Our mission is to raise and train barrel horses with a soft touch and a sound mind that can go on into any type of competition. Our horses are brought along slow and easy and on their own schedule with a simplified and consistent training method without gimmicks or crutches allowing the horse to compete with ease and joy. This method also enables someone else to ride our horses and take them on to a level fitting that particular rider's needs and skills. "Anything forced and misunderstood can never be beautiful." Greek soldier Xenophon 350 BCSTEVE & DEB CHRISTY
TRIANGLE CROSS QUARTER HORSESTwo are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. Ecclesiastes 4:9 (NIV)
Our horses run in pastures with plentiful native grasses and learn at an early age to cross creeks, steep banks and learning to get their feet under them - making for a sure footed horse with tough legs and healthy feet. They are wormed, vaccinated and have their feet trimmed on a regular basis. We believe in letting the horse grow naturally and just be a horse. This natural growth avoids many of the vices horses in other situations acquire, such as cribbing, weaving, etc. Our horses are happy horses with pleasant dispositions. "I am appalled at how fast some people can ruin a good horse" - Margaret Hawkins, Arthur, NE.
Both Steve and Deb are members of the American Quarter Horse Assn.
Deb is also cardholder with the Womens Professional Rodeo Assn. (WPRA) competing in the Prairie Circuit, she also competes in the Nebraska State Rodeo Assn, the Mid-States Rodeo Assn and the Kansas Professional Rodeo Assn (KPRA), and has served as a barrel racing director.
Deb has been involved with horses all her life and learned to ride by "walking out" her dad's (Bud Forell) doggin'
horse as soon as she could sit in the saddle. Her parents were on the rodeo trail the summer she was born and her first bed was the manger of a two-horse trailer! "The majority of my riding when I was a kid was bareback with a piece of twine looped around the nose - it taught me to stay very balanced and gave me very light hands!"
"Somewhere behind the barrel racer you've become...
is the little girl who fell in love with the sport, and never looked back...
ride for her."She grew up competing in rodeos, horse shows and O-Mok-See (pattern horse racing). By the time she was an adult, she had won numerous state and national barrel racing awards. Her most recent accomplishments are winning the Nebraska State Rodeo Association and Mid-States Rodeo Association barrel racing championships two years in a row and finishing in the top 15 of the WPRA Prairie Circuit with just 14 rodeos.
Deb enjoys training futurity horses that go on to successful rodeo & barrel racing careers. "My futurity colts get hauled on the rodeo trail, making it easy for them to go back to the rodeo trail after their futurity year. Barrel racing is my passion, no question, but training is very rewarding and full of joy. When I see glimpses of greatness in a colt, it is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time - I feel like a glassblower - working with such fragileness."
Steve enjoys working with the colts and initial handling.
He also assists in the production of barrel races and rodeos, including the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn (PRCA) Pro Rodeo Tour Finales and the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo held each December in Las Vegas. On the local level, Steve and Deb help produce various barrel races. "It is important for us to give back to the world of barrel racing for all the great things it has given us!" Deb also enjoys instructing and assisting with Rodeo Bible Camps.
Artyce Forell circa 1954 - a legacy of cowgirls
"Cowgirl is an attitude, really. A pioneer spirit, a special American brand of courage. The cowgirl faces life head on, lives by her own lights, and makes no excuses. Cowgirls take stands. They speak up. They defend the things they hold dear. A cowgirl might be a rancher, or a barrel racer, or a bull rider, or an actress. But she's just as likely to be a checker at the local Winn Dixie, a full-time mother, a banker, an attorney, or an astronaut."
- Dale Evans Rogers, Los Angeles, 1992
“Horses know nothing of money status, beauty or accomplishment…Horses see only our hearts, and they accept or reject us based on what they find within…In short, horses do naturally what humans can pass a lifetime without ever mastering.” --Author Mary Miidkiff, quoted in the Denver Post
Bud Forell, 26th US Army Infantry Regiment 'Blue Spaders', 1st Infantry Division 1952-1954
Oren Christy T5-Corporal US Army
Triangle Cross Ranch supports our troops!
"We all share the love of peace, but our sons & daughters must learn two lessons men everywhere and in every time have had to learn; that the price of freedom is dear but not nearly so costly as the loss of freedom--and that the advance & continuation of civilization depend on those values for which men have always been willing to die." --Ronald Reagan
In God We Trust
