Cover Story – Melissa Busch Cook and Flo Rida
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10 – May/June, 2022
By Brittany Bevis
After a 14-year absence, Melissa Busch Cook is back in the saddle again making her show pen debut with a talented, 3-year-old, AQHA gelding named Flo Rida. For her, the return to her favorite discipline of Western Pleasure “feels like I’m stepping back into something comfortable.”
From the late ‘90s to early 2000s, Melissa showed horses like Zippos Outlaw, Christenonimpulse, and Make Me Shine to multiple accolades. Melissa and Zippos Outlaw appeared numerous times on the APHA Top 20 list and were named World and Reserve World Champions in Youth Western Pleasure and Youth Horsemanship.
“He was a great horse who taught me a lot,” she says. “He was one of those horses that was great, but you had to be on your game to get your horse shown. He was a good one and taught me a lot about having to really consistently prepare.”
Once Melissa reached the Amateur ranks, her focus switched from all-around competition to Western Pleasure with her family’s stallion, Make Me Shine, and a mare named Christenonimpulse, both of which became World Champions.
