1978 CRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity Champions, Doc N Missy and Bobby Ingersoll. Many claim this run remains the Snaffle Bit Futurity's best-ever cow work.

The National Reined Cow Horse Snaffle Bit Futurity is my favorite show of the year. It combines, in suitable amity, the traditional ways of the vaqueros with the pragmatic efficiency practiced by today’s trainers. More so than any of the other big futurities, the reined cow horse sport puts a diverse, unforgiving demand on horse and rider. There are no shortcuts in developing a team that can successfully weave together the herd, reined and cow works. And, despite which horses are leading after the herd and reined works, no one knows who’s going to win until the exciting, totally unpredictable cow work has come to a close at the end of the day. The action is nonstop, the challenge amazing. There truly is no other event like the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity, which runs through Oct. 5.


I’ve been covering the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity for Quarter Horse News since 2000 – the year Ted Robinson catch-rode Shawn Renshaw’s Smokums Prize to the Open Championship. Renshaw had ridden the horse to the Open and Non-Pro finals, but an injury suffered while resetting a shoe on a horse kept the California non-pro from making the big runs on the final Sunday. As history would have it, Robinson came through – winning his sixth Snaffle Bit Futurity Championship. He now has seven.

Actually, I’ve been coming to this show for a lot longer than eight years.

Like so many of the Great Basin ranching families and buckaroos, this is the one event my mom and dad saved up for and attended every year. It was our vacation, our treat – the break before the fall gathering of cattle in the desert. Back then, the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity was held in Reno-Sparks Convention Center on the south edge of town. It was out a ways from the hustle and lights of downtown Reno, with the Stagecoach restaurant being the only handy place to get a bite to eat. Ranches still lined Virginia Street and the traffic was light.

I still remember the excitement of the Wild Bunch and the bright-light sales at John Ascuaga’s Nugget, where an elevator lifted the horses into the meeting room-turned-auction-ring. For a kid from the rural northeastern corner of California, the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity was all glitz and glamour, a dream world a million miles away from the home ranch and its utilitarian using horses. Benny Guitron, Bobby Ingersoll, Greg Ward, Les Vogt, Stan Fonsen and so many others – they were the best, they were the heroes of those days. I was in awe of their personas, their horses, their talent.

I still am.

Time sure goes by fast. Now, the Convention Center is hemmed in by city development and a freeway; it's an expanded meeting facility positioned in the odd shadow of the faux Roman columns that line the monolithic Atlantis Casino Resort Spa. The NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity has moved a few times – to Las Vegas, Fresno and finally to the north side of the Biggest Little City in the World, to the Reno Livestock Events Center.

For nearly four decades, since 1970, the reined cow horse industry’s premier event has thrived and prospered. The show went on, despite oil crunches, economic downturns and the evolution of modern training techniques and attitudes. The NRCHA has seen its ups and downs, and it almost went completely broke in the early 2000s. But the association has prevailed, grown and thus expanded its entry base far beyond the West Coast where it originated as the California Reined Cow Horse Association. As for the Snaffle Bit Futurity, it stands alone as absolutely the most brilliant stone set in the ring of the reined cow horse industry.

You should see it.