"I had qualified to Houston so I went down there and entered some rodeos," Moody says. "I wasn't running Dolly but my main horse wasn't working good on the small patterns so I decided to try Dolly for my second run at Austin."

Dolly ran good enough on Moody's second run to qualify her back to the short go round.

It was a preview of many wins to come including two WNFR qualifications and a fantastic 2008 where Moody ended up the WPRA Reserve World Champion Barrel Racer, collecting nearly $220,000 in earnings along with the WNFR Average Championship.

In the years since that first trip around the pattern in Austin, she and the now nine year old Dolly have never had great luck at Austin, however, running into penalty issues. Things finally changed in 2009.

"We finally managed to get by three runs," Moody says. "I always thought that was a nice pen for her."

Though it may have come a few years later than Moody would have liked, she certainly was right. At the 2009 Rodeo Austin, she and Dolly made three consistently fast runs to take the average title.

Dolly set the bar high early on, running in the first two performances of the rodeo. Her 14.78 run in round one would only be moved once, six performances later by fellow WNFR qualifier Tammy Key-Fischer. Key Fischer posted a 14.64 for the round victory.

Moody picked up the pace in round two with a 14.67 second run. That time would eventually secure a third place check behind the fast time of the rodeo - a blazin' 14.51 run by Tiffany Fox in the fourth performance.

Moody entered the Saturday night short round in second position behind Fox. With just .08 seconds between the two, spectators were assured of quite a horse race to the championship.

"When she is working and the ground conditions don't change, Dolly is pretty consistent," Moody says. "Her third run was the wildest; she was getting a little naughty and firing harder than the other two runs."

Her short go time of 14.71 seconds was not her fastest of the week but was the fastest of the night. She collected the short round victory as well as the average title, widening the time gap in the three run total to two tenths of a second over Fox.

"It's been a weird year," Moody says of her 2009 campaign thus far. "It's been up and down. Dolly has run hard and worked good but hit barrels, and then the next run, felt the same and been one hole out of the money. She just started really feeling right before Houston."

Moody has battled anemia off and on with her great mare and says she will get flat. She says the only way she can tell when Dolly is starting to not feel well is when she is not being ornery at the trailer.

"Then I know something is up," she says.

Getting things lined out just in time for Rodeo Houston has proved very fortuitous for the pair, who have proven in the past that they can collect a ton of earnings in a short time. In 2008 they were the high money earners over the Fourth of July with $26K won.

After a third place finish in Houston worth over $11,000 and the big win in Austin worth $9264, Moody and Dolly are at it again. The two rodeo haul of over $20,000 puts them to second in the WPRA World standings with over $32,000 won.

Moody, who is sponsored by MVP, Dakota 2000, and TheBarrelRacingReport.com, plans to head home for a couple of weeks before going to California for the spring run of rodeos. There she and Dolly will no doubt continue to gather up the wins and make their way to the lights of Las Vegas for a third straight year.