It's easy to picture the little girl growing up in Colorado, dreaming of being a professional barrel racer at the biggest rodeos in the state: Denver, Colorado Springs, Greeley. Tana Poppino was that little girl and can now claim not only that she has been there, but that she has won all three.

"Winning these rodeos would certainly have been on a list of things I would love to do," Poppino says. "And to have my horse going strong . . . I just praise God that it's all worked out. It means something to me. Maybe it wouldn't to someone else, but growing up here in Colorado, it really means something to have won them all."

Now living in Big Cabin, Okla., Poppino was busy over Cowboy Christmas, like most of the WPRA barrel racers. She hit rodeos in Cody (Wyo.), Livingston (Mont.), Greeley, Crawford (Neb.), and Oakley (Utah). She collected $8,627 in Greeley and added $1,678 at Cody and $372 at Oakley for a total haul of $10,677 for her 2010 Cowboy Christmas.

"I'm real glad we don't have to be anywhere today," she laughed. Poppino is taking a break in the action, staying in Oakley before traveling to Vernal, Utah later this week.

Poppino rode her tough gelding, Perryman Star, better known as Amigo, to the Greeley Championship along with her other Fourth of July wins. Amigo is 15-years old this year and running as good as ever.

"I'm so proud of him," Poppino says. "It takes a really tough horse to make a rodeo horse, and you'll see horses out here on the road win a bunch and do great for a year or so, and then they are done. I have been hauling Amigo since 2003, with the exception of the one year when he was out after having surgery. But here he is, 15-years old, and he still tries his guts out.

"Honestly, he is winning more at 15 than he did even three or four years ago."