Playing With A Stacked Deck

There is absolutely no doubt that anyone who breeds, raises or buys a horse with a certain performance event in mind is going to want to make sure that the pedigree of that individual is as stacked as possible with proven or known producers of successful athletes in that event.

That is pretty much the reason breed organizations are started. People want to know where their horses come from and be able to track who is good at what.

I never realized that there is still debate amongst some people as to how and why the AQHA came to be. What I have read, heard and learned is that the QH came to be, through his skills as a sprinting race horse. As this type of horse spread from the colonies into the developing west, particularly Texas, his blood was used to upgrade the cowponies of those areas and ta-da, the theory that the QH was developed as a cowpony was born. Darn Texans...trying to take credit for everything(I kid!!).

In some ways historical debates are supremely interesting to me and in other's completely irrelevant. Take for instance, the debate over whether early 1900's horses were ugly, hammer-headed or as long as a freight-train...who cares? They were the horse of their times. It is completely irrelevant by today's standards whether we think they are pretty or not. Now, a debate as to whether some of those horses could compete with modern day horses? Well, wouldn't you all just love to see Peter McCue matched with Judge Cash?

Above and below are pictures of Peter McCue(1895-1923), a LEGENDARY race horse, who successfully passed on his record-breaking speed to his offspring. He reportedly ran a quarter mile in 21 seconds flat...a feat that could not be duplicated by any other race horse for decades!!

And this is Judge Cash...

He is a 1987 stallion with a Speed Index of 110 and is a Superior and ROM race horse!! He is another stallion that is not only fast, but reproduces that speed in his get...with 108 ROM-race, 7 Superior-race, 17 Stakes Winners, 1 World Champion, multiple barrel futurity and 1D winners and NFR qualifying offspring.

Nearly one hundred years separate these two horses and yet, they are very similar. Not only were they phenomenal athletes themselves, they possess a quality that breeders drool over...the prepotency to pass that speed on to their get. Prepotency is the key as to whether a horse becomes famous or legendary in HIS lifetime...or whether it could possibly be decades before their worth is realized.

Take for instance this horse...

Doc Bar...it took THREE generations for the one single thing that Doc Bar was bred for to surface and that came through a select few. The majority of his get and grandget would not see additional infusions of running blood for another couple of generations. You might say that Doc Bar created his own niche'...or rather the people who believed in him, found and capitalized on HIS prepotent trait...the ability of his get to work cattle. There was a time, early in Doc Bar's stud career that his get and grandget ruled the arena. Barrel racers and ropers alike rode a Doc Bar if they could. But arenas got bigger and scores got longer and the smaller, sprinty Doc Bars started to get outrun. The few that went to the tracks were not successful or marginally so. So for a very long time the Doc Bars were regulated to an event where they excelled. In spite of that, there were breeders who capitalized on not only Doc Bar's prepotent ability to put "cow" in his get and grandget, but the fact that he was after all, a horse bred to run. So they continued to add more run to the bloodline and slowly but surely, they stacked the deck enough that the Doc Bar bloodline is again synonymous with top arena horses.

These days we mostly see successful horses with a "stacked deck" done so by breeding one successful horse to another successful horse, of unrelated bloodlines...or not very closely related bloodlines. For most the thought of in-breeding or closely line-breeding our horses doesn't sit well. We have seen in recent decades how continuing to breed closely relate horses can in fact, hurt the overall image of that bloodline. Doc Bar is again another good example. For a while there, it seemed all they did was breed Doc Bar's to more Doc Bar's. The horses got cowier, but they got smaller and smaller and lighter boned and hotter. There was more of Doc Bar than just the cowiness surfacing. What they forgot to do, was something the "old" breeders did consistently...find an outcross. Compared to other events, the cutting horse has a relatively small gene pool, so it is a struggle for them. I have seen some mighty fine line-bred Doc Bar horses and although they are small, they have plenty of bone and mild dispositions. When I see these types of horses, I always look at the "tail-line"...the one or two lines that are not Doc Bar. Often you will find that these lines are what mellows the concentration just enough to make it work.

Now speed horses, that's another matter. Speed is as speed does. Breed a fast horse to a fast horse and all you can do is hope for another fast horse. Speed can come from anywhere, but when speed horse breeders find it, 1st they pray that is is a prepotent trait(in stallions or mares) or if it's not, they will just keep finding more speed to add to the mix until there is little doubt that the horse will run. And quite frankly, speed horse breeders don't care where the speed comes from. Outcrossing to TB's is quite common and most breeders find it as desirable today as they did "back in the day". The difference is that today, there is a multitude of fast horses available and a hundred years ago...it was a little more difficult to have access to noted running horses. Soooo...intensive in-breeding was common. I doubt in this day and age, you will see anyone breeding one of Judge Cash's own daughters back to him, maybe somewhere along the line you will find a few people who might breed a 1/2 brother to a 1/2 sister and surely there are people who have or will breed a Judge Cash bred horse to another Judge Cash bred horse. But back in Peter McCue's day, the characteristics we take for granted were not as "fixed" as we are accustomed to, so they resorted to breeding Peter McCue to his own daughters or 1/2 brothers and sisters to concentrate Peter McCue's ability. At that time their available gene pool of successful horses was pretty limited and the goal was to "fix" certain characteristics so that when they were outcrossed those desirable characteristics weren't diluted.

Ultimately, each generation has to prove itself, but as they do, they provide the basis for what we will eventually seek out and combine in an effort to stack the deck for the next generation. But personally, I think if Peter McCue was around today, he would still be a sought after breeding stallion...and I think the barrel horse industry would have a new golden boy.