Pat Johnson

Copper/Cook Bloodlines

Pat Johnson, an old time Curly breeder, kindly wrote what follows. She knows Curly history because she was part of it.

"Penny Johnson asked me to write something about the Art Cook Copper D bloodlines.

Most people are familiar with Copper D coming through The Bill Mare or The Copper Mare and a few other horses, but there is another line, different from the ones usually associated with Copper D. Most everybody knows the story of Copper D and how he came to be with Benny Damele. How he was Benny's favorite horse, worked all day, every day until around age 21, when Benny turned him out with another old mare back to roam the mountains where he was born. The Art Cook line is a different line than the ones usually associated with Copper D, and has an interesting history.

Art Cook was a neighbor of the Damele family and after Benny had caught Copper D and began using him as a ranch horse and a stallion, bought a colt from him for breeding his mares. I don't know how many mares he had, but he kept the fillys from this young stallion and apparently sold or gelded the colts. To my knowledge, I've never heard if he named him, but he is always noted in the pedigrees as Cook Curly Horse, and there was apparently only one Cook Curly Horse. He was sorrel, threw mainly sorrel foals and was most athletic.

Art Cook usually bred him back to his daughters, maybe because he was the only stallion Art had or because he wanted to instill more Curly blood into the herd of horses he had. At any rate, after a period of time, Cook Curly Horse was kept in a corral at Art's ranch. The stallion became bored and probably lonely so when he had had enough, he jumped the fence and headed for the hills to find some mares to run with.

Every couple of years, Benny would find him in his annual roundups and would call Art to come get his stallion. He would pick him up, take him home and breed him to his mares and would pen him up again. Cook Curly Horse might stay around a few months or half a year, but eventually he would again take off for the hills and wouldn't be seen for another year or so. Apparently Art Cook was increasing the height of the fence each time but it didn't seem to matter what the height, as when the stallion was ready to go he was gone.

For years, Cook Curly Horse was not caught or sighted and both Benny and Art believed he had died on the range. Then, after ten or twelve years, to everyone's dismay, the stallion was caught in the roundup with a band of Benny's mares. Here Benny had thought that all of the foals during that period had been produced by whatever stallion he (Benny) had released with the mares, only to learn that Cook Curly Horse had probably sired some of the foals brought in during the past years.

Of those horses produced by Cook Curly Horse, only three mares and one stallion were registered with ABC Registry: Curley Babes (ABC P-312); Ravishing Ruby (ABC P-441) her daughter, Elleree ABC P-443) and her son, Houdini (ABC P-468).

Supposedly, someone was hauling a truck load of Curly horses through Idaho north and the truck broke down. As the man had spent almost all of his money on the horses, he didn't have sufficient funds to pay for the truck repairs, so he threw in a young filly to help get him on his way. That filly was named Curley Babes and was owned at time of registration to Katie Heckman. She raised Curley Babes and bred her twice while she had her to the nearest Curly stallion in the area, Colonel Austin, (ABC P- 148) owned by the Bratchers in Oregon. The two stallions produced were Curly Colonel (ABC P-397) foaled in 1985 and Curley's Pride (ABC P-579) foaled the following year.

For a number of years I owned both Curley Babes and Curly Colonel and never were there more gentle loving horses on this planet. They passed their wonderful dispositions on to their offspring. Everyone who was ever around Colonel, even in the middle of a field surrounded by his mares, was astonished, if not shocked, that this was a stallion not a gelding or a mare. Shortly after arriving at our place, while we were gone one day, another stallion chased him through two fences until he was outside the pasture. As Colonel didn't know where to go, nor had he been anywhere else on the property, he

decided to follow the neighbor's cat home when the cat passed in front of him. The neighbor who lived between us and the cat's owner shared the same little road and was hanging clothes on the line when she saw Rattlesnake the cat walking home with a horse following right behind as though there was an unseen leadrope in the cat's mouth. The owners of Rattlesnake looked out the window while eating lunch and were startled at the sight as well. As they had horses, they put a halter on Colonel and walked him back to our place and told us that Rattlesnake was quite put out that they had taken the horse he had found and which had followed him home.

I did not know Curley's Pride personally, but I do know that he produced a number of offspring, some of which also had that same disposition.

Some time around 1988 or so someone called Joe Mead, who then lived in Sequim, WA, and told him to come to Nevada to rescue some Curly horses that helicopters were chasing. He went down and found three mares and one young stallion. Art Cook's daughter identified them as an older mare and the others were her offspring. One of the mares was dead from being shot when he arrived. The older mare he named Ravishing Ruby for the Ruby Mountains where they were from and found, and the surviving daughter he named Elleree for Art Cook's daughter. She had been shot in the rump and he told me that for the first two or three years he owned her she had aborted her foals due to lead poisoning but after that, carried her foals to full term. Joe picked up some other horses from Benny Damele while in the area and hadn't decided on a name for the Ravishing Ruby's son. They stopped on the drive back, put up some portable panels and took the horses off the trailer to rest. The stallion did not want to come out of the trailer, so he was left in. When they loaded the horses back into the trailer and closed the tail gate, there was the young stallion outside of the trailer wanting to join the others. As they couldn't figure how he had gotten off the trailer, much less out of the pen because of how things were set up, they decided to name him Houdini (ABC P-468). He was quite the character and very expressive in thought and actions, and an extremely fast learner.

I later owned Houdini as well, and have one daughter of Curly Colonel and two daughters of Houdini. One of those daughters, when being weaned, jumped straight up over seven feet to join her dam on the other side of a six foot plus gate and would have gone over but she hit her head on a rafter. She would come down, look at the opening and jump again (flatfooted - no running start) and did this a total of three times. Only the rafter kept her from going over that gate. At nine months, rather than go into a trailer she tried to jump over a seven foot high wood fence and had her front legs over, but fortunately she had grown and weighed a good bit more than when she was weaned and could not get the hind legs over. She has never tried to jump since, but her foals all show great sports potential.

Curley Babes died in her sleep one night in her twenties and is sorely missed. Houdini is somewhere in Kansas, and to my knowledge is not being bred. I know Elleree is still alive and well in Washington and continuing to pass on this different Copper D bloodline. Anyone interested in adding this bloodline to their herd will not be sorry!"

Editors note:

Pat Johnson has bred curly horses for 18 years. She knew and was friends with many of the early breeders, including Benny Damele, Elmer Johnson, and Joe Mead. Sunny Martin and Pat always “agreed to disagree” and respected each other.

Pat has kept and nurtured the Copper D line that comes from the Cook Curly Horse. By doing this she has kept a “living treasure” alive and well in the Curly Horse breed. She firmly believes that this particular Copper D line is one that needs to be added to the stock of more Curly Horse breeders in order to improve the breed.

If you go to the Early Curly Breeders Association web site at www.earlycurly.com you will see the photos of two yearlings from this line as well as photos of two foundation broodmares from the Cook Curly Horse. These horses have been sold.