Page 59 - Barrel Stallion Register 2019

When he finished high school, Bob moved north and got involved in cutter racing. “I never drove them, but I owned them and we hooked them up and raced. There might be 80–90 races a weekend, running four teams at a time, wheel to wheel. It was crazy!” He also raced on the flat track. But, it got too expensive when prestige and money entered the picture.
Along the way, he talked to successful breeders, who advised him to sell all his horses and buy one good mare. So around 1984, he and a partner went to Heritage Place look-
ing for a good horse. “We couldn’t touch the one we went there for for less than $25,000,” he says. But he did see an Easy Jet grandson named Real Moody that he liked. “He’s got ‘the look,’” Bob told his partner.
The partner went to rustle up some friends with deeper pockets, but they nixed their contri- bution, saying the horse was “too refined.” Bob recalls that Real Moody sold for around $5,700.
Next, Bob picked out another horse he liked, who brought a similar reaction from the potential partners-to-be.
Bob and his friend ended up flying home empty-handed, but Bob continued to track the two horses’ performances. “Real Moody won close to $450,000 and the next one didn’t do quite as well; he only won $107,000,” Bob says, tongue in cheek.
A year or two later, B.F. Phillips sold a bunch of his horses and Bob bought Sudden Fame (Tiny’s Gay-Bar Dearie, Lake Erie TB). “I didn’t pick her because of the Tiny’s Gay,” he says. “I picked her out because of Lake Erie in her pedi- gree.” Bob sold her first foal to clear the debt he incurred buying her, then he bred her to First Down Dash, producing Dash Ta Fame in 1989. “That was the turning point for me,” he says.
BOB’S DASH TO FAME
Dash Ta Fame earned multiple graded stakes-winning status with a 13-7-1-3 record and earnings exceeding $290,000. As a 2 year old
at Los Alamitos, he placed second in the Dash For Cash Futurity-G1 and won the Golden State Futurity-G1, then returned at 3 to win the Grade 1 El Primero Del Ano Derby. He finished eighth in the Governor’s Cup Derby-G1 against the likes of Corona Chick and Holland Ease, then, at Hollywood Park, earned a win in the Vandy’s Flash Handicap-G3, a third in the QHBC Championship Classic-G1 and a fifth in the California Derby.
The chestnut stallion’s ability as a sire has more than matched that of his talent on the track. He’s a sought-after sire in the barrel horse indus- try as well as on the flat, producing horses with not only speed but with winning dispositions.
“What makes Dash Ta Fame such a freak, and I mean that in a good way, is that he’s exceptionally gifted physically and he has
the mind to go with it,” says Sue Smith of Blackfoot, Idaho, who has a racehorse back- ground and who trained and competed with the 2016 WPRA World Champion Futurity Horse and Equistat Futurity Horse Dashs Centerfold (Dash Ta Fame-Diamonds Tiny Effort). Sue also qualified for two National Finals Rodeos and won the Calgary Stampede on Dash Ta Fame son Real Claim To Fame, out of Real Ease daughter Alicia Rene.
“I look for balance in a barrel horse,” Sue says. “I want a low hock, strong loin, deep heart girth, good slope to the shoulder and a neck that comes out of the shoulder a little higher but not too high or too low. I look for a horse whose shoulder is at least equal to its hip, not lower. His movement is
Bob Burt bred 1996 World
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Bob Burt purchased Sudden Fame, shown here with her foal Dash Ta Fame as a weanling, from B.F. Phillips
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