I grew up in a small Tennessee twon from which the mare Lillie White walked to the 1939 and 1940 Mare World Championships. My father's older  sister married the brother of Lillie's trainer. As a result, Daddy was well acquainted with the top show horses that were in training at D.H. Brock's stables in the thirties. He would occassionally tell me about these horses as he took our family to Saturday nigh Walking Horse shows in the late sixties. As I fell in love with the breed and studied its history in my treasured copy of Ben Green's Biography of the Tennessee Walking Horse,         I wondered why none of the horses competing in the pleasure classes at these small shows walked. I was not exactly sure what a pleasure horse walk looked like, but nothing I saw ridden when still living in my hometown had any head nod, not the mention overstride or the timing that vaguely resembled what the show walkers did. The flatshod horses that I saw all appeared to be doing what my dad called a singlefoot, or a flat-out speed rack.

When I went to MTSU in Murfreesboro to study to be a teacher, I continued to look for horses - any horses - capable of moving at flatshod running walks like those show walkers from the thirties that Daddy had described. One  September, my friend and I actually saw a black daughter of Sun's Midnight Duke walking rather than pacing at C.A. Bobo's Sellabration Sale for yearlings. My girlfriend bought the filly. I continued to search for horses that could do     this gait rather than pace, stepping pace, or rack.

In 1972, I began attending George Peabody College in Nashville as a graduate student in library science. One night, a group of friends still back at MTSU arranged a blind date with a friend of their friends. The movie and dinner went okay, and he suggested that, since I liked horses, I go with him the next afternoon to meet his stallion. Really tired of dorm rooms and dusty stacks at Vanderbilt's library, I readily agreed.

I don't know what I expected when my date pulled the stallion from his stall. I had certainly see plenty of large horses on pads, but this one was barefoot, and easily went over 16 hands. When give the cue to move on the lunge line, the big sorrel circled his handler at a timed-up walk. Suddenly   I realized that I was seeing what Daddy had seen over thirty years before. The stallion's head nodded in time with ever deliberate footfall. The rear   legs slipped up under his huge body to overstride about thirty inches. This was a walking horse that really walked! I fell in love!

          Rip had been bred by the Elrod Brothers of Murfreesboro. He had been destined for the padded show ring, but    an accident on the ice as a yearling resulted in a fence cut which damaged the tendons in one rear leg. That was    how my future husband and his brother Bobby had acquired   half interest in the big horse. After Harry and I were married, I persuaded them to do some posters for local advertising and run an ad in the Voice. Neither yielded results. Serious pleasure competition was still several years in the future, and trail riding was in hiatus. Breeders wanted pacy black stallions by World Grand Champions. Poor Rip was a lowly grandson of Midnight Sun whose dam, as well as sire's dam, were by Miller's Wilson  Allen, a chestnut sire of some of the top flatshod show Walkers in the country before    the padded horses became the show ring stars. Rip's second dam had been a daughter of Sam Allen.

Rip's court consisted of the few mares that were owned by Harry and me, along with those of Bobby and his wife Linda. My first mare, formerly impossible to settle, raised a filly by Rip that broke out into a beautiful walker with a fast running walk and lovely back end. Her dam had been  multi-gaited, but with no true flatwalk and no overstride. Many of his fillies were quite elegant.

Rip was always a gentleman. Formerly afraid of stallions, I learned to be comfortable in his presence. One Saturday, Harry was working, and the  stallion was running with his mares. Bobby drove up with a couple from Alaska who were interested in the horse. He whistled the horse in, and the herd came loping toward the barn area where we were waiting to see them. I was standing on a huge cherry tree root. Rip slowed a little as he  curved around the tree,      and I jumped out to grab his halter. He could have jerked my arm out of its socket or smashed my 110 pounds into    the tree, but the minute my slight pressure hit the halter, he froze. The Alaskans were quite impressed. (I still do not know why he was in the field with a  halter, as we never turn out our horses wearing them.)

         Bobby's wife Linda is a physical therapist, and he began using various physical therapy techniques on the big stallion's injured leg in an effort   to bring him back to rideable soundness. He was well-broke, but would begin to limp   if ridden for more than half an hour. In 1977,  the horse was going sound for long rides in the hills of Lincoln County.

In April, the Fayetteville Early Bird show had added a class for plantation horses for the first time. Those involved  asked Bobby and Linda to show two of theirs so enough interest in the class would guarantee its inclusion in future years. Because the judge for the show was the late Herman "Dot" Warren, an older trainer who remembered the early days of the breed, Harry and Bobby decided to show Rip at the Early Bird show.

        Rip was certainly not the typical horse that appeared in plantation classes at the time. Unloaded from the trailer, he took up more space than  most horses on the ground. Head up and shaking boldly, he flat walked on the lunge line as the boys attempted to wear him down a little before saddling up. Trainers in the trailer area watched him move, looked down at his feet, then watched him move again. Some appeared mystified. The inspector was not pleased with his initial "studdy" behavior. He sent the horse away, and after more work, the stallion behaved for that gentleman.

Dot Warren did not judge the show that night. For reasons unknown, he failed to appear, and judges were chosen by lot to officiate for several  classes in which they were not competing. Seven horses answered the gate call for the plantation class. Rip lived up to his name as The Rip-Snorter   as he entered the ring that night, head up, nodding deeply, teeth clacking, ears flopping. The running walk was his best, smooth and nodding, pulling and pushing with a three foot overstride that had him gliding around the ring. He took both canter cues with ease. At the end of the lineup, Snort and his son Rusty pulled up side by side. A gentleman in the boxes turned to Harry and me to ask, "Is  that your stallion?" When Harry answered affirmatively, the man just shook his head. "Good horse! He really earned    the blue in this class!"

      Rip got no ribbon that night. Rusty, not even shed off, having performed anything but a running walk, placed third. That was the beginning  and the end of Rip's show career. He was thirteen years old at the time, and it would be another six or seven years before judges in the Middle Tennessee area learned to appreciate the simple fact that plantation walking horses must nod if they are walking in the show ring.

              Three years later, Harry and I with our young son moved from the farm near Murfreesboro to a smaller place in Bedford County. The horses that moved with us were, with one exception, sired by Rip. The pleasure horse market was still depressed, and with me as a full time mom, we had no time nor funds to raise foals. Rip had at this point failed to respond to therapy, which meant he as back to breeding status only. Bobby had received an offer from someone with a large court of mares that wanted his own stallion. No one listened to my protest when they sold  Rip at Easter time in 1981.

Over the intervening twenty years and more, Rip remains my standard of what a natural pleasure walker should do. I have seen very few stallions ridden since then who remind me of him in their way of going. Three that come to mind are or were Suzanne Most's Stock's Superstar, Kris Quaintance's Williams King, and the Aadland's The Pride Piper, all of which we saw compete on the new lite shod circuit of the eighties.

Our farm has one Rip grand-daughter at this time. While her style is not as bold nor long-striding, she walks the walk with elegance, as if knowing she is bred to the gait. March of 2003 marked the fortieth anniversary of the foaling of  the Old Rip-Snorter. I continue to wonder what impact he  might have had on the breed if his times had been different, or if his arrival had been just ten years later.....