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.”