Nothing To Lose, but a doggedly aggressive second cow.

“It really tried me,” said Tate Bennett of the heifer that tested his colt Nothing To Lose in yesterday’s second set.

“I’m still a little green to that here and I wasn’t sure what I needed to do, maybe try to quit that cow. I’m glad we didn’t because it held to the buzzer, but it sure was nerve-wracking.

The gutsy run put Nothing To Lose out in front of Open first round contenders with 221 points.

Cats Me If Ya Can, shown by her breeder, Tom Shelly, and Manytimes, with Phil Rapp, each earned 219 points to tie Tom Dvorak and Pippis Longstocking with the second-highest score, while Looks Halreycious and Morgan Cromer hold third with 218.5 points.

“It’s taken a lot of hard work, but he’s always had the ability,” said Bennett of the High Brow Cat son that he purchased as a yearling  for $32,000, at the NCHA Futurity Sales.

“It took a while to get him to flow like I wanted him to and get settled into the ground. The challenge was to get him to understand that it has to be my way.

“But he has a presence about him and even when I struggled with him, whenever someone else is watching, they always tell me how good he looks.”

Nothing To Lose is the first performer out of Spoonful Of Rosie, LTE $23,620, by Hes A Peptospoonful.

Manytimes

“The good ones are all work,” said Phil Rapp, after a 219-point ride aboard Manytimes, bred and owned by Louis and Corliss Baldwin, Fort Worth, Tex. “I haven’t trained one that was easy, yet.”

If anyone should know it would be  Rapp, who is the sport’s #1 all-division rider with over $7 million in earnings, and who trained and showed top NCHA money earner Dont Look Twice, LTE 710,965, also owned by the Baldwins.

“There’s one for you — she’s a good ‘un,” Rapp told Louis Baldwin, when he saw two-day-old Manytimes for the first time, at the Baldwin’s Waco Bend Ranch in Graham, Tex.

“You could just tell,” said Rapp. “She had a presence about her, with her ears pointed together.

“She came by her name honestly, but this fall she has been a very good horse and we are really pleased with her.”

Sired by One Time Pepto, Manytimes is the first performer out of the High Brow Cat daughter Cats Twisted Whisker, LTE $112,934, who Rapp showed to win the 2007 Breeders Invitational Futurity.

Cats Twisted Whisker is out of Spins Gay Lena by Australian sire Docs Spinifex.

Cats Me If Ya Can

Paul Skinner, Seattle, Wash., owns Cats Me If Ya Can, but Tom Shelly raised the Cats Merada daughter and showed her to earn 219 points yesterday in the first go-round.

“She’s a sweetheart,” said Shelly of Cats Me If Ya Can. “She’s strong and smart about a cow, and she’s pretty easy.”

Shelly showed Fannys Oskar, Cats Me If Ya Can’s dam’s sire, as a finalist in the 1983 NCHA Derby.

Looks Halreycious

Looks Halreycious and Morgan Cromer  scored 218.5 points for owners Larry and Liz Stacy, Ardmore, Okla., but Phil Hanson trained the Halreycious son and asked Cromer to catch ride for him in the Futurity.

“I rode him in the pre-work at Ardmore and kind of had an idea of what I had to do with him,” said Cromer. “Phil is an awesome trainer, so it makes it easy for me.

“I don’t know the horse’s little quirks. I am sure they are there, but for me, every time I’ve been on him he’s been a gentleman, so I don’t worry about him much and just send him where I need him to go.”

Lady Writer scripts another top score for Bushaw

Chad Bushaw, Weatherford, Tex., scored 218 points Monday on Lady Writer, a One Time Pepto daughter that he raised and trained out of his 2008 NCHA Non-Pro Super Stakes champion Cats Ruby.

“It’s a big relief to get through the first go,” said Bushaw, who won the 2001 NCHA Non-Pro Futurity on Jerryoes.

On Sunday, Bushaw watched as catch-rider Tom Dvorak scored 219 points on Pippis Longstocking, a mare that Bushaw purchased as a yearling for $6,500, at the NCHA Futurity Sale.

“I showed a half-sister to (Pippis Longstocking), Peps Calm Down, by Peppys Boy 895, that was a really talented mare,” said Bushaw. “Over the years, when you ride a good one, you try to repeat it, when you find one that’s bred like that. And she’s by Dual Smart Rey, one of my favorite horses ever, when Phil (Rapp) showed him.

“I like buying those kind. It’s fun when it works, whether breeding, training or showing.”