Page 101 - May 2018 Speedhorse

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The Race Horse Man Who Didn’t Aim to Be
P.C. Perner
by Jane Pattie
Paul “P.C” Perner has always been more interested in how a horse performs than what he can do in a halter class. But it stands to
reason that if an ol’ pony is much of an athlete, he’s going to be strung together pretty well right. Perner had his own ideas about a good horse long before he ever thought about trying to outrun anybody on the race track. To work his ranch west of Ozona, Texas, he liked good-legged,
stout horses . . . Hancock bred. Back in his day, Joe Hancock and his get had stirred up the dust on the brush tracks of Texas and Oklahoma,
and they proved just as adept at jerking over a fast-running calf or steer. The winning ropers were generally well-mounted on Hancock-bred horses, and Perner agreed with their choice. “Hancocks were the best using horses we ever messed with. They were big, stout horses and had good dispositions,” P.C. says. He had two of the old horse’s grandsons and one great grandson . . . Topper Hancock, Hancock Clegg and his son, The Irishman. These stallions were used on the ranch’s mares to produce good using horses. In 1963, riding four different Perner-raised Hancock geldings, P.C. and his wife Peggy’s daughter, Pam, won seven All-Around trophies at Texas Quarter Horse shows.
So, the Perners’ horse business, though secondary to the ranching, was successful. They’d haul a horse and get him to winning at roping or barrel racing and sell him. But one day in 1964, the family gathered around the kitchen table to make some decisions. P.C. told his wife, Peggy, and the three kids, Pam, Paul and Philip, “We are raising these horses and selling a few colts, but mostly what we have sold are horses that we have ridden that are already doing something, which, you might say, takes three or four years. And we are getting about the same price for these finished horses as people with running blood
are getting for their weanling colts. We’re doing good, but not good enough. It looks to me like we are doing a whole lot of work that we don’t need to. I figure that we might be about as smart
as anybody else, and it’s about time to try a short-cut to the bank.”
They all agreed. The All American Yearling Sale was the next day in Ruidoso, so once the Perners decided that the route to follow lay in buying a stallion of good running bloodlines, P.C. and 16-year-old Paul hooked the horse trailer onto the back of the station wagon, threw a couple of pillows in and headed for Ruidoso right after dinner. Paul did most of the driving, since P.C. was on a cane after a knee operation. They pulled into Ruidoso about sundown.
The sale was held in a tent where the saddling paddock now is. Less than 100 horses were to
be sold. P.C. and Paul got a catalog and walked around looking at the offerees. P.C. recalls, “We’d look until we found a individual we liked and then we’d look up his pedigree. I never did look at Talent Bar. Back then, there were very few colts in the catalog that were by a AAA horse
and out of a AAA dam, and still less that the
dam was out of a AAA horse and out of AAA mare. We saw his breeding, but our resources were pretty limited. We didn’t even go to look at him because there wasn’t any use in looking at something that was out of our price range. And he was one of the very few colts that was AAA
all the way. His dam was AAA and (her sire) Leo Tag was AAA. Monita (his second dam) was AAA AQHA Champion. On the top, he was by Royal Bar, who was AAA by Three Bars, and the dam of Royal Bar was the AAA Queen of Clubs J by Piggin String (TB), 2-time AQHA Champion Running Horse. Queen Of Clubs J was out of Queenie, who was also a World Champion and 2-time Champion. He (Talent Bar) had a World Champion mare on the top and the bottom sides, so we just didn’t go look at him.
“We had chosen two to bid on. One we picked out was a big, stout roan colt. The main reason he caught our eye was that he was out of a Hancock mare,” P.C. grins. “The two colts went through the sale, and they got out of my price range pretty quick. We had given up. I was stove
P.C. Perner at the Ozona Rodeo aboard 4-year-old Talent Bar (Royal Bar-Della’s Queen, Leo Tag), a cow-horse when he wasn’t at the track.
SPEEDHORSE, May 2018 99