Sheila Varian and Ronteza

[BMcCrary27@aol.com]

While we were all floundering around trying to recall the name of the class 
that Sheila Varian entered and won with Ronteza, I just decided to e-mail her 
and find out straight from the source.  Following is her answer to me:

<<Barbara:

You do go way back..... The class you are thinking of was the Cow Palace 
$1,000 Reined Cow Horse Championship.... At the time winning the Cow Palace 
was called Winning the World. Ronteza went three times to win the 
Championship... each time she did a dry work pattern and then worked a cow. 
The Reined Cow Horse that injured his leg was Bay Event (Bay Abi x Ronteza).>>

The year was 1961.

I also asked her the name of her remarkable gelding that had suffered such a 
hideous accident while out in pasture.  I had read an article about him in an 
old copy of Arabian Horse World.  The power company had been working on a 
line on Sheila's ranch and had left a line on the ground.  It might have been 
a guy wire, or who knows what.  Anyway, the gelding tangled with it and 
severed a tendon completely.  Sheila took him to the vet clinic Alamo Pintada 
(I think I have that name right) and they worked mightily on him, actually 
grafting a portion of another tendon onto the injured one.  After a lengthy 
recuperation, she brought him back and won with him, too (also in a spade 
bit).

Barbara