Team roping futurities have gone nuts, which has us spotlighting breeding with a focus on stallions. But the new all-time leading dam of futurity money-winners by more than one sire? She’s a bad “Betty!”
The mama of the winningest futurity horses by multiple sires is owned now by Jose Garcia. Her name is Look At Her Glo but her breeder, NCHA Hall-of-Famer Bobby Lewis, called her Betty.
The bay 2003 mare by CD O Cody (by CD Olena out of a Docs Hickory/War Leo mare), is out of Leo Night Glo by War Leo Jr. Not many of today’s standouts are double-bred War Leo, a stud that earned money in both cutting and racing. But that combination has been magical at roping futurities.
LOOK AT HER GLO b. M, QUARTER HORSE, 2003
A full handful of Betty’s get by three different sires—and their offspring—have set the world on fire, including Time To Glo, CSR Dual Glo, Dual Patron and J Lows Glo. But she was plenty bad, herself, at the earliest futurities.
Seventeen years ago, before anyone was paying attention, Betty placed fourth in heading at the timed-and-judged National Team Roping Horse Association futurity in 2007. She won the 2008 Jr. Heading at the World Show. She earned more than $15,000 roping cattle at the 2009 World Show and continued to place at ARHFA futurities in 2011 and 2012.
“Honestly, anybody in America could have taken her to the NFR in heading, heeling or tie-down roping,” Lewis said. “She was not just a show horse, she was a good one. She was as good a calf horse as you ever swung a leg over.”
Betty earned some $63,000 in roping, working cow horse and ranch sorting. Lewis chose to ride her in the World’s Greatest Horseman contest twice.
“She was very versatile,” he recalled. “She could really run and she stopped on a dime. She quite literally has been a good one since she was a bronc. My son knew when she was 2 that she was a superstar.”
Lewis raised “that whole outfit” that led to Betty. CD O Cody—the nation’s high-point cutting horse two or three years in a row—was sired by the same stallion that sired Ryan Motes’ great horses Starbucks and Rockstar. And he was out of a mare Lewis bought as a 2-year-old that won $150,000. On the bottom, Betty’s dam was a granddaughter of the Harrison Ranch’s legendary Les Glo. Lewis had to buy quite a package of horses just to get Leo Night Glo, but it paid off. Betty’s mother had 23 colts in a row and never missed.
As for Betty herself, “I could have just turned her out on the section line and honestly, she’d have had a good colt at the end of the year,” he marveled.
That phenomenon has actually been proven, by the way: poor dams bred to elite sires tend to produce poor offspring, but elite dams bred to poor sires can still produce excellent offspring. Researchers in 2015 analyzed performance stats and found that 14% of the variation in a racehorse could be attributed to the genetic influence of the dam, and only 3.5% to the sire.
As for Betty, she crossed with Hickory Holly Time to produce Lewis’ great 5-year-old Time To Glo, an earner already of $132,187 at team roping futurities. And she crossed with Dual Spark to produce the standout cutting mare CSR Lay Down Sally and J Lows Glo (that earned $84,753 at early roping futurities), plus, of course, the great stallion Dual Patron, an AQHA Superhorse that banked $84,555 roping steers. She was also crossed with Spooks Gotta Whiz to produce money-winning reiner Spooks Gotta Glo.
“Lady Down Sally was a superstar in roping, no more than we roped on her,” recalled Lewis. “And she was phenomenal in cow horse. One of the all-time greats, starting with the Snaffle Bit Futurity.”
Lewis himself has a 3-year-old son of Betty by Shining Spark that he’s excited about. And Marshall Weir owns Betty’s son, the 14-year-old stallion CSR Dual Glo that not only earned money in cutting and heading, but also sired 7-year-old Sevens Star Glo, one of the winningest futurity horses of all time, and Sevens Hank 2, the 5-year-old on which Miles Baker won February’s Royal Crown in Arizona.
“Look At Her Glo never had anything but a good one, to be honest with you,” Lewis said. “I bred her to several different horses, and she had a good one by all of them. Kind of like the old Blue Hen scenario, you know?”
If a Hall-of-Famer like Lewis uses a term like “blue hen” to describe Betty’s multigenerational influence in both the roping boxes and the breeding shed, then we know she’s a winner.
—TRJ—
