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right disposition to go with it. That’s what this is all about: to learn what a horse’s pedigree means to the horse’s owner, breeder and trainer.
“I don’t care whether you’re talking to a racehorse trainer or a performance trainer,” Larry adds. “Why does a trainer like to train a certain type of horse? They like certain bloodlines in their barns because they’re the bloodlines they work best with and have the most success with. So visit with them, and read the “Speedlines” column to get some background.”
Larry says that although he doesn’t claim to be a genetics expert, he has learned over the last few years that a lot of longstanding breeding theories have a true genetic base to them. “It’s not light reading, we know that,” he says, “but we want to challenge people to really get to know the horses and their pedigrees.”
Particularly fascinating to Larry is mitochondrial DNA. “You go through the
sale catalog and look at all these mares whose families just keep producing year after year after year, and that has to do with the mare line and the mitochondrial DNA that the mare line passes on,” he says. “The mitochondria is where we get our energy. In human athletics, they’re trying to verify what effect this has regarding efficiency — of utilizing energy — and it’s all found in these mare lines. And that’s exciting to me. I’ve finally come to the point in my career that I’m beginning to see genetic answers to
theories that I’ve been talking about for years. “I told you that I had to interview B.F.
Phillips Jr. for my first Speedhorse article,” Larry adds. “He and I never met face to face, but we had several conversations and in one, he gave me the piece of advice that’s proven to be so so true: All we’re doing is recycling these genes. We’re seeing that through line breeding and inbreeding. But yes, there is a point where we can do too much of that and we need a good outcross.”
HIS BREEDING VENTURE
Along with pedigree research, Larry has also dreamed of breeding great Quarter Horses. His first broodmare was a Thoroughbred that he got from a friend in Louisiana. “We had one colt out of her and he went AAA on the track and was stakes placed,” Larry says. “Then we left the race side of it and bred her to performance-type stallions. I’ve also owned a son of The Investor and a line-bred son of Cutter Bill. But I didn’t want to stay in the stud business.”
For the past 20 years, Larry has put together a group of mares, including two daughters of one of his first mares, cutting-bred Nans Crescent Moon (1997; SR Hallmarked – Alottapep, Peppy San Badger). He also had two granddaughters of Continental King and a granddaughter of Cutter Bill, who were part of his foundation and he
has kept a few of their daughters over the years. “They’re all performance-bred,” he says.
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When he’s not researching, writing, talking or thinking about horses, Larry enjoys just being with his family: a son, David, and his wife, Teresa; a daughter, Nancy, and her husband, Roger Snook; and seven grandchildren.
“My wife is a walker and sometimes I go with her to participate in those activities,” he says. He also likes to read about history (surprise!) and go to his grandson’s baseball games. “If I can’t go to a horse activity, it’s because I’ve got something going with the family,” he adds.
When it comes down to it, Larry’s life is all about family, be it his own or any particular horse’s. And over his writing career, we have all become better informed because of his passion for identifying inherited equine traits.
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Photo by Starr Murders Photography