Page 109 - September 2018

THE NEXT CHAPTER
Leonard spent the next 10 years building his Santa Fe practice, offering cutting-edge equine surgery. “That was the first strictly equine clinic in New Mexico that did arthroscopic surgery,” he says.
It was during that period that a group of his clients organized and opened Santa Fe Downs, which led to his tenure as track veterinarian. But the racetrack work took a lot of his time, so he hired Dr. John Bird to pick up the slack. Also during that time, Leonard served on the AQHA Board of Directors for 12 years. During that time, he met Walt Wiggins Sr., who frequented the New Mexico tracks and farms in search
of advertising for his new magazine, Quarter Racing World — later to become Speedhorse.
It turns out that Walt, along with Leonard’s reputation and the connections he made on the track and in his practice, brought him up on the radar of Harriet Peckham, who was in the process of purchasing a ranch at Roswell, New Mexico, where she planned to stand her stallion 3-time World Champion Go Man Go and others.
One day while palpating mares at a farm in Santa Fe, Leonard saw two women in a Cadillac drive up. “Nobody was paying any attention
to them. I figured they were there to see some stallions, and I just kept on palpating,” he
says. “They came and leaned on the fence. It
was Harriett Peckham and Sarah Henderson. Harriett told me she was looking for a veterinarian to help her design her new place and run the farm.
“Go Man Go was the leading sire in the country at that time; he was the Dash For Cash of his day and I thought I’d never have the
opportunity to be associated with a horse like that again,” Leonard says. So during 1970 and ’71, he traveled between his practice in Santa
Fe and Buena Suerte Ranch, opening the 350-acre Buena Suerte in 1972. At its height, Buena Suerte stood not only Go Man Go,
but Easy Jet and Rocket Wrangler and many others, breeding 800-plus mares each year. “I’ll be forever grateful to Walt Wiggins for getting me that job and for his wisdom
in my early career,” Leonard says. “It’s what led me and my family to go to Roswell and operate Buena Suerte Ranch there
for so many years. Although I designed
and formulated the plan for the farm, Walt was still an orchestrator of it, and he was always supportive and helpful in all our endeavors. It was sort of the kickoff of my career.”
One little-known fact about Leonard’s
career is that he saved the life of Dash For Cash when the great stallion was just a 2 year old.
“We were at Ruidoso and Dash For Cash got a compaction,” says retired AQHA Hall of Fame Trainer Bubba Cascio of Tolar, Texas. “I had some vets there at the track working on him, but they’d have to go and treat other horses, and I knew Dash For Cash was getting worse all the time.
I called Leonard and he came to my barn. He never left that horse for, I think, a day and two nights. We’d bring him something to eat, and he stayed on a cot under the shedrow. The morning that Dash For Cash got over it, I went to the
barn and he’d passed an obstruction the size of a football. If it hadn’t been for Leonard Blach, there wouldn’t have been a Dash For Cash.”
“It wasn’t my plan. All of that was God’s plan. It wasn’t something I ever designed to do. And I never was afraid that I might fail. I just felt like somehow, the good Lord was telling me, ‘This is what you need to do next.’”
Dr. Blach, with Harriett Peckham, unloading the first horse onto Buena Suerte Ranch, Sparkling Native. Blach helped design the facilities with Peckham.
At its height, Buene Suerte stood not only Go Man Go, but Easy Jet (shown with Dr. Blach), Rocket Wrangler and many others.