WATFORD CITY - If blonde and petite Carrie DeFoe had looked a gift horse in the mouth and judged it by its worn down stubby teeth, her story might have a different ending.

She got on that horse and rode it anyway.

She rode that horse so much it became the prince in her Cinderella story, and Thursday the two of them left for the National High School Rodeo Finals, a very big deal in the competitive world of kids and horses.

Unlike some contestants, Carrie won't be rolling into Farmington, N.M., with all the advantages money can buy.

Not her. Not even close.

She'll roll in with a 21-year-old quarterhorse named Bear, a gelding with a temperamental attitude who's not even all that good-looking. People in Watford City chipped in to help with expenses.

Carrie got the horse for nothing from a family friend, an unlovable horse with a mean reputation, but one she saw as smart and clicked with almost right away.

She's no ranch girl. She keeps Bear on a small acreage near the Watford City limits, where he grazes alongside rusting oil field equipment.

She's living proof that a town kid with a will to ride can make it in the rodeo game. At Farmington, she'll ride against girls who have it all - generations of ranch background, $30,000 trained horses with trainers, deluxe climate controlled horse trailers, the works.

In the end, though, it's not money that separates a champion from the rest. It's the kid and the horse.

"Usually, it's the kid who rides the most," said Kelly Hanna of Watford City, president of the North Dakota High School Rodeo Association.

Hanna said there's no doubt Carrie will compete against moneyed rodeo princesses.

"It's going to be tough, but what it comes down to is three clean runs in a row without tipping any poles," Hanna said.

Over the years, Carrie and Bear have run so many pole-bending patterns that they probably run them in their dreams.

The pattern weaves them around six poles and back again. A tipped pole - they're delicately set and the flick of a tail can do it - adds five seconds to the time tally.

Carrie and Bear are good at it, good enough to win the reserve pole-bending champion at the state finals in Bowman in June and earn a berth at nationals starting Monday through July 27.

Watford City will be following Carrie's progress. Anyone can by going to http://www.nhsra.org.

Gene Veeder, long familiar with high school rodeo because of his kids, will be following Carrie. He's watched her and Bear get better and better, though in the beginning, he said he wouldn't have bet a plugged nickel she'd get where she is today.

"It's one of those things, the kid's personality and work ethic lining up with a horse that's smart, a horse that someone gave her," Veeder said. "She did it on her own."

She did it on her own, but with a lot of help from her mom and dad, Diane and LeRoy DeFoe.

Diane and LeRoy - she works at the hospital and he manages the county landfill - had three kids. Then, 13 years later, along came Carrie, a tag-along and a bundle of determination.

Diane DeFoe said it wasn't until the sixth grade that her daughter, who'd been riding on borrowed horses with her dad's instruction, announced she wanted to compete in high school rodeo.

Diane DeFore was new to the rodeo culture. To her, it looked like "people running around in boots and hats acting like Texans. I didn't really want to do this."

In fact, it'd be hard to find someone with a deeper fear of horses than Diane DeFoe, who'd gotten kicked in the chest and badly injured by a horse that wandered over to where she was minding her own business while out fishing one afternoon.

"Just looking at the back end of a horse scared me to death," she said.

To make matters worse, most of Carrie's high school riding took place while her father was either on the road or working in Alaska.

The first time Diane DeFoe had to unload Bear by herself she seriously considered crawling on top of the horse trailer to unlatch the door.

It got so Carrie and her mother could hitch the horse trailer to the camper and take off for rodeos together, although Diane DeFoe had to build up her courage to do it.

"I got behind the wheel and thought, 'What am I doing?' But I couldn't not go," she said.

She's impressed by Carrie's grit and determination, riding and riding that high-strung, hyper horse until they're smooth as silk pie, whittling precious bits of time off a pole-bending pattern - down to a consistent 20 seconds.

Carrie sees it differently.

"That was the plan all along," she said. "It's not so amazing to me."

This is the same girl who took emergency responder training so she can help with ambulance calls.

Along the way, some special people took interest in Carrie, including Kelly Jurgenson, a Killdeer Mountain rancher she describes as a "horse whisperer" type who helped her refine her horse-handling skills.

If Carrie and Bear didn't tip a pole, they placed either first or second at every high school rodeo event this year. She wanted to end her senior year by winning just one buckle. She won six.

She rides Bear every day, and says that between exercise and dietary supplements, he's in great shape, running better than ever.

People in Watford City are so used to the girl and her horse riding and riding that six-pole pattern over at the fairgrounds that they don't give them a second glance.

Carrie said she's banking on Bear's smooth footwork - in a pattern so often practiced that he barely moves outside of it - to get them into the national short-go. That's rodeo speak for the top and last 20 to compete for the title.

Hanna said it's not too complicated.

"All she's got to do is leave all those poles standing," he said. "She's got nothing to lose. She's got a horse she loves and all she's got to do is go there and ride him."

It'll be the run of Bear's life, carrying the girl who, against all odds, patiently and determinedly got him there.

Bear's an unlikely prince. But Carrie's always known it would be hard work and discipline - not privilege or advantage - that would serve as this cowgirl's glass boots.

"I just stuck to my guns," Carrie said. "Me and him, we're totally on the same page."

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 1-888-303-5511, or scoop@ndonline.com.)