Around age 13, Bella Vasquez suffered a head injury so severe that — for a few days — she could no longer remember the time or date. While riding her horse, Lucas, things had suddenly gone awry.
“When I got him, he was very untrained,” the Macedonia resident recalls. “One day, I was doing a barrel race, and we came around, and he decided to run through the gate without stopping. … My leg hit a cement pole, and with the momentum, I swung over. And then I was dangling down from the saddle, and he ran me over.”
Though the blow knocked her unconscious, Vasquez didn’t allow the accident to drive a wedge between herself and her horse.
“I still got up that next day and went to the barn, because I had to take care of him. There’s a lot of grit,” says the now president of the Trail Blazers, a Summit County 4-H club. “No matter what they did that first day, you have to forgive and forget.”
After working and forging a connection with Lucas, Vasquez, now 17, is winning barrel races — in which riders direct their horses around a pattern of barrels — at rodeos and conquering other events with him. The pair nabbed Grand Champion in barrels and showmanship at Summit County Versatility in 2024, won flags at Rocky Fork Rodeo in 2022 and placed top 15 at States for Keyhole in 2024. These victories require extensive training.
“Conditioning, usually that consists of riding every day,” says Vasquez, adding that Lucas needs monthly chiropractic care and a diet of hay, grain, supplements and water.
Vasquez has also competed with Buster, her adviser’s miniature horse. That involves showmanship — in which the animals must walk patterns, complete pivots, trot and more — as well as jumping. Competing for the first time with Buster, at the 2021 Summit County Fair, was pleasantly surprising. “It was a showmanship class, and we ended up winning it,” she recalls. “He was super focused.”
Vasquez and Buster won a Grand Champion title for the in hand division that year, as well as for the in hand division at the 2022 Summit County Fair.
“He’s a spitfire, but he’s very, very obedient,” she says of Buster. “When you got him in the ring to show, he was all business. He knew what he was doing. He listened to me, and that’s how we really meshed.”
Communication, Vasquez says, is key to competing with horses. So is a close bond and a similar mindset.
“You have to want it as bad as your horse does,” she says, “and your horse has to want it as bad as you do.”
Mal McCrea
Mal McCrea
Mal McCrea
