Is this Legend or are certain TB lines known for being belligerent?

[Alagirl]

I have to go back and check the pedigrees of our old gals…I think most had Nearco in them, but with the exception of one they where all perfect ladies - as far as the mare thing goes

The Quirky one was by Krakatao (sp) who - I’ve been - made for difficult babies…

Then we had the foals by one stallion, two full brothers and a half sister (yeah, yeah, I know, but for ease of explenation…)

And all three where nuts - good jumpers but nuts! The oldest colt you couldn’t brush his legs! He’d spook from his on devious thoughts! The only horse who ever made me walk home - solo. And that wasn’t even far from the barn!

The filly would pick matchraces with deer when you encountered them in the woods! Bold! Her way of testing saftey of new objects was to take a bite out of it - if it didn’t move or bite back it was safe!

And Colt #2 (mine ) was a chauvinist pig! And no, even stronger equestriennes than me - and they are NOT hard to come by - had their trouble with him. And guy, no matter how weak, had an easy ride with him!

Gotta look up Gimont - the sire…

But sometimes I think it is just a bunch of BS, when somebody can’t or won’t deal with it, it has to be the Sire, no matter how far back. Or when they have enough get, there are bound to be some rough ones around, and the mare has a lot to say about the foals behaviour!

Edited to say: I stand corrected! Two of our mares did indeed go back to Nearco - Through Celadon-Kracatao…

But Gimont didn’t

[DMK]

CAH, tragically this one was smart. More like cunning really. The sort that could and would take every opportunity if you so much as dropped your guard for a second.

Although I do distinctly remember another nijinski son that was as dumb as a post. Of course he was one of those rare deviant horses that I truly believed liked pain. Every morning he would try to savage me and every morning he would get a beating. And I swear that was the part he liked the most.

Years later they bred said evil Stage Door Johnny mare to that very same Nijinski son. And she of course in true style, delivered a filly. I was long gone by that time, but still I heard tales.

[Pferdchen]

In my experience, there certainly are certain personality traits associated with certain bloodlines, BUT…how these traits manifest themselves depends on if they come down through the sire line or the dam line. It’s a proven fact that the mare has ALOT more to do with the ultimate temperament/personality of the foal than the daddy does…it’s been said that the mare contributes at least 60%, compared to the stallion’s 40%…but I’d go so far as to say the mare contributes up to 80%! After all, she’s not only contributing the genes, but she has the raising of the baby during its most impressionable phase! I’ve seen an experiment in which a cross was performed, where a really gnarly-tempered stallion was bred to a total sweetheart of a mare, and the resulting foal was a very nice-minded individual. A mirror-image cross was done that same year, with a mare that was the full sister of the gnarly above-mentioned stallion (and she was a b*tch) and she was bred to an extremely sweet natured stallion…and her foal was just like her: hot as a sheriff’s pistol, and would just as soon bite or kick you as look at you. (btw…interesting as the experiment was, personally I would have NEVER bred the icky-minded horses…don’t care how athletic or beautiful they may have been…but that’s just my personal opinion…I won’t get on my breeding pet peeve soapbox here! LOL)
By the by, I have a mare that I raised that is Exclusive Native on top and Khalborough was the dam sire…anyone feel like venturing a guess about her personality based on that? LOL

[Alagirl]

Originally posted by slow down:
Yes, he was Einar. I would go out to the tracks and watch him run about once a week. He usually ran last which it why my father gave him to me when he was eight. He was doing well in some very long races held either at Hawthorn or Sportsman. They just didn’t get them long enough for him to wear all the other horses out.

We had one like that, too, didn’t wake up till after a mile and a half.

Too bad there are really not many races that go that long - on the flat. Das Silberne Band von der Ruhr beat me to death with my own shoes, I am not sure what track it is run on, Duesseldorf or Dortmund, it is (or was, I’ve been gone a long time) 4000m on the flat!, that is almost three miles!

[cgn38]

I have a Gate Dancer grandson who is the smartest but most sensitive and most willful TB that I have ever re-trained. Don’t fight with this horse because that is just what he wants.

[btilton]

Has anyone else run into any Irish River’s off the track? I know he’s pricey so there probably aren’t many… but I had one, huge huge huge, not excessively tall, but just massive… and one of the kindest, most pleasant animals I’ve retrained. No spook in him, not real smart, but a nice big dumb friendly jock…

Not popular racing lines, but Close Watch’s I’ve found wonderful. My Mr. P was sweet and a good racehorse and great broodmare, but not very smart and flighty. My Roberto mare was the same, athletic, pretty, sweet but not very smart. I don’t alway need smart, as long as it doesn’t go with scared of their own shadow.

My favorite older one has to be Count Fleet, I’ve loved them all, again… my off spring of his, years ago, big dumb jocks, but they could jump, were sweet and tried really hard… and once they were trained, they were auto pilot…

Has anyone heard anything about either Unbridled’s Song or Unbridled? not likely many of those running around OTTB.
B

[CrzyCorgi]

I have heard that the Slew babies can be pretty bad.

Also I owned a Gato Del Sol baby who could be quite an SOB. An absolute SWEETIE on the ground, wouldn’t hurt a fly, but once you were on, OH BOY!! He was fine as long as things were on his terms, but once he decided that was it. That was it!!! Boy he was quite the ride sometimes LOL. Does anyone know anything about Gato Del Sol and his line?

~Darci~

[findeight]

I had a chestnut gelding that was a literal rescue-found starving in a field when his teenaged owner was caught selling drugs in high school, her folks threw the horse in the field with nothing…in winter…in the midwest.

His tatoo said he was an own grandson of Mr P on top and his dam was by Spectacular Bid and when he bloomed back to health he looked it.

What a jerk. I don’t mind the hot ones but this one had to be placed perfectly to each fence or you’d hear about it, even the Pro riders. Never knew when he might explode just walking around and you could do all the negotiating you wanted, he wasn’t going to co operate unless he felt like it.
Bundles in vet bills, saddle changes, therapeautic shoes et al.
He just was never going to soften up.

Current mare suprised me when I pulled the pedigree, alot of Bold Ruler but most on the female side. Tail female goes to Argentinian breds that raced at Santa Anita in the early 60s.
Stakes winning Grandsire was the son of a European import(Mahmoud) and her stakes placed sire actually was shipped BACK to France to sire sporthorses.

Had an old Appendix that was an own grandson of Nashua on top and Leo(AQHA)on the bottom-he was tatooed from starting on the QH tracks and was still a pistol and doing the 3’ Hunters at 22.

IMO it’s got alot to do with training BUT they have to be willing to accept that training. Sometimes they just don’t get that when they are bred to do or die at the track and I think you can say certain lines are worse, particularly in 2 or 3 generations or less. Farther back I don’t think it matters unless the other crosses are just as notorious.

I remember a stud at a neighboring farm way back…I think his name was Dr. Fagin? Fagen? Fagan? Named after a vet. Mauled a couple of grooms. Babies equally disagreeable from day one. But they won.
No idea how far down they got that.

[slow_down]

My first horse was a stallion out of a full sister to War Admiral. The sire was Norseman. I got him as an eight year old and started him as a riding horse. He was never studdish and I saw no reason to geld him. He was never bred but did fox hunt and do some shows. I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter horse. I would ride him bareback with a halter and rope on the trails. Even had an 11 year old girl showing him until we found out it was illegal for a junior to show a stallion. Had him until he died at 22. He never did change his personality from Mr. Sweet.

[DMK]

Originally posted by fish:
I think a lot of people forget, though, that part of being able to “do or die” at the track involves a steadiness and ability to focus on the job despite a helluva lot of heavy-duty distractions that are bound to make a lot of even the best bred ones crack. T.J. Kelly used to have his babies broken at a farm with fog-covered cattle lowing in a canal at the first turn, and a wrecking yard complete with cranes swinging around and dropping entire cars on the backside. He liked this farm precisely because of these spook factories, figuring it was the best way to prepare his babies so they wouldn’t have nervous breakdowns when they reached the track-- which, of course, a lot of them did anyway.

This is why buying OTTB’s for the shows has to be a pretty selective process-- and why the ones who come out of racing both mentally and physically sound are gems to be cherished (and reproduced if at all possible) indeed!

That being said: I can’t help but wonder whether the problems with that fancy horse may have come from the Mr. P rather than the Bid side: case in point: the groom at Claiborne told me that Conquistador Cielo was the stupidest horse he’d ever handled.

There are, however, a lot of Mr. P.'s doing well at the shows-- guess there are just too many factors to make establishing causality anything better than more or less educated guesswork.

Pretty sorry state: I’m guessing that I’m guessing

There are also a lot more Mr. Ps out there than Bids (a sad thing if you ask me ). So I figure no matter how Not Bright some Mr. Ps may be, if you get enough of them the law of large numbers is bound to kick in and you will end up with some sharper tools.

Findeight, I’m guessing you mean the great FL stallion Dr. Fager? He was named after the neurosurgeon that saved John Nerud’s life. I don’t know how he handled since he died some yeras ago (he was in the Round Table era), but his offspring were always good eggs. And of course without Dr. Fager (both of them) we wouldn’t have had John Nerud and Unbridled.

fish, good point about the track effect. I spent enough years on the track to know when one was too stupid for that job. But some of the best racehorses make lousy pleasure horses precisely because they were good at their original job. That’s different from horses that even people at the track wish would never get a chance to pass on their “special” personalities!

[KateB]

I have one of Slew’s sons, a colt, and he’s got his Father’s temperment and quirks down pat.
His intelligence is spooky and he LOVES to work. When he was off for a bit he would “train” himself in his paddock all day - jog for awhile around the fence line and then gallop, jog then gallop. It kind of freaked people at the farm out - they thought it looked like he had a phantom rider on his back and thought he might just be possesed.
He isn’t *too" difficult when he’s in training or racing and out working everyday BUT if he doesn’t get to be out and running everyday he can be a real handful - exactly like his Dad.
People that knew his Dad very closely always comment on how alike they are in so many ways - both good and bad.
I also have some Slew grandsons and granddaughters and the similarities aren’t nearly as pronounced. So it it may just be that some of those traits become diluted through the generations - they would almost have to.

[sm1]

I have a gelding off the track at Belmont, Storm cat is his sire. He is the sweetest horse with a heart of gold that always manages to babysit my sorry butt in the saddle.

Don’t try to fight with him though, he says “Are we going to fight? Let me show you how it’s done.”

That’s just the breeding that makes a champion on the track. Keep yourself on the same team as the horse and you have a great horse. If you’re determined to fight with him you’ll probably end up with a ruined horse because he’ll never back down, never quit. That never-say-die and I’m-gonna-fight-til-I-drop attitude I attribute to Storm Cat, Northern Dancer, Secretariat, etc.

[system]

Ahh, nature versus nurture. I wondered about my gelding’s lineage but don’t know much about TB pedigrees (other than looking at them on pedigreequery). His sire is Apalachee, whom I know nothing about (other than that HIS sire was Round Table, whom my gelding strongly resembles); his dam has Nasrullah and Native Dancer in her lines, 3rd generation back.

Do any of you know anything about Apalachee?

He is another fighter like some of you have described - but once I learned not to fight him, he’s been a gem. Super-smart, always curious, very playful and quite bold…these characteristics are more nature than nurture IMO.

[bwills]

cgn38, I have a gelding by Gate Dancer, like you said super smart, he’s pretty willing but I have found it better to wait him out than get into a huge fight. He is very willing over fences though!!

[hcwells]

Originally posted by TKR:
Tabasco Cat didn’t “kill” Lucas’ son (asst trainer), he injured him severely and he wound up hospitalized for some time.

PennyG

Sorry about that. I remember hearing that Tabasco Cat ran over him at top speed, I didn’t realize he had survived the incident. It’s been a while and my memory "ain’t what it used to be… "

[mbj]

The couple Storm Cat grandchildren I’ve worked with were very sweet and pretty. Definite show hunter material. But the maternal line was always fancy, of course.

[FLIPPED_HER_HALO]

My friend has he meanest OTTB I’ve ever met. He won over a million racing and was trained by Bob Baffert and was by Flying Paster. To this day he’s just flat out mean!

[Racetb_Aefvue_Farm_B]

In the hunter world…our Sunny’s Halo mare has always been a BEEEYATCH dominant monster in the paddock…but a fabulous jumper and performer. Decades ago, there wasn’t a Bull Lea in the show ring that wasn’t talented, but AWFUL to deal with on the ground and under saddle.

[btilton]

I personally look for young horses that are maybe a hair simple minded, but basically bold in being that way. I simple scaredy cat horse is no use at all, but the ones whose mommy’s were head of the heard, the ones who never learned to be afriad, and were also kinda dumb in general, they are like that! They just learn a job, at some point the light bulb clicks on, they get their job and they just do it, no questions for the most part… that was that big Irish River gelding I had… to a tee!

But God forbid you ask for a counter canter… once he learned auto changes, there was no keeping him on the ‘wrong’ one!

[Everythingbutwings]

The Ribot’s need a job. They get cranky just hanging around.