MARYSVILLE — Avid horse rider and photojournalist Melody De Lappe was handed an opportunity of a lifetime.

DeLappe grew up in horse country in Pasadena, Calif.

“I was one of those crazy little girls that always loved horses,” she said. “It’s been my lifelong passion.”

She begged her parents to want to own and ride horses. She eventually got her way, taking lessons when she was 10-years-old.

Now in her 50s, De Lappe won the Reining Green Rider Finals National Championship at the Morgan Grand Nationals horse show in Oklahoma City Oct. 18.

“I was shocked and astounded. It was sort of surreal,” she said. “I certainly ride to win but I never expect to win.”

De Lappe’s horse-riding career was not from one end to another. She stopped riding for 10 years when one her horses died in 1993.

“It was devastating,” she said. “I could do anything with her.”

But she got back into riding when her 9-year old daughter, Shelby, wanted to learn how to ride.

“She didn’t even know that I knew how to ride horses,” De Lappe said.

De Lappe writes for the Morgan Horse Magazine and was sent on a photo assignment in Idaho to write about a Working Morgan breed of horses on a ranch. She was introduced to a horse named LittleWood Inside Straight, nicknamed Dusty.

She was given “surprise-reining-lessons” on Dusty one day. “I never gave it another thought,” she said. But Dusty’s owners liked what they saw.

“And they asked me, ‘Melody, would you ride to help our horse qualify for nationals?'” De Lappe said. “And I said, ‘Sure I would.'”

De Lappe has has only starting reigned riding since June.

“I’ve only ridden Dusty seven times, and the seventh time was the time I won,” she said.

Reining is a type of western riding horse competition that has the rider control the horse through precise patterns of circles, spins and stops.

“I am a capable rider,” she said. “I can get on most horses and do okay.”

It would have normally cost $1,000 to attend such a championship, but since Dusty’s owners were already in the contest the fees were covered.

“I was very grateful for that,” she said.