Page 106 - May 2018 Speedhorse

One of P.C. Perner’s favorite horses by Talent Bar was Old Black Talent, shown here after winning the Alamo QHBA Futurity at Del Rio in 1972 while suffering from distemper.
potential. Then Frank came out that next winter and bought Salty. I had traded Pam a Talent
Bar gelding that was already broke and going good for this yearling, so I sold Salty to Frank. Salty didn’t do much as a two year old, but
he had good care taken of him, and he wasn’t ever hurt. He was in the futurities, but he was too study and didn’t have much luck, so they finally gelded him. Then they sent him back to Ruidoso to the Rainbow Derby, and the horse was in a good position and caught everything just right. He had the advantage and he knew how to take it. That was his big win.”
In looking back over Talent Bar’s colts, P.C. says, “Old Black Talent was one of my favorites.
I bought his dam, Silver Tiki, from Will F. Whitehead. She’s by Real Silver. Her first foal was a filly, but Silver Tiki didn’t give any milk and it was a little ol’ thing. I sold it back to Will F. and he put her in his broodmare band. Her second colt by Talent Bar was a coal black one, and he was practically a doggie. His mother weaned
him real early while I was at Ruidoso. He just scrounged around and kind of managed to live. Because it looked like she was going to produce, I tried to sell that old mare that winter to a man for $750, and he laughed at me. Anyway, Jack Hughes had this real good AAA mare that he wanted to breed, so I swapped him a stud fee for training. I had a good colt that I was going to let him train, but I sold him while all this was going on and all I had left was this little ol’ black colt.
So, I took little Old Black Talent to Jack and they went to training him. The first time they took him to Uvalde to a little winter meet down there, he surprised everybody and won. Then they took him to New Braunfels and ran him down there and won, and they came back to Del Rio Futurity trials. He won his trial at Del Rio and qualified, but the day of the finals, this little colt was so sick that he could hardly hold his head up. Distemper was going around and he had caught it. So, Jack and I went up to the office and told them that
if they’d give us the last place money, which was about $900, we wouldn’t start him because he had a high fever and he was sick. They told us they were sorry, but the way the futurity rules were drawn up, you had to run to earn money.
If we scratched out, we wouldn’t get anything. Well, we told Manuel Rodriguez, our jockey, ‘This little colt is sick, and if he doesn’t want to run, just let him lope down there and we’ll get last place money. They’re making us run.’ Well, when those gates flew open, Old Black Talent left there flying and he won from wire-to-wire! And he was the most pitiful thing. That little horse could barely stand up, but had the heart to run. He won a little over $10,000. This little horse had the biggest heart and did more with less than any colt I ever raised. It was just really a thrill and a surprise, and that colt outran some good colts there. He outran a filly that set a track record for 350 yards at Ruidoso that summer. He won that race in AAA time. He was the cull of the whole
bunch. The next year, his dam had a big fine filly, and her 1973 foal was a nice colt. She’s a AAA producer now, and I had offered to sell her for less than the stud fee with the colt that she was carrying.” Well, the good Lord must take care of horse people!
P.C. likes to sell his foals as babies, but he doesn’t ever price one until it’s weaned and halter broke. They sold nearly all of their colts in 1972 at the ranch by the first of February. He doesn’t pick out one or two to keep and run. He says,
“I run what’s left, like Old Black Talent, and
I’ve done pretty good with them. Nobody’d buy Hook ‘Um Talent, yet he won eight races in two years and made us some money, and we had a lot of fun with him. Our horses have always been for our own enjoyment. I’ve been criticized for letting Pam take Talent Bar to Fort Worth and Dallas for 10 days and run barrels on him. We often hauled him to two or three shows a week. But if we can’t enjoy our horses, we’re in the wrong business. It hasn’t hurt them a bit. Pam started My Talent last summer and she has been placing right along with him, and he had never been worked like this until she got him the first of June. After working him 90 days, she has been in the money every time she has run him.
“People say, ‘You mean Pam is barreling ol’ My Talent? How did she ever slow him down enough to get him to look at a barrel?’ This yellow horse had run from 350 to 870 at the track. The last year I ran him was ’72, and the
104 SPEEDHORSE, May 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JANUARY 1974 ISSUE