Amateur competitor Cheryl Mullikin took 25 years off from showing. But when she returned to the show pen in 2007 she did it with a vengence.

As a youngster growing up in Ohio, Mullikin showed 4-H and local Open Show Circuits. When she got married she sold her horse and 25 years went by before she found herself helping a friend’s daughter in 4-H. She knew she couldn’t be around the shows without diving in herself and she was right.

“The girl I was helping never really got started and I wanted to show,” she recalls. “During the process I met Wade Black and before long I had him searching for just the right horse for me to start riding again.”

Black took his time to make sure he found just the right partner for Mullikin in Heavenly Mac, a 2004 sorrel gelding by Macs Good N Plenty and out of Heavens Fantasy.

Since that time Mullikin has had the opportunity to own and show such outstanding competitors as Extremely Hot Chips and Historyrepeatsitself.

Teamed with Extremely Hot Chips, a 2006 stallion by Blazing Hot out of Miss Trophy Chip, Mullikin won the Limited Division of the 3-Year-Old Non-Pro Western Pleasure at the 2009 Quarter Horse Congress and classes at the Reichert Celebration, NSBA World Championship Show and Southern Belle Invitation. In addition they were Reserve Champions at the Tom Powers Futurity, that same year. Then in November Black and Extremely Hot Chips placed third in Junior Western Pleasure at the AQHA World Show.

“We purchased Historyrepeatsitself, 2009 black gelding by Repeated in Red and out of Kissed in the Dark, at the 2011 Congress just before he won two 2-Year-Old Western Pleasure classes with Brian Cox,” Mullikin explains. “Abe and I went on to win many circuit awards.

Justa Machine, a 2012 bay gelding by Machine Made out of Zip N Therapy, was added last year. Teamed with Black the youngster won the Limited Division of the 2-Year-Old Open Western Pleasure Stakes at the Congress.

“He has done very well so far and I’m very excited to show him this year,” Mullikin says.

Justa Machine will be shown at all the major shows and futurities this year with Black in Open and Mullikin in Non-Pro events.

Mullikin will also be showing Got My Swag On, a 2010 bay mare, sired by The Good Ranger, in Amateur Select and Maturity Non-Pro classes this year.

In January at the Fox Lea Farm Winter Circuit in Venice, Florida, Got My Swag On captured the High-Point Junior Western Horse award.

We had a very good start for the year,” Mullikin says.

When she is not at a horse show Mullikin is busy in her post as Chief Financial Officer at Carbide Probes, Inc., a Dayton, Ohio company she runs with her brother, Greg.

“My grandfather (my mother’s father) started it in the 1950s. My father ran the business after my grandfather retired and now my brother and I after our father retired,” she says. “We both have two children who work there which makes that the fourth generation in the business.”

Mullikin met her husband, Ron, who was the coach of her daughter’s volleyball team. After a year of dating they tied the knot in Las Vegas at an Elvis chapel. Their combined family now includes her two daughters, Christina, 30, and Jessica, 29; and his sons, Josh, 27, Max, 24, and Mick, 22.

Together they opened Bellbrook Canoe Rentals, which operates from April to October and, in the summer when she is not at shows, Mullikin helps out there as well.

As a couple they try to make time for “date nights” and love to vacation together.

“Our favorite vacation was five years ago we went on a trail ride out in Utah called ‘Red Rock Red,’”she says. “I highly recommend it. We met three other couples from Pennsylvania, Florida and Canada, we all became instant friends. So ever since, all six of us every year pick a place, meet there and trail ride for a week. We went last year and we are going back this year, The Hideout, in Wyoming is outstanding.”