Michelle Alley and Lipstick N Stilletos have entered NFR qualifying conversation at the halfway point in the ProRodeo season, plus crossed a major lifetime earnings mark off the list for the 6-year-old powerhouse mare.
After leaving RodeoHouston sitting at $488,838 in QData recorded career earnings, Stiletto pushed past the $500,000 mark over the next few weeks, stacking checks across the winter run and turning it into a surge in the WPRA World Standings.
Alley and the mare, owned by Heather Moeller, advanced through nearly every major winter stop, working through qualifiers and rounds to land in semifinals, wild cards or better, and making multiple finals along the way. It came together in San Angelo, where Alley won the Stock Show & Rodeo and more than $23,000, then followed it up less than 24 hours later with a win at the Corpus Christi qualifier in Hamilton.
It’s the kind of stretch that changes the outlook of a season as athletes set to head West for the peak of ProRodeo season.
Saucy 2.0
Stiletto is out of Seis Caress, “Saucy,” a mare that won a pile of her own inside the rodeo arena and gave her an already impressive field of athletes.
“When I’m on Stiletto, I feel like I’m on Saucy,” Alley said. “That transition was so easy for me, and I felt confident running her at the rodeos early on because of that. Personality-wise, they’re a lot alike. They love their job. They crave it. They’re so calm before we run, then once the adrenaline hits, they go to work.”
That balance shows up as much outside the arena as it does in the pattern.
“She’ll just stand there in the holding pen half asleep,” Alley said. “It doesn’t matter to her, the setup or the crowds. She just handles it and goes and does her job.”
Inside the run, Stiletto is a different kind of athlete.
“She doesn’t cheat. She doesn’t drop a shoulder,” Alley said. “She can just be going full speed and turn back. It’s almost like she’s too athletic.”
That athleticism is what makes her effective, even if it doesn’t always look textbook.
“I think you have to be so athletic to stay in the middle with her and get her around a barrel,” Alley said. “It takes a special owner, rider and a special bond to get one like her to the finish line. She’s not a horse you just sit on, she demands that you show up every run.”
It’s not something Alley tries to manufacture across her program.
“My other horses are easy. People ride behind me on them all the time,” she said. “She’s just more aggressive. That’s just who she is.”
That approach traces back to the bloodlines she prefers, including the Dash Ta Fame influence she’s leaned on throughout her program and continues to build around, including stallions like RR Mistakelly, whose dam was the standout producer Mistys Dash Of Fame.
“There are a lot of great horses, but there’s only a small group that can go anywhere, handle anything and still win. (Stiletto) is one of those.”
Michelle Alley
At San Angelo, everything lined up.
“The ground was as good as I’ve ever seen it there,” Alley said. “It held up from the first runs all the way through the finals, and that made it really competitive. It made for a really exciting finals to watch, too.”
While other major “Texas Swing,” rodeos have converted to tournament-style competition, San Angelo’s stuck to their roots, holding a massive slack to qualify, running a full second round and advancing the top athletes to the final performance.
“I like that you earn it round by round and in the average,” she added. “It’s old-school, and it pays.”
For a horse like Stiletto, that kind of setup fits.
“It doesn’t matter if the ground’s deep or hard,” Alley said. “There’s a small fraction of horses that can excel in all conditions, and that’s what gives me confidence every time I nod.”
The run through the winter also came with careful management behind the scenes.
“She fell at Mercedes and overreached, ripped a shoe off and cut her heel bulb,” Alley said. “After Houston she just wasn’t quite herself, so I took her to the vet to get her checked out. She had some light stifle pain. We injected her, her next run was at San Angelo and she smoked that qualifying run. She felt really good, and when she feels good, she works great.”
Now, with a major win on the board and momentum behind her, Alley is heading into the summer run in a different position than she’s been in the last few years.
“This is definitely the best winter I’ve ever had,” she said. “What I’ve won now makes up for what I’ve lacked in previous years, and it makes going into the summer a lot easier.”