Page 54 - Canada Spring 2019

there would be two runnings. Cash Deal was in one; Sissy Dial, in the other. Both came in first. In a wild moment, Roy Boland threw his canes in the air. While the rest of the crowd danced around and cheered for Johnny Dial daughters, their devoted owner was forced to stand where
he was until someone captured his canes and returned them to him. He didn’t care. He reckoned that 1964 was, canes or no canes, one whale of a year. And it was the same year that Johnny Dial was sold to the man who had been making bids for him for a long time.
horse come loose. Oh, he was something when he was running, and he was a great asset at my place. But I don’t have to defend him as a sire. His record is there.”
Johnny Dial ranks 25th out of 45 all-time leading sires of money earners, and 23rd out of 41 all-time leading sires of ROM race qualifiers. He is an all-time leading maternal grandsire of ROM race qualifiers. 81 of his 112 daughters have produced a combined total of 148 Qualifiers.
Quincy Farms was not to be Johnny Dial’s last home. According to Ed Honnen, “By the late Sixties,
I wasn’t too happy with the way the horse business was going. For various reasons, I made a few decisions. To let Johnny Dial go was one of them. But I never wanted to sell him and never forgot him. I never did.”
In 1968, Earl and Virginia Shapiro, Paul and Doris Travis
and the Grafton Moores attended a horse sale in California before backtracking to the AQHA Annual Convention that was held in Las Vegas that year. Throughout the sale, and throughout the flight to Las Vegas, Earl Shapiro continued to brag on Johnny Dial. Paul Travis finally said, “Johnny Dial’s for sale. Why don’t you buy him?”
Until Paul Travis made that remark and asked that question, Earl Shapiro had not known Johnny Dial was for sale and had not
known how much he truly believed in the stallion. This may be one of the few times in history when the man from Festus, Missouri, was left without anything to say, but he was thinking plenty:
“I hadn’t been seriously into the Quarter Running Horse business for too long. To the best of my ability, I had made up a list of prominent sires. I had checked into the mares they bred, how many were AAA, etc., and I had checked into what the offspring did. I had come up with the idea that Johnny Dial’s percentage of winners and producers was amazing because he had always sort of been isolated. He had belonged to some fine people. And I guess the broodmare band at Quincy Farms, those Leo and Three Bars mares, was one
of the best ever assembled. But Denver was off the beaten track.
So was Pinon, and so was Miami. Miami was in Oklahoma, all right, but not in the Oklahoma City area, where the top mares gathered. So, the way I saw it, Johnny Dial never had a consistent chance at top mares, but his offspring always had a lot of want-to. They tried.
“I knew what it would take
to buy him. Nerve and money.
He was already twenty years old, but he was still Johnny Dial and would never go cheap. So, I sat on the plane and thought about the
AUTUMN
Johnny Dial was sixteen years old when he went under the ownership of Ed Honnen at Quincy Farms
in Aurora, Colorado. Ed’s personal ideals and convictions rode with breeding live cover. No collection room existed at Quincy Farms. The Colorado breeder said, “I think Johnny Dial approved of the deal. And I think he was the finest son Depth Charge ever had. I loved him. He was the best mannered horse I ever knew. I had known him ever since he had started out on
the track. He was a marvel on the track, so complacent before a race. You could walk by his stall and see him resting in there in a back corner with a hind leg cocked. Then you’d watch him break and see an honest
“I knew what it would take to buy him. Nerve and money. He was already twenty years old, but he was still Johnny Dial and would never go cheap. So, I sat on the plane and thought about the horse and wished I had the guts to get him.”
54 SPEEDHORSE CANADA, Spring 2019
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JANUARY 1978 ISSUE