What to do when you hold the power of an equine genetic line in your hands?

Backstory
Four summers ago I found myself in a very interesting situation. The equine love of my life, a 16 hand sorrel tobiano paint, was no longer healthy enough to be my pride and joy when it came to riding. My “old man” as I like to refer to him, has packed me on his trusty back since I first started riding in the third grade. I had just created my own professional rodeo drill team and had to face the strong realization that I wouldn’t be able to ride on it: team manager from the sidelines was going to be my “thing”.
One day, a month before our first performance, I was online looking for a better flag pole deal when, due to our poor country internet I had thought I had clicked on a website for drill flag poles when the computer scrolled and then clicked. Frustrated, I had no idea that, at that point in my life, God was already taking the first steps to saving my future. The website that opened was a website selling central Oregon ranch horses.
Sugar Baby Twist.
That was the name of the beautiful palomino stock horse on the screen. I wasn’t caught by the horses beauty or it’s information – I was shocked to see the striking resemblance that she had to my sisters gelding Ringo (the one I won a hero award on in high school). Obviously I had to show my entire family this twin-like horse.

Little did I know or mean too, my parents started talking and they said, “Let’s go look at her?” I was surprised. I was away at college most of the time, I didn’t need them spending their money on a horse. My dad argued that I didn’t have a horse to ride and if I wanted to progress with my riding ability than maybe this was a sign. It was. It would take me another three years to realize that.
A few weeks later I was home with my new horse. My boyfriend at the time was not very happy. He had been battling his parents for a dog and he was pissed and envious that I had gotten a horse of all things. There was a reason he didn’t last!
I had got her for a striking deal of $1,000.00 and no sooner did I have her at my first rodeo did the first offers started coming through.

Holly, the barn name of the mare, was a dream come true. The perfect easy keeper she could do anything and everything. Being our first, really nice, registered horse Holly opened my eyes to the world of bloodlines. I saw this group on Facebook called “Hancock Horses”. Holly was Joe Hancock line bred so I added myself in and, after a few months of gaining. The social media courage, I posted a picture to share of her and her bloodlines asking to see what people thought about the potential of breeding her.

Via allbreedpedigree.com I had seen that at four years old, she had had a foal. My Facebook blew up to say the least. Apparently I had an extremely nice horse. I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been bred more times with this jackpot of a bloodline. It seemed that everyone wanted my pretty yellow horse! She wasn’t for sale though, no matter how ridiculous the offers got. I had people offering to trade breedings for a foal (one for me and one for her), co -ownership offers, basically you think it and tats what was offered.
My original thought was to breed her to another foundation quarter horse. With her bloodlines coming in at 98% I realized that I could breed her to a horse that was close to the foundation registry and she would be able to pull the percentage high enough for the registration. I went with a stallion called Perkolatin, a Dash Ta Fame bred stud who was shaking things up in the barrel horse world. Tall and black I also secretly loved the color options!

Then, just a few days ago, I was contacted by somebody I’m the group informing me of a suspicion they had. My horse has the highest Crocketts Lucky Joe percentage of any other living horse. The lineage of Crocketts Lucky Joe is, in fact, almost extinct.

I’m a broke college student. That’s a fact. Breeding holly just once has been a huge strain on my resources and has resulted in me taking one, maybe two, terms off from college because I can’t afford it. Now it’s looking like this entire bloodline, so important to the heritage of the foundation American quarter horse, is completely in my “no-resources-at-all” budget.

Next week I aim to get the official bloodworm and documentation done. Once I have that I am going to look into going into business with someone that specializes in the Hancock horse bloodline. I may have a foal that I on,u own a percentage of.

I guess I never really thought about being a horse breeder but The Lord works in mysterious ways. Too many things are happening that seem to be aligning me in such an amazing way with these opportunities to really change the equine world.