STANTON STUD DODGE – FS
Acknowledge: Australian Stock Horse Society 40th Anniversary Compendium
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See also: https://sconevetdynasty.com.au/australian-stock-horse-society-40th-anniversary-compendium/
In equal eighth position with over 7,500descendants is the stallion/gelding STANTON STUD DODGE – FS. This horse was foaled in 1964, and his conception like everything else about him unusual.
E H ‘Tiger’ Batterham had a very good mare by Dimray called Glamour, and Tiger had purchased a stallion by Radium called Rayon. John Stanton approached Tiger and offered him £100 for a foal out of Glamour by Rayon.
Tiger said, ‘I would never have mated those two horses as I would have considered the bloodlines too close, but I was to be proved very wrong. In those days £100 for a horse, let alone a foal, was an amazing amount of money, so I agreed to breed the foal’.
Tiger recalled that 1964 when STANTON STUD DODGE – FS was born was the worst drought that Timor, Tiger’s district has ever experienced even today (2010). To make it worse, rabbits were also in plague proportions. Tiger rand John and told him to pick up the colt or he may not survive.
‘When I took him home to feed him’, said John, ‘he’d had hooves only as big as eggcups.’ STANTON STUD DODGE – FS recovered rapidly from his poor start, and John broke him in at 20 months of age. John Stanton knew the first time he rode him that he had an exceptional horse. He invited his mentor, legendary horseman Frank Scanlon, over to see how well the horse was going. After riding the colt himself, Frank concurred with John’s opinion. He however suggested to John that to keep doing what he was doing STANTON STUD DODGE – FS needed four year old legs, not two year old legs. At first John was shocked, but he took Frank’s advice and turned him out for two years.
STANTON STUD DODGE – FS only produced seven foals before he was gelded. Frank Scanlon bred two foals by STANTON STUD DODGE – FS out of his Bobbie Bruce mare. One was the great little mare, TINY, that was given to Graham Keys, by Frank Scanlon, and the other was a colt that was gelded. John bred four foals by him; three deliberately and one accidentally. The three colts by Dodge all turned out to be successful sires: CECIL BRUCE – IS, STANTON STUD CHANCE – IS and BLENHEIM WONGA BOY.
TINY only ever had one foal, who had no progeny. The other daughter by STANTON STUD DODGE – FS was STANTON STUD JEANIE. The seventh foal, STANTON STUD SNAPSHOT, was gelded.
STANTON STUD DODGE – FS was to prove himself an exceptional working horse, winning the ABCRA Open Horse of the Year in 1972, in the same year John Stanton won the Calf Roper of the Year on him and also the Campdraft Rider of the Year.
STANTON STUD DODGE – FS lived to 33 years of age. In his retirement years, he ran in the bullock paddock at Guy Fawkes Station, which was managed by John’s lifelong friend Tom Scanlon, Frank Scanlon’s son. On the night in 1999 when STANTON STUD DODGE – FS passed away, he came right up the fence of the homestead and lay down at the back gate. This outstanding ‘sire’, who had spent 29 years of his life as a gelding, was found the next morning, sitting down with his head turned back into his shoulder as if he was asleep, but he was dead.
Of these nine most influential sires, seven tapped heavily into Cecil through Radium. The statistics for these stories were taken from the database of the Australian Stud Book in July, 2010.