WHALEYVILLE — Meghan O’Malley has loved horses going back as long as she can remember.

“I was just really obsessed with My Little Pony,” O’Malley said.

Around age eight, living in Cleveland, Meghan’s mom “caved in” and bought her riding lessons.

“I think she thought it might just be something I do during the summer,” O’Malley said.

From that beginning, O’Malley, now from Suffolk for the past year and a half, and her phenomenal 9-year-old buckskin mare, officially named A Chanceof Blueskies but known affectionately as Lucy, are three-time world champions.

“When I was a little kid, I just would’ve done anything to have a horse. For it to become this, to have a horse who wins three world championships like this, it’s wonderful. It’s crazy,” O’Malley said.

The streak of Lucy’s world titles in the American Quarter Horse Association FedEx Open World Championships continued last week in Oklahoma City. Lucy, with O’Malley as the owner and Lainie Deboer of Hugo, Minn. as the exhibitor aboard Lucy, won the senior hunter hack championship. Lucy won the amateur hunter hack titles in the last two AQHA World Championships.

O’Malley compares the hunter hack event, and the horses who are elite in it, to Olympic-caliber figure skaters.

“It’s about a horse’s athleticism and form,” O’Malley said. “It’s solely about the horse. A rider can cost a horse points, but the judges are supposed to judge solely the horse.”

Leaping fences is one part of the competition, along with a round for displaying the horse walking and cantering around a ring. The horse’s skill and form going around the course is judged; even in the leaping part, speed is irrelevant.

“When the horse jumps, the knees should be up and its head should be down. Lucy is just the whole picture. She just flows into jumps,” O’Malley said.

The open division is made up mostly of pros. O’Malley and Lucy are still amateurs but wanted to step up in class. The past two years, O’Malley was the owner and rider as Lucy brought home bright gold trophies.

O’Malley bought Lucy, an Ohio-born mare, when she was nine months old. For the past two years, Lucy’s stayed with a trainer in Minnesota.

“It’s sort of like if you have a kid who’s really gifted, you want to do everything you can to give him the best opportunity to be great,” O’Malley said.

With moving to Suffolk recently, having a full-time job, plus having Lucy take on the open division this time around, O’Malley decided Lucy’s chances were better with her trainer as her exhibitor.

“We really wanted to get the open championship, so we decided to let her trainer show her because that was our best shot,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley began showing quarter horses at age 14, beginning with local shows in Ohio. Lucy is the first horse she owned and the first horse that progressed to national and international shows.

O’Malley bought Lucy as a competitive quarter horse.

“We knew from the way she had been bred, she came from a lot of similar horses who had done well,” she said, “but when you’re buying a horse that young, it’s a big risk.”

Lucy is smaller compared to most of her competition.

“I don’t feel that’s ever hurt her though,” O’Malley said.

Lucy’s even the wrong color, according to most elite owners in the sport.

“Yeah, she’s the wrong color. You wouldn’t think it’s a big deal, but with English class horses you usually don’t see her color, buckskin,” O’Malley said.

“Some owners wouldn’t have bought her just for that. I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, too bad she’s buckskin,’” she said.

Lucy made it to the AQHA World Championships for the first time in 2007. Along with the three AQHA world titles, O’Malley and Lucy have four world championships in the National Snaffle Bit Association. The team won four championships in the 2011 Virginia Classic.

The AQHA championships are the big titles, though.

O’Malley and Deboer were with Lucy in the morning before the competition in Oklahoma City.

“(Lucy’s) personality is a little different because she’s a mare. Lainie said to me, ‘Lucy told us this morning. She’s ready to win.’ So we knew,” O’Malley said.

Quite differently from when a thoroughbred is in its prime, Lucy is far from done at age nine. Preparation is already under way for the 2012 season and AQHA World Championships.

Through the science of embryo transfer, there will be two little Lucys soon, due in January.

The embryo transfer is done to keep Lucy healthy and so she won’t miss a season.

“Obviously they’re going to be worth quite a bit, because of Lucy, and the father isn’t too bad either,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley rides locally, with a “practice horse” she owns and stays at Bit By Bit Farm near Whaleyville.

Nothing compares to competing and winning on the biggest stage, but riding anywhere, for large stakes or no stakes, still fulfills the childhood goal.

“I started in small places like this, when you don’t have the best horses, but a lot of the time, when you don’t have the best horse, that’s what you learn the most from,” O’Malley said.

With Lucy, there’s obviously no problem competing in the pro ranks. Turning pro isn’t in O’Malley’s future, though.

“There something about putting a pay check with something you love that, for me anyway, doesn’t make it fun,” O’Malley said.