Page 46 - January 2022

SPEEDLINES
1958 Champion 2-Year-Old Colt and 1959 Champion 3-Year-Old Colt
Missle Bar is out of Peggy N by Clabber.
1959 Champion 3-Year-Old Filly, 1959 Champion Mare &
1960 Champion Mare Triple Lady
is out of Clabbers Lady V by Clabber
7-time stakes winner Clabbers Win
is out of Clabbers Flossie V by Clabber.
straightaway track but an oval, “He’d get to running so fast in the straightaway that he couldn’t make a turn. He would run right through the fence if you didn’t pull him in. He’d make a wide turn and then be out of the race. If the tracks had been straightaways, then nothin’ could have caught him ‘cause he started like a shot but just ran blind.”
J.C. Smith bought My Texas Dandy in 1929. Clyde Smith was a breeder from Big Foot, Texas, and he was the father of J.C.
He didn’t think much of his son’s purchase until he saw My Texas Dandy race and he saw the speed he had, but that he continued to lose his races. Smith had three reasons for the cause of the horse’s problem. First, “he scared himself—that is how fast he could go.” Second, he had a “bad scar on his leg” and that could have resulted in pain when
he ran full out despite that the wound had completely healed. Third he “lost interest”
in racing and so he just didn’t try to win.
No matter the reason, My Texas Dandy reportedly won only one race and in that race the jockey had to force him to run.
Smith repeatedly saw My Texas Dandy “break from the post so fast he made it look as though the other horses had gotten a bad start.” The colt would go down the track and pass everybody and then get beat. He even saw him go down on his knees in one race and get up and catch the field at two hundred yards and still get beat.
When Clyde Smith saw what he had, they started breeding mares to My Texas Dandy. Some of the early foals sired by My Texas Dandy include Colonel Clyde, Ginger Rogers and Captain White Socks, who was a full brother to Clabber. Colonel Clyde may be the most famous as he became a successful runner. He changed hands several times, including time with AB Nichols.
He later became a top rodeo horse for the legendary John Bowman. Bowman and Nichols both raced Colonel Clyde and they told Nelson Nye in his book Outstanding Modern Quarter Horse Sires that he could outrun Clabber at “one-eighth of mile,”
but that Clabber would win beyond that distance. Bowman ran the horse “open to the world” at one-eighth of a mile. Nye
says that the last time Bowman raced him
it was a match against a horse named “The Pig” for $1,000 a side. Clyde won by a half- length. Colonel Clyde sired fast runners, including a mare named Prissy that was consider one of the best of her generation. She set a world record for 350 yards in 1946 going in a time of :18.2. She sadly died in a racing accident at Eagle Pass that killed her and her jockey.
My Texas Dandy changed ownership several times to a Mr. Winn and then to Carroll Thompson. Mr. Winn was the owner of Ginger Rogers, one of the early successful runners for My Texas Dandy. Outside the fact that she is sired by My Texas Dandy, she has no reported race or pedigree record.
Thompson sold My Texas Dandy to George Herndon, his last owner and this takes us to some of the later foals sired
by My Texas Dandy. They include Battle Creek, a stakes winner in the 1949 Baby Stakes, and My Texas Dandy Jr, the winner of eight of his nine official starts and it appears his only defeat was in the 1947 Del Rio Championship. My Texas Dandy Jr proved to be a sire with foals like Barbara Tex, dam of Dick Killian, the winner of the Arizona Futurity and Miss Lou Dandy, dam of Miss Louton the 1958 AQHA Racing Champion Two-Year-Old Filly and the 1959 AQHA Racing Champion Mare and Three-Year-Old Filly.
Schulenberg. But, The Quarter Horse story has photos of those involved and they say that C. F. Meyers owned Sadie M. They tell us that Meyers was both a Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred breeder. Sadie M was one of his quarter mares. The colt born to Sadie M and Porte Drapeau was then a Quarter Horse named Boy Howdy. When it came time to start Boy Howdy and his Thoroughbred
herd mates, Meyers sent the Thoroughbreds to race and sell in Louisiana. He kept Boy Howdy in Texas.
A Thoroughbred colt named My Dandy by Porte Drapeau was born in 1925. This horse would go to the track to earn $137,923 running in 191 races from 1929 to 1933.
He placed in 16 stakes races until it was time to retire this good runner in 1933. He won nine stakes races, including the Windy City Handicap, George Washington Handicap, and the Speed Handicap. The article tells
us that My Dandy had two effects on the state of Texas. Porte Drapeau left Texas and Howdy Boy got a name change to My Texas Dandy because of My Dandy.
When it came time to run My Texas Dandy, a peculiar thing happened. He
was sent to Dr. Henry Mayer and a trainer named Charley Brenham. They raced the colt at New Braunfels and La Grange, but he failed to win a race. He showed early speed and blew the competition away from the start, but was overtaken by those chasing him. His jockey Will Hysaw explained it this way because they didn’t always run on a
44 SPEEDHORSE January 2022
Guy Kassal
Speedhorse Archives