Or to ride his sons and daughters?

Jack Brainard in 2012
with Shesaremindun, a
homebred 2006 daughter
of Reminic N Dunit
HOL LY CL ANAHAN
N
By Holly Clanahan
What would it have been like to
breed a mare to King P-234? Or
to ride his sons and daughters?
Longtime horseman Jack
Brainard dishes on this and
much more as he recounts
some of his personal history.
26 O C T O B E R
2 0 1 2 A M E R I C A’ S H O R S E
COURTESY JACK BR A I N A R D
Jack in 1954 on a son of Blue
Hancock by Joe Hancock. He says
"Old Joe" was a big-boned steer
roping and tie-down roping horse
who weighed 1,250 pounds, "a
great old horse."
ninety-one-year-old jack brainard,
a horseman with an impeccable memory
and the sensibilities of an archivist, picks
up a pristinely kept magazine from a
table in his living room.
“Here’s a Quarter Horse Journal, January ’57,” he says. “It’s fun to go through
here and look at those old horses,
because I knew about all of them.”
He’s not kidding. He remembers the
horses, the people … everything that was
associated with AQHA’s infancy. As Jack
prepares to accept an award from AQHA
for breeding horses for 50 years (actually
longer than that if you count some he
partnered on in the beginning), he sat
down with America’s Horse to reminisce
about his background, which put him
right at the center of the early action.
AQHA was formed in Fort Worth,
Texas, in 1940, when Jack would have
been 18. By 1945, the Iowa farm boy was
in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood, Texas,
just 30 miles from the Goodrich Ranch
in Lampasas. He’d been reading about
Quarter Horses in the Cattleman magazine, and he saw mentions of the good
ones in Lampasas.
He rode his motorcycle to the ranch,
where he met Glen Chism, a fine
horseman who began Jack’s education
on this new breed of horse.
“They were pioneer breeders,” Jack
says. “They had two or three mares that
were in the first 100 registered. They
had a stallion by the name of Starway,
who was by Oklahoma Star, and another horse that I think was one of the
greatest ones I’ve ever seen, a horse
called George Hancock. Mr. Goodrich
had bought him from the Four Sixes,
and he was by Joe Tom, who was a son
of Joe Hancock. He was a fabulous,
fabulous horse, and I got to ride him a
little bit.
“I was so intrigued with those horses
that every single weekend, I’d get a pass
from the Army, and I headed for the
Goodrich Ranch on my motorcycle. I
was there a lot, and then I had my saddle shipped down from home, and I was
a permanent party over there.”
He met Helen Michaelis, who was
then AQHA’s executive secretary,
famous for her commitment to the
fledgling Association and for her expertise on bloodlines. The Goodrich crew
also introduced him to Ott Adams, a
horse breeder since 1912 who had produced Joe Moore, Zantanon (the sire of
This document is courtesy of America's Horse Magazine and as such protected from copyright. WDAA has been given permission to reproduce this article for your reading pleasure only.
horse p eo ple ≤
King P-234) and many more.
With those sorts of contacts, “I knew the bloodlines, and I
knew the horses that were involved. I met many of the early
people who were in it, and that was definitely a plus from the
standpoint of my knowledge of the Quarter Horse,” Jack says.
Most of those people he was meeting were crazy about the
King horses, and as Jack got out of the Army and began
breeding and training horses, he agreed.
“We found out that the Kings were nice horses to ride,”
Jack says. “They had such good dispositions, everybody went
for a King.”
Jack tells of one daughter of King, Martha King, born in
1954: “I rode her as a 2-year-old, won her first reining in the
hackamore as a 2-year-old.” Their showing career ended when
the mare’s owner died suddenly and his wife asked Jack to sell
the horse. She went to B.F. Phillips Jr., who later became
famous as the breeder of Dash For Cash.
“She was an excellent mare,” Jack remembers. “And I’ve
ridden several other daughters of King. In fact, at the same
time I took that mare to B.F.’s, I had a mare called Sue Hunt,
who belonged to a customer of mine, and I took her down to
breed to King. She got a horse called Continental King. He
was a famous, famous horse, a great, great horse. I rode him
as a 2-year-old.”
Those King horses “were sensible, quiet horses. They were
much easier to train than the other kind of horses, and they
did have ability. They stopped nice, nearly all of them
HOL LY CL ANAHAN
changed leads. They were just a handy kind of horse.”
But after his exposure to George Hancock, Jack also had a
soft spot for horses who traced to Joe Hancock, a 1923 stallion.
“I rode quite a few of the Hancocks, probably as many as
anyone,” Jack says. “I rode a nice colt called Little Bay Joe. He
was by Little Black Joe, who was an own son of Joe Hancock.
I rode several colts by Little Joe The Wrangler, who was by
Joe Hancock, and I rode some Buck Hancocks. They were
nice horses.”
The Hancock horses didn’t get as much of the show-ring
exposure that the King horses did, but ranch cowboys and
rodeo hands loved them.
“The Hancocks were bigger horses, and they didn’t have
the refinement that the Kings did,” Jack says. “They were
big-footed, but they moved well. They could run and stop.”
“Later on,” Jack says, “I got into the Okie Leos. Of course
I was strong on King, and Okie Leo was out of a daughter of
King, and he was by Leo, and he was a fabulous horse. I rode
the Okie Leos for a long time. In fact, I had the last living
Okie Leo; he was a stud that I raised.
“I took a daughter of Poco Bueno down to be bred to Okie
Leo and got a horse called Diamond B Okie (born in 1976). I
gave him to Dick Robey (who had owned Okie Leo) as an old,
old horse. Those were great, great horses, and Bob Loomis
made his reputation on an Okie Leo.”
Today, Jack, who was an AQHA judge for 36 years, has
downsized his horse operation, although he still rides often
Jack checks out his 2012 foal by Flash Of Whiz, out of Remin Kinda Gal.
27
This document is courtesy of America's Horse Magazine and as such protected from copyright.AWDAA
permission
to reproduce
M E Rhas
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with those old,
great horses Jack
knew first hand:
King,
Poco
Bueno, Doc Bar
and more.
Jack’s a stickler
on conformation,
and he likes the
way this baby
looks.
“It’s really a
nice-bred colt,”
he says, and he’s
not for sale. “I’m
going to keep
him.”
Kathy and Jack Brainard, with his highly
trained western dressage horse, Calboy
King Fifty, who – you guessed it – traces to
King on both his top and bottom sides.
HOL LY CL ANAHAN
and is very active. (See the March-April 2011 America’s
Horse for more on his current passion of western dressage.)
Just one foal wanders the paddocks outside the
Whitesboro, Texas, home Jack shares with his wife,
Kathy. He’s sired by Clint Haverty’s stallion Flash Of
Whiz and is out of a mare whose pedigree is peppered
Check out the
January 2013
issue of The
American Quarter Horse Journal for more stories on AQHA’s
50-year breeders (www.aqha.com/journal). To learn more about
Jack, who maintains an active clinic schedule, go to www.jackbrainard.com, and keep an eye out for his upcoming book, “A
Horseman Remembers His First 90 Years.” Jack was one of the
founders of the National Reining Horse Association, Stock
Horse of Texas and many other ventures.
Remembering a
Turning Point
– and with
the fact that he hasn’t forgotten a thing – he has lots of
stories to tell.
This story, he says, isn’t known by many people, but it
was probably the single-most-important event that got
the American Quarter Horse going as a breed.
“In 1945, I was at the Goodrich Ranch, and I decided I
had to go to Fort Worth to see the rodeo,” Jack remembers. “They had the Quarter Horse show down over the
hill … down in those trees, they had set up a big tent.
Horses stood there in tie stalls, and it had rained, and they
showed those halter horses in the mud.
“They’d had a show there in ’41 and ’42, and King
Ranch won it, you know. (The grand champion stallion at
the 1941 Fort Worth Stock Show earned the privilege of
getting the first number in the new AQHA stud book,
and it was the King Ranch’s horse, Wimpy.) “But in ’45, there was an old boy from Wichita Falls
(Texas), Ramon Wood, and he brought a buckskin horse to
the Quarter Horse show, and he was the grand champion
stallion. A man from Wyoming, a wealthy man named
with the life jack brainard has lived
28 O C T O B E R
2 0 1 2 A M E R I C A’ S H O R S E
Morris Clark, decided he had to have that horse. He was
going to get into the Quarter Horse business in Wyoming,
and that was the place to do it.
“Everybody wanted to breed Quarter Horses, you want
to remember, at this time, but there wasn’t any breeding
stock.
“And Ramon Wood didn’t want to sell his grand champion horse, but finally he committed, and he sold the
horse for $25,000. That would be like selling one for
$250,000 now. And the headline in the Fort Worth paper
was this big story about this horse selling. And you know
what, that word got out so quickly.
“Everybody wanted (a Quarter Horse). Immediately
after that, you never saw such a demand for them in your
life. … There was nothing like that as a catalyst to start
up the Quarter Horse business as Ramon Wood getting
$25,000 for Buckskin Joe at Fort Worth.
“I’ve often wanted to go down to Fort Worth and dig
through the (newspaper) archives and get a print of that
story. Nobody remembers it … but these are things that
I’ve seen. I have seen the changes.”
This document is courtesy of America's Horse Magazine and as such protected from copyright. WDAA has been given permission to reproduce this article for your reading pleasure only.