Great horses don’t always happen by accident. The fact of the matter is that great breeding programs do produce great horses, time and time again. In October 2021, we offered the first of two parts of our “Sibling Rivalries” story, highlighting great horses with the same blood running through their veins. Part one covers the great bloodlines of Starlight Gypsy, A Streak Of Fling, Dual Patron, PC Frenchmans Hayday and broodmares Kings Sly Sugar and Slynking Sugar Whiz, and here we offer you Part 2.

JIMMY, TWINKIE AND CLINT

Key Bloodlines: SON OF OAK

Chad Masters took home the $5,000 bonus for the AQHA/PRCA Horse of the Year title in 2017 with his 2006 gelding, Madison Oak, the fast sorrel horse he calls Clint. Masters won Cheyenne in 2019 with Joseph Harrison on Clint, and he’s excelled in setups big and small during rodeo’s regular season.

“There’s a good friend of ours named Clint Madison that lives in Kentucky now but he’s from Mississippi,” Masters said. “He and his family raise these horses, and I bought mine when he was 4. Then, I bought another one from him a couple years later that was a full brother to him when he was 4.”

That second sibling, Twinkie, is a full brother to Clint and, while Masters eventually sold him, he was a stand-out backup and jackpot horse in any setup.

Masters won the average at the NFR with Travis Graves in 2017 on a half-brother to Twinkie and Clint—a palomino gelding registered as Wasting Away that Masters calls Jimmy.

“They’re impossible to catch—any of them,” Masters said, laughing. “Once you get your hands on them, they’re really gentle. People think that they’re broncs just trying to get around them but, once you get on them, they’re all dead heads—at least, mine are, anyhow. It’s funny how, the way that they run, they don’t feel like they’re running hard, but they’re just catching up—I don’t know how to explain it.”

PROWLER AND SANDY

Key Bloodline: LONE DRIFTER

The stallion, Dash Ona Drifter, and his daughter, DMO Sand Drifter, have a lot more in common than just blood. Both horses were made famous first by South Dakota horseman and NFR header Logan Olson, and then ridden to acclaim by 2017 PRCA World Champion Header Erich Rogers.

Rogers rode Prowler in 2014 at the Finals to place in three rounds with Cory Petska. Then, in 2020, he jumped aboard Sandy, Prowler’s daughter out of running-bred Fixin To Win mare American Big Winner, to win $122,962 at the NFR alone and to claim the NFR average title with Paden Bray. It was on Sandy, too, that Rogers won RFD-TV’s The American in 2021.

“We just really rode Prowler,” Olson said. “Studs require a lot of riding. He wasn’t hard, and he wasn’t stud-y. He wasn’t broncy. He was always willing. Sandy, she was identical to her mom. They ran, but they’re very, very cowy. We even had the grandma, and we roped calves on her, and she went to the World Show in the barrels and the calf roping.”

“There was a little similarity, but not just a ton,” Rogers added. “They were both good horses, don’t get me wrong. They were both flat going across the line, and they stay out of your way and let you do your job.”

NICK AND MURPHY

Key Bloodline: ROCKETS BREEZY LADY (BROODMARE)

Matt Sherwood won both of his world titles on a sorrel gelding named Nicks Rocket Rojo—aka Nick—a horse he picked up by chance back in 1995.

“I was roping in California with Jason Hershberger,” Sherwood remembered. “We were practicing one morning, and this guy came by with four yearling colts, and he wanted to sell all of them so he could buy his son an old rope horse. That was the only one I was kind of interested in, and I just felt bad for the guy.”

Sherwood gave $600 for the barely halter-broke colt and, needless to say, his partner was annoyed they were hauling this wild colt around in the trailer.

But as Nick helped take Sherwood from a flooring specialist to a World Champ, the Pima, Arizona header realized he better track down Nick’s roots.

“I looked at his papers and I called the breeder, Ruth Tarling, and asked if she still had the broodmare the colt was out of,” Sherwood said. “She did, and when I went to pick her up, she had a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. I ended up buying both of them, and one of them was Murphy.”

Murphys Susie Que, as she is registered, carried Sherwood to the second act of his career, including wins at Fort Worth and RodeoHouston, both with Walt Woodard, as well as multiple NFR qualifications.

While Murphy is now on high school rodeo duty for a friend of Sherwood’s in Utah, Sherwood is now heeling on a granddaughter he calls Cory, of the original broodmare Rockets Breezy Lady, and aboard her he finished the season in the Top 30 in the PRCA world standings—including a $10,000 payday behind Derrick Begay at RFD-TV’s The American.

“Nick and Murphy were very similar, but the heel horse not so much,” Sherwood said. “Every one of them, when you lead them, they pass you and walk in front of you. She does the exact same thing. No matter how fast you walk, she’s in front of you the length of the lead rope.”

ALICE AND REMIX

Key Bloodline: ONE HOT JOSE

Joe Braman’s famed JB Quarter Horses in Refugio, Texas, produced both Quinn Kesler’s Miss JB 117 and Kory Koontz’s Mr JB 0839, by their late stallion One Hot Jose. And both horses have trademark BIG personalities.

Braman had always told his long-time friend Koontz—who’s ridden some of the greatest heel horses of all-time in Jackyl, Switchblade, Caveman and LB—that he wanted him to have one he raised. So as a yearling, Remix was picked him up on the roadside in the middle of the night in Post, Texas.

“He had not really been halter broke and he didn’t really lead, but he was tiny,” Koontz said. “It took me about three hours to get him in my trailer.”

And it didn’t get much easier. Remix tended to jump out of arenas and panels, and buck Koontz off. But after years of trials and tribulations and doctoring wheat pasture cattle, Remix ended up a good one. Koontz rode him at the Finals in 2018 behind Dustin Egusquiza, and—after the horse survived a deadly horse trailer accident and major injury in 2020—won the Bob Feist Invitational behind Manny Egusquiza in 2021.

Kesler got Alice as a 5-year-old back in 2016, and she too had an ornery streak.

“She was broke pretty good, but almost every day she’d want to try to buck,” Kesler remembered.

Her name then became “Crazy Alice,” off of the John Wayne movie, “The Cowboys.” Kesler rode her in the mountains and on his family’s ranch near Holden, Utah.

“I messed around roping on her right away but then I did a lot of ranch work on her,” Kesler said. “She got less bronc-y. She was pretty dang easy to train. She wanted to be cowy and wanted to do it and could really stop.”

Jade Anderson borrowed and rodeoed on Alice as a 6-year-old. Then, when Kesler found himself afoot in the winter of 2018, he threw Alice to the wolves, and she came out swinging, helping him qualify for his second NFR.

“Alice and Remix are very similar,” Kelser said. “They’re both pretty dang tough. I don’t remember having to give her any bute or anything over the whole year and I rode her almost everywhere. They both can run plenty and watch a cow.”

COLONEL AND STINKY

Key Bloodline: ZANS DIAMOND SHINE

Long before Jake Long’s Colonel and Kyle Lockett’s Stinky reached NFR fame, Trevor Brazile won an AQHA Tie-Down Roping and Heeling World Title in 2007 aboard a palomino stud named Zans Diamond Shine, by the legendary Shining Spark.

His sons—Zans Colonel Shine owned by Jake Long and Bar D Mr Moon owned by Kyle Lockett—have both paved their own ways in the rope horse business. Colonel is Jake Long’s three-time AQHA/PRCA Heel Horse of the Year, aboard whom Long won the Bob Feist Invitational, two Wildfire Open to the World titles, the Texas Circuit Finals and the HorkDog, and whom he rode for a full 90 runs at the NFR.

“I picked him up right before I started practicing for my first NFR,” said Long. “He got a lot thrown at him right there, going from making jackpot-like runs in the middle of the arena to me trying to be 3 on him every day. But he always had such a good mind and attitude toward everything.”

Colonel is now semi-retired at home in Kansas, but he still does kids’ horse duty with Long’s daughters and can pinch-hit for Long if he finds himself afoot.

In the meantime, Lockett’s Stinky is keeping the family name alive and well in ProRodeo.

“Years ago, I was in El Paso, and there was a registered horse sale,” Lockett remembered. “The first couple riding horses went so cheap, I bought three, then four, and figured I was going to have to hire somebody to haul them anyway, so I figured I’d just keep buying them. I ended up with four riding horses and nine babies. Stinky cost $250 as a yearling. I bought 13 head for under $13,000. They came off the Bar D Ranch where Sheena Robbins’ barrel horse and Jake Orman’s gray are from. When Stinky got off the trailer, he had a big, old cut across his neck. It stunk really bad, so that’s how he got his name.”

Lockett didn’t really get Stinky going until he was about 5, and didn’t ride the horse at his first rodeo until he was 13.

“He doesn’t really have any cruise,” Lockett laughed. “He’s full contact, which is probably my fault, because I’ve always roped on him that way. I probably screwed him up going to those little buildings that first winter. We’d hang back then go as fast as we could go and as soon as they turned I’d end up throwing.”

Notably, Jackie Crawford’s World Champion Breakaway mount, T-Boy, is also a son of Zans Diamond Shine. 

ROCKY AND STARBUCKS

Key Bloodlines: CD OLENA

Ryan Motes’ CD Rockstar and CD Starbucks are full siblings raised by Motes, his mother Danny and stepdad Winston Hansma, out of their great mare Cari Me Starlight, and by the famous CD Olena, who Hansma showed to the famed National Cutting Horse Association Open Futurity Championship and $170,000 in earnings.

Starbucks carried Motes to a Bob Feist Invitational title in 2009, amassing $165,205 in Feist earnings over the years he appeared there under Motes. The horse also won AQHA/PRCA Horse of the Year honors in 2013, and he helped Motes to a Reserve PRCA World Title in 2015 with Aaron Tsinigine.

When Starbucks started to slow down, his brother Rockstar stepped up. He helped Motes win more than any team roper ever at RFD-TV’s The American, when Motes and Coleman Proctor won $433,33.33 per man for their qualifying win there.

“I rodeoed on Starbucks forever to win a million, and now I’ve rodeoed on Rocky just a couple years and probably won a million in this short time,” Motes said. “He was my second stringer not for a bad reason. I had one of the best ones there is during all of Rocky’s career. When I went to practicing for the NFR on him is when he really started seeing it. They felt similar. When I went to rodeoing on Rocky it was crazy how close they felt to working the same.”TRJ