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Claude Thompson and the Road to Recovery
G.W. "Shorty" Kennedy, foreman of the neighboring LS ranch, is astride one of the dependable Appaloosas. He holds a rope taut while the Mansfield cowboys handle the calf at the other end.
In 1938, a wheat farmer from Moro, Oregon and a few of his stockman friends realized that the True Appaloosa horse was on the verge of extinction. Of the surviving horses with Appaloosa characteristics, Claude Thompson calculated that only a hundred or so would be capable of registry in the breed standards he set forth as founder of The Appaloosa Horse Club. In Thompson's words, "we are championing a breed so few in number that the main purpose is to preserve the blood of the once-famous Appaloosa war and buffalo horses of the northwest."
Thompson and the other original ApHC members practiced select breeding and the remnants of the line slowly bred back to the original hardy, surefooted Appaloosa. From the 1940's to the 1960's the breed stood out in showing, equitation, rodeo, and ranch work. This heyday period brought forth some of the greatest Appaloosas ever such as Sundance, Patchy, Mansfield's Comanche, Double Six Domino, Navajo Britches, Joker B., and Chief of Fourmile, to name a few.
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