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Legends 2: Outstanding Quarter House Stallions And Mares
Features articles about 23 influential Quarter Horse stallions and mares who gained fame in the early days of the AQHA.
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2002
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May 3, 2018
The second installment of the Quarter Horse Legends series is not as long as the first but longer than the subsequent volumes. Still, page length notwithstanding, this does get tedious at times. Mostly the chapters on specific horses focus on their major wins, the wins of their offspring and not much else. This is particularly frustrating for Midnight, Jr -- a chapter much shorter than for his sire, Midnight.
Anyway, this edition has more than one writer, which helps keeps the prose from plodding too much. There are some funny bits and some very sad bits -- as is usual when dealing with horses. I was also surprised to see how many Thoroughbreds were registered as Quarter Horses. However, these Thoroughbreds have the conformation of an ideal Quarter Horse and so the addition of Thoroughbred blood isn't too outlandish. Personally, I think many other breeds and cross-breds should be allowed in the Jockey Club (Thoroughbred) stud book, but that's just me.
Years ago I read Fred Grove's The Running Horses where a gentle bay Quarter Horse stallion is killed by a massive injection of barbiturates. At the time, I thought this was an improbable way for a horse to die but sadly Fred Grove's inspiration for that story is here in the tragic murder of the bay Quarter Horse Stallion Jet Deck. This photo was taken a few days before Jet Deck was killed (a black and white version can be found in this book):
This volume focuses more on racing and performing horses rather than just halter champions. (You know -- those horses that just have to stand there and look pretty.) This makes for far more lively photographs than just monotonous still profiles of horses or views of their supremely muscular rears (which seemed to be the norm for showing off a stallion in an advertisement and many QH studs are still posed like this today.)
There are some especially nice touches, such as mentioning which horses are in the previous volume and a list of corrections for the first volume in the introduction. There are also many, MANY photos. However, there were some embarrassingly bad typos and lots of white space. Only buy if you are nuts about horses and already are familiar with Quarter Horse jargon.
Anyway, this edition has more than one writer, which helps keeps the prose from plodding too much. There are some funny bits and some very sad bits -- as is usual when dealing with horses. I was also surprised to see how many Thoroughbreds were registered as Quarter Horses. However, these Thoroughbreds have the conformation of an ideal Quarter Horse and so the addition of Thoroughbred blood isn't too outlandish. Personally, I think many other breeds and cross-breds should be allowed in the Jockey Club (Thoroughbred) stud book, but that's just me.
Years ago I read Fred Grove's The Running Horses where a gentle bay Quarter Horse stallion is killed by a massive injection of barbiturates. At the time, I thought this was an improbable way for a horse to die but sadly Fred Grove's inspiration for that story is here in the tragic murder of the bay Quarter Horse Stallion Jet Deck. This photo was taken a few days before Jet Deck was killed (a black and white version can be found in this book):
This volume focuses more on racing and performing horses rather than just halter champions. (You know -- those horses that just have to stand there and look pretty.) This makes for far more lively photographs than just monotonous still profiles of horses or views of their supremely muscular rears (which seemed to be the norm for showing off a stallion in an advertisement and many QH studs are still posed like this today.)
There are some especially nice touches, such as mentioning which horses are in the previous volume and a list of corrections for the first volume in the introduction. There are also many, MANY photos. However, there were some embarrassingly bad typos and lots of white space. Only buy if you are nuts about horses and already are familiar with Quarter Horse jargon.
Displaying 1 of 1 review