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Legends 4: Outstanding Quarter Horse Stallions and Mares
Book by Boardman, Mike
216 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 3, 2025
This was my favorite book in the first five volumes of the Legends series, despite it being thinner than most of the other volumes. This time, quality ruled over quantity, and only 17 horses are profiled. Ten freelance writers in the show and race horse industries were given at least one horse each to research. The variety of writing styles helped make for a livlier read.
Everyone at Western Horseman Publications had a hard on for Dash For Cash -- he's given the honor of not only having a color photo on the back cover, but is one of the horses featured in the Orren Mixer painting on the cover. To the best of my knowledge, he's the only horse given this honor.
The first two volumes seemed to be written on the assumption that there would be only two volumes. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why the horses were chosen. They certainly weren't chosen in any kind of chronological order. This time around, the majority of the horses were foaled from 1940 - 1969 (Zantanon, sire of King-234, being a major exception.) Sometimes, a mare and her mate or a mare and her son had one chapter right after another, which helped make for easier comprehension.
I was really surprised that Impressive was included. Not that he wasn't interesting to read about, but it's usually a given in books like these that nothing bad is ever written about the horse industry. After all, the writers don't want to risk getting blacklisted by the very industry they've specialized in. Impressive shows everything wrong about the show horse and stock horse breeding industries.
Impressive was foaled in 1969. Long before Impressive died in 1995, it was already known that his foals carried the gene for HYPP. (Look it up -- the horse version, not the human version.) HYPP can kill a horse, and attacks are unquestionably painful. Not all of his foals had HYPP, but the sudden explosion of HYPP in show-winning stock horse breeds were all descendants of Impressive. He's not only a major influence with Quarter Horses, but also Paints and Appaloosas. He had an estimated 400,000 descendants, living and dead, (and I'm using a lowball figure.) Most of those descendants were allowed to be registered.
That Impressive carried a deadly, crippling genetic disease is no surprise. He was heavily inbred to one horse -- Three Bars, a Thoroughbred. By the time Impressive was three years old, he'd already become so unsound that he could no longer be ridden.
But he could show in halter classes. These are strictly beauty classes, like dog shows. Despite whatever the rules are in both dog and horse shows, judges are highly subjective. They often decide who wins based on how much money they'll make, since they are often breeders themselves. ("I just bred my mare to Impressive, so I'll make sure he wins and sell the foal for a mint.")
The author of Impressive's chapter noted that there were breeders who purposefully bred for HYPP because the resulting foals were muscular -- and therefore, more likely to win halter classes. I was really surprised that anyone on Western Horseman Publications' payroll would admit that.
Then, contrast breeding of Impressive to a stallion like Zippo Pine Bar, also foaled in 1969. Three Bars appears in his pedigree -- but only once. He was a stallion that wasn't inbred or linebred. Two completely unrelated horses were bred. Whodathunk? Zippo Pine Bar could be ridden well into old age. He made his mark in Western Pleasure.
Everyone at Western Horseman Publications had a hard on for Dash For Cash -- he's given the honor of not only having a color photo on the back cover, but is one of the horses featured in the Orren Mixer painting on the cover. To the best of my knowledge, he's the only horse given this honor.
The first two volumes seemed to be written on the assumption that there would be only two volumes. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why the horses were chosen. They certainly weren't chosen in any kind of chronological order. This time around, the majority of the horses were foaled from 1940 - 1969 (Zantanon, sire of King-234, being a major exception.) Sometimes, a mare and her mate or a mare and her son had one chapter right after another, which helped make for easier comprehension.
I was really surprised that Impressive was included. Not that he wasn't interesting to read about, but it's usually a given in books like these that nothing bad is ever written about the horse industry. After all, the writers don't want to risk getting blacklisted by the very industry they've specialized in. Impressive shows everything wrong about the show horse and stock horse breeding industries.
Impressive was foaled in 1969. Long before Impressive died in 1995, it was already known that his foals carried the gene for HYPP. (Look it up -- the horse version, not the human version.) HYPP can kill a horse, and attacks are unquestionably painful. Not all of his foals had HYPP, but the sudden explosion of HYPP in show-winning stock horse breeds were all descendants of Impressive. He's not only a major influence with Quarter Horses, but also Paints and Appaloosas. He had an estimated 400,000 descendants, living and dead, (and I'm using a lowball figure.) Most of those descendants were allowed to be registered.
That Impressive carried a deadly, crippling genetic disease is no surprise. He was heavily inbred to one horse -- Three Bars, a Thoroughbred. By the time Impressive was three years old, he'd already become so unsound that he could no longer be ridden.
But he could show in halter classes. These are strictly beauty classes, like dog shows. Despite whatever the rules are in both dog and horse shows, judges are highly subjective. They often decide who wins based on how much money they'll make, since they are often breeders themselves. ("I just bred my mare to Impressive, so I'll make sure he wins and sell the foal for a mint.")
The author of Impressive's chapter noted that there were breeders who purposefully bred for HYPP because the resulting foals were muscular -- and therefore, more likely to win halter classes. I was really surprised that anyone on Western Horseman Publications' payroll would admit that.
Then, contrast breeding of Impressive to a stallion like Zippo Pine Bar, also foaled in 1969. Three Bars appears in his pedigree -- but only once. He was a stallion that wasn't inbred or linebred. Two completely unrelated horses were bred. Whodathunk? Zippo Pine Bar could be ridden well into old age. He made his mark in Western Pleasure.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews