Sometimes, the road to
Saddlebreds is circuitous, but eventually we get there. My father-in-law went to school to be an
attorney, but once he graduated, he didn't like it, so he went back to school
and got his engineering degree. He
worked at an automotive plant (one of the many in the Toledo area), but that
plant was going to relocate to the Carolinas in the late 1950’s. For whatever reason, my mother-in-law went to
visit the little town of Clinton, N. Carolina and put her foot down. Did she really prefer the Michigan/Ohio
winters? Anyway, my father-in-law,
having four children to support, opened a cabinet shop where he turned out
kitchen cabinets. One of the byproducts
was a whole lot of wood shavings. At age
12, my husband made a little spending money on the side by cleaning out the
sawdust bin and selling it to Dr. Elrod, thus, the family’s introduction to Dr.
Elrod and Saddlebreds.
Dr.Elrod sent some of his broodmares a mile up the road for
my husband to look after and keep at his barn.
They were mostly out in pasture, and when they got close to their
foaling dates, they went back to the Elrod barn. One day, it started to rain so my husband
went to fetch the mares to put them in.
They all came in but one, so he went out into the pasture to find
her. The weather was getting quite bad
by this time, and you guessed it, the missing mare had foaled in the
pasture. My husband carried the colt in
to the barn and it was promptly named Stormy Weather. I had heard this story many times from my
husband over the years, but I found out years later that the mare was Vanity’s
Virginia. The Elrod’s had bought her
from Elliot Bonnie, who had owned her sire Vanity’s Sensation for a while. For whatever reason, Mr. Bonnie bred her to a
pony stud and she was in foal when Dr. Elrod bought her. Stormy Weather was a half saddlebred half
pony, but over the years, Vanity’s Virginia produced a lot of nice horses,
including my own dear Buddy.
Sis with one of her colts
Alloway's Bonnie Lassie
1973 3-Gaited Champion in Michigan
Alloway's Bonnie Lassie
while at Paul Priebe's in Minnesota
My father-in-law also loved the Scottish poet Robert Burns,
so they came up with the farm name Alloway’s for the colts they produced. When
the last colt was a yearling, my father-in-law passed away. My husband was starting college, and the sad
reality was that the horses had to go. He
sold “Sis” the mare, her yearling colt and a 2 year old by Oman’s Desdemona
Denmark that he had bought at Tattersalls the year before. It was a package deal, but sadly most of it
had a bad ending. Sis ended up aborting her
latest colt, got an infection and was euthanized. Whitneys Warrior got tangled in a fence and
was badly cut up. He later sold again,
but was permanently disfigured. The only
good thing that happened was that my husband’s yearling was sent to Jr. Seay
for training.
Alloway's Tam O'Shanter
with Jr. Seay winning the 2 yr old
Fine Harness class at Youngstown Ohio
By the time I met my husband, his barn was long since empty,
and he’d lost track of his colt. Being a
faithful reader of Saddle & Bridle and some other publications, I was able
to track down his colt and provide a little more info. After Jr. Seay showed him for a season, Tam was
purchased by Sallie Busch Wheeler and trained by Jim B. Robertson. I don’t think they had great luck with him
and the next time Tam surfaced, he was on the west coast, had been trimmed and
had a new name………Big News. A couple
years later, Art Simmons had him and he went through his sale. I wrote to Mr. Simmons to get some info on
Tam/Big News. Art Simmons was a truly
nice man to take the time to write back to me and let me know that Tam had been
sold to Connecticut. That was the last I
heard of him, but it was good to know that he’d been somewhat successful and
literally went from coast to coast and had some of the best trainers in America
work with him.
Alloway's Tam O'Shanter
with Jim B. Robertson.
Big News
with Frank Dye showing in Del Mar California
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