1967-Voice Of The Tennessee Walking Horse 1967 August Voice RS | Page 6

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COME UP—This dramatic unretouched photograph of BIG SHOT'S T BIRD graphically
illustrates the extreme action and ability of this great horse. When trainer Billy Brantley
says “come up" in the Celebration . . . they will be ready.
It was a chilly summer morning in August of 1966
and we had been requested to come to the Billy Brantley
Stables in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, a suburb of Chatta­
nooga, to see a command performance of BIG SHOT’S
T BIRD as he was being readied for the Celebration.
The reason for our personal invitation was due to an ob­
servation we had made regarding other horses in the three-
year-old class that he would show against. Having w'atched
this big bay stallion since he was a colt, we naturally ac­
cepted the invitation.
Mr. Billy Brantley, T BIRD’S trainer, carried him up
to the track and gave him a good forty-five minute work­
out—a workout which convinced me and several other
observers that Ol’ BIRD had little to fear from his compe­
tition. Billy pulled up to let him blow a bit and accepted
the congratulations of his viewers. “How about that?”
he said. After being convinced that he had a good horse
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he said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” and headed toward
a field that had a well-worn path going from north to
south. Billy carried the big bay to the north end of the
path and, after flat-footing for a few feet, called on his
mount. What T BIRD did as he came down that path
in the running walk would make the hair stand on your
head.
After the Celebration was over last year and T BIRD
had won the Three-Year-Old Stallion Class and had tied
Reserve in the stake, we asked Billy Brantley, ‘‘Why
didn’t you turn T BIRD on in the ring like you did
us that morning?” He smiled and replied that he d'
need to in order to win a top spot. In discussing
tential of this particular horse we learned that he
nd
able of much more than anyone has ever seen
an
Billy doesn’t plan to show him at his best unfi
aged horse.
Horse
VOICE of the Tennessee