Nick Dowers and Cabanna Boy earn another NSHA Title

The sand in Las Vegas feels like home to Cabanna Boy, as the gelding and trainer Nick Dowers earn another NSHA title, this time the Open Derby.

Topping the 97-horse field at the National Stock Horse Association (NSHA) 2024 Open Derby, Nick Dowers and Cabanna Boy (WR This Cats Smart x Shining Madonna x Shining Spark), added another win to the gelding’s resume and earned $25,000. “Tres” is owned by Triple D Ranches, a partnership between Dowers and his father.

“He is fun and has always been a gamer,” said the National Reined Cow Horse Association (NRCHA) Million Dollar Rider from Dyer, Nevada. “This year, it feels like he is hitting his groove and we know each other really well. I know what it takes to warm him up and I know not to over-react to his playful personality.”

The duo rode into the cow work at the South Point Equestrian Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, with the high composite on two events, and rode out with a score of 665.5, a point-and-a-half higher composite than Reserve Champion HiCaliber Cat (High Brow Cat x SFR Magic Doll x Abrakadabracre), owned by Crosshair Ranch and shown by Clayton Edsall. In 2022, Cabanna Boy was the NSHA Open Futurity Champion.

“He’s been right in there this year at the derbies,” Dowers said. “I feel like I’ve been leading going into the fence work at the finals of so many events but haven’t had the cow to get it done. I did this show, and it was good.”

Dowers says the Derby-aged events are bringing the “best of the best.” Cabanna Boy won the NRCHA Western Derby Open Derby in 2023 and may get the rest of the year off before Dowers focuses on the gelding’s bridle years.

“There is more of an emphasis on bringing up a good Derby horse because there is more gold at the end of the rainbow of making a bridle horse, with the money in the bridle horse events these days,” he says. “Especially in the derbies, if you make a bobble, even small, you aren’t going to win an event. You have to be perfect all the way through, and that is what I feel like has been Cabanna Boy’s year. He’s been perfect but had a little bobble to in the final fence work [at other shows]. I was just glad we were bobble free, he was himself, we had cows we needed and it worked out.”