They don’t make many stallions with more chrome than Probably By Design (“Splash”). Eight years old this year, the bay stallion stands 16 hands and weighs 1,300 pounds with a striking bald face and white legs. He turns heads and, according to trainer J.D. Yates, couldn’t be more “gentle, quiet and easy.”

The stallion’s owner, Phil Tearney, has won two AQHA non-pro world championships and a reserve title heading on him. As recently as November, Tearney rode Splash to the AQHA Select Heading world championship, while Trey Yates placed the stud fourth in Senior Heading, worth $10,272. 

J.D. had already piloted Splash to the 2022 Reserve AQHA World Championship in Jr Heading, plus made the stud that year’s Junior and Open High-Point Head Horse. The stallion had earned upwards of $40,000 at the World Show alone by the time he was 7.

“For a big horse, he can really use his hind end,” said Yates. “You seldom find horses at that age that like to do what he does that much.”

Splash is by Slick By Design, the top-earning barrel racing stallion of all time; a $6.5 million producer that also ran barrels at the NFR. But it doesn’t show in temperament.

“Splash is the most docile stud,” said Tearney. “He could care less about mares or anything else. He’s easy.”

Splash’s dam, Probably Got It All, was a Reserve World Champion in Jr Heading, and garnered an Amateur High-Point award and 600 AQHA points in heading. 

Splash’s broodmare sire, With All Probability, was the AQHA’s 2005 Superhorse, out of the Lazy E’s legendary Jack E Eleven. 

Tearney bred Splash to both the mother and the full sister of DT Air Jordan, another standout baldy that won back-to-back ARHFA world championships in heading in 2017-18 and the 2019 AQHA Sr Heading world championship. 

“His strongest characteristics are his disposition and athleticism, coupled with his size,” said Tearney. “He’s going to put a lot of bone on his babies and size.”