth 13 & Under Hunter Under Saddle
4th 13 & Under Western Riding

An Honest Detail & Gabriella Salamone
5th 14-18 Hunter Under Saddle
4th NYATT Hunter Under Saddle

An Honest Detail & Deanna Searles
3rd Senior Hunter Under Saddle

Lastcallfour Alcohol & Deanna Searles
Congress Champion HUS Masters Futurity

Heza Radical Zip & Susie Johns
Reserve Champion Select Amateur Western Riding
6th Amateur Select Western Horsemanship

I Gotta Good Name & Jeff Johns
10th Amateur Trail

Heza Radical Zip & Jeff Johns
Reserve Champion Novice Amateur Western Horsemanship

Wheres My Alimony
10th Hunter Under Saddle Masters Futurity

Heza Radical Zip & Deanna Searles
6th Senior Western Riding

Flashy Attraction & Jim Searles
8th Senior Western Riding

Flashy Attraction & Mary Lou Searles
4th Select Amateur Western Riding

By: Brittany Bevis

The Equine Chronicle Masters event kicked off this evening at the 2011 All American Quarter Horse Congress, with horse and rider introductions under the lights of a completely packed Celeste arena. Everyone filed in early to get a seat for the first event of the night, the Equine Chronicle Masters 2-Year-Old Hunter Under Saddle.

22 entries saddled up to compete in the class tonight, which was reserved for maiden two-year-old hunter under saddle horses only. When the final score cards were turned in, it was Deanna Searles with Lastcallfour Alcohol who claimed the top prize of the Masters title, bronze trophy, Blue Ribbon saddle, and a guaranteed $50,000 purse.

Searles tells us that the aptly named “Bud,” gets his namesake from her stepfather, who raised the colt himself in Oregon.

“We named him Bud, like Budweiser, after my stepdad, because he raised him up in Oregon,” Searles says. “He had him up there and he always drinks Budweiser, so we called him Bud and made his show name Lastcallfour Alcohol.”

Although there are a few notable differences between Bud and his sire, Allocate Your Assets, like the fact that Bud stands at 17.3 hands tall, Searles says he definitely takes after his father’s temperament.

“He just went in there, and packed me around, and was such a good boy,” she says. “It’s like he has been doing this all his life. Nothing bothers him.”

“His mentality is just like his dad’s. That’s what I fell in love with in the first place. He also has the look and is strong. He has something special about him.”

Searles placed third in the Masters Hunter Under Saddle the first year it took place at the Congress, but this is her first win.

“It’s so surreal,” she says. “I’m so proud of him. It was a good ride and I was happy that I got to win on a good ride.”

By: Brittany Bevis

“He is kind of like my other horse, because he is like Dennis the Menace,” Searles says. “He likes to eat everything, so we have to give him a new sheet like every week. My first show with him was in September, so I just recently got him.”

Searles has had quite a successful Congress so far winning the Youth Western Riding 13 and Under with her horse Flashy Attraction and coming in fourth in the same class with Al Be Sweet On You. She also plans to compete with this horse in the Novice Youth Hunter Under Saddle coming up.

“The first split I was really nervous,” she says. “I haven’t been nervous this whole show, but today I was so nervous. He is really green, because he got hurt during his three-year-old year and they just started showing him again when he was four.”

Allocate Your Assets, a 2000 stallion by Protect Your Assets and out of Kat Sass, is owned by Katherine Tobin and currently stands at Jim and Deanna Searles’s ranch in Scottsdale, AZ. Tobin is a longtime client and close family friend of the Searles, so she was waiting alongside Jim as Taylor exited the arena.

“Taylor rode him so cute,” Tobin says. “Oh my gosh! It was incredible! It’s kind of funny, because his mom is a Sweet Talkin Chip mare. We wanted to see what kind of mares Al would cross with. He also does trail and was just fourth in western riding with Taylor the other day. This was fabulous.”

Al’s babies have been doing quite well at the 2011 Congress, with Resurrection winning the Progressive Working Hunter and Junior Hunter Hack with Ryan Painter in the irons.

“Al has had multiple Reserve Congress Champions, but these are his first Congress Champions,” she says. “It really shows his versatility that one can do the jumping and hunter under saddle and the other can do western riding, trail, and hunter under saddle.”