At the beginning of the year, Jake Pinheiro decided to enter his homebred mare Now You Sea Me in early futurities rather than wait for the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Futurity. He’s been cashing in on that decision ever since.
The mare by Equi-Stat Elite $10 Million Sire High Brow CD has been a winner from the start, most recently on Aug. 26 in the Non-Pro at the Idaho Cutting Horse Association Futurity. With owner-breeder Pinheiro aboard, they marked a 217 in the first and second go-rounds for a composite 434 in the class, which was decided in a pencil finals format. The win was worth $3,100.
Futurity Success
Earlier in the month, he and Now You Sea Me won the Non-Pro Championship at the Cascades Futurity in Redmond, Oregon.
“Lana” is extremely cowy,” said Pinheiro, of Templeton, California. “I owned her mother [Lu Sea Lu] when I bred her and if there was anything I could pick apart about that horse was that I wished she was more expressive on the cow. Lana has that.
“She is a little on the smaller side, I wish she was a little bigger and stronger, because she wants to be more cowy than her body lets her right now.”
Both Pinheiro and his boss—trainer Morgan Cromer—show the 3-year-old mare. At the ICHA Futurity, Cromer finished ninth in the Open with 217.5 to add $3,100 to the mare’s lifetime earnings. In Oregon, Cromer and the mare tied for first in the first go marking 219.5.
Now You Sea Me’s Future
Impressed that Lana can handle competing in both the open and non-pro divisions, Pinheiro is looking forward to the remainder of the show season, which includes the El Rancho Futurity in California and Pacific Coast Cutting Horse Association Futurity in Las Vegas.
“She has a quirky personality. I couldn’t be any happier with her thus far. She just walks out into the herd and really enjoys her job,” he said. “You never know what to expect when you go to your first futurity and it’s a pretty good feeling that she is doing so well and that I raised her myself.”
