At this point, the entire situation is starting to feel a bit surreal, even to the person in the midst of experiencing it.
Barrel racer Makenna Shook came into 2025 excited to compete as a rookie in Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. The Needville, Texas native had a primary horse she was ready to ride and an optimistic outlook on her first season as a professional.
Almost instantly, those plans were dashed as her horse sustained an injury in February that required surgery and months of recovery.
Shook just assumed her rookie campaign would be a wash under the circumstances, even after picking up a five-year old futurity horse named XV Mario from Samantha Mauney, wife of legendary PRCA bull rider JB Mauney, back in late March.
Instead, that purchase changed everything.
Over the weekend, Shook and Mario won the Central Wyoming Fair & Rodeo in Casper, along with securing a solid check for a 10th-place showing at the Sheridan WYO Rodeo. All told, the two events earned the pair $13,834. In fact, Shook’s money earning run in Sheridan and the clinching short go in Casper both occurred just a few hours apart on Saturday.
It’s impressive. It’s also somewhat unlikely given where this duo started just a few weeks back.
“Casper was maybe his 12th rodeo,” Shook said with a laugh, noting that their first run as a team took place in Union, Ore., back in early June. “Literally when I bought him, we couldn’t get him to load into the trailer. I had a side load and Samantha didn’t have a side load. I was at JB‘s ranch for like three hours trying to load them into a trailer.”
Mario is the grandsire of Pistoletta, the horse Samantha used to reach the 2014 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Shook bought the animal aware of two things – he was fast and he was going to be a project.
But with her plans already altered, Shook figured it was an opportunity to season a new horse for the future. Quade Hiatt, her boyfriend and a PRCA tie-down roper himself, encouraged her to bring Mario along to experience life on the rodeo circuit.
“The very first race that we took him to, it was like maybe two weeks after I bought him, we won. I was like, well this is going to be a faster pace than we thought it was,” Shook said. “He literally hadn’t been entered anywhere until I bought him. We went to a few futurities and stuff like that and he did really well at them.”
The first few weeks on the road didn’t net much in terms of WPRA earnings, but it did allow the two to develop their partnership. Everything changed in California when Shook and Mario won the Old Santa Ynez Days Rodeo. The following week, they took third in the average at the World’s Oldest Rodeo in Prescott, Ariz. After a few missed opportunities during the Fourth of July, the pair hit it big in Wyoming.
The current WPRA standings don’t reflect Shook’s earnings from this past weekend, but her place in the rankings will certainly change when they are updated. As of July 8, she had amassed just shy of $17,000 for the season, putting her 75th in the overall rankings, but fourth in the Resistol Rookie race.
In a very short period of time, she’s gone from nonfactor to Rookie of the Year contender. All because of an animal with hardly any rodeo experience.
“There’s no horse that I’ve ever been on that could just adapt this fast. The first day I brought him home he was scared of a bird. I actually have a video from the first day I was out here and the flag flew, and he literally almost dumped me,” Shook said. “I had some other horses out here, and I was just going to kind of take him around and season him. And I honestly haven’t ridden the other horses very much because he’s proven over and over again that he wants to do it.”
Shook’s original horse is expected to be recovered from surgery in October, giving her a trailer of equine partners at her disposal.
She’s already been approached several times about the prospect of putting Mario up for sale. The offers are appreciated. They’re also falling on deaf ears.
“There’s a lot of things I would sell – but he ain’t one of them,” Shook said. “There’s no way. He’s not for sale. He can’t be bought.”
The only focus for Shook is to keep riding. It’s a tandem no one saw coming, not even the person who put it together.
And until the season wraps up in September, the only option is to see how far their journey together can go.
“I don’t know how it’s been working the way it has, but he really loves it out here,” Shook said. “We’re just going to keep going until he tells me he’s tired of it.”
Photo courtesy of Andrea Kaus/Kaus Photos