16/07/2025
DOC O'LENA - 1967 (Doc Bar x Poco Lena) - by AQHA
THE MATING OF TWO FAMOUS INDIVIDUALS guarantees absolutely nothing. But, when two legends of the cutting horse industry met in 1966, the DNA fell perfectly into place to produce the only horse to ever make a clean sweep of the National Cutting Horse Association Futurity.
Even Doc O'Lena's name struck a perfect balance between his sire, Doc Bar, and his dam, Poco Lena.
Doc Bar earned his reputation through his progeny, rather than his own performance, but Poco Lena staked her place in history during a decade on the cutting horse circuit.
She was NCHA reserve world champion five times. She won the AQHA honor roll title in cutting three times, plus she's credited with 174 halter points. She won nearly $100,000 in NCHA during an era in which $15,000 would clinch a world title.
Doc Bar's owners, the Jensens of Paicines, California, bought the severely foundered Poco Lena in 1962. In a bizarre turn of events, she had been left unattended in a horse trailer for perhaps as long as four days, when the man hired to drive her to Texas from a show in Arizona disappeared. What's more, the long-term effect of drugs that had kept her from cycling during show season had compromised her broodmare potential. It took three breeding seasons before she was finally safely in foal.
Doc O'Lena, born June 21, 1967, was a tiny bay, with white on half of his left hind pastern. The Jensens hoped to sell him as a yearling to Don Dodge, who had trained Poco Lena. Don turned him down because of his size, or rather the lack of it. Now, of course, because of horses like him, his dimensions would be considered ideal.
The Jensens decided to keep Doc O'Lena and have him professionally trained. They asked "Shorty" Freeman, who was training out of Scottsdale, Arizona, to come try him on for size. Shorty had made a world champion of Hoppen and he was pursuing the title again with King S***t in 1968, when he stopped on his way to the Cow Palace in San Francisco to look at Doc O'Lena, then a long yearling.
When Freeman stepped up on Doc O'Lena that very first time, the greenbroke c**t ran off with him.
"I didn't think running off belonged to him, so that didn't really bother me," Shorty said in "Just Shorty," a book written about him. "And I didn't really feel his size was any factor. I don't like big horses to begin with. Besides, I knew what the old mare was, so I wanted to ride him."
Shorty said Doc O'Lena got most of his training as a 2-year-old.
"When he was a 3-year-old, I was haulin' King S***t for the championship of the world and gone a lot of the time," Shorty said. "A trainer made his living on the road showing horses then. But I didn't train Doc O'Lena anyway; he trained himself. I knew about 30 days after I got him that he was an exceptional horse. I always had to ride him last in the training program, 'cause if I didn't, I'd be mad at all the other horses in the barn. He was just that good."
King S***t's owner, Adrian Berryhill of Scottsdale, Arizona, bought Doc O'Lena from the Jensens in April 1970. Adrian agreed to take on Shorty as a partner, even though the trainer didn't have $7,500 for his half of the $15,000 purchase price. Shorty could only contribute his confidence and training.
Doc O'Lena paid for Shorty's share in December 1970 at the NCHA Futurity. The duo won both preliminary go-rounds, the semi-finals and the finals first horse and rider to do so. The feat was worth $17,357, half of which would go to Shorty, as the trainer, and most of which Shorty would return to Adrian for his stake in Doc O'Lena.
Doc O'Lena and Shorty blazed a lot of trails. The bay stallion with the elite pedigree became the first NCHA Futurity winner to sire a Futurity winner, with Lenaette in 1975. His son, Smart Little Lena, was the first horse to win NCHA's triple crown by winning the NCHA Futurity in 1982 and the NCHA Super-stakes and Derby in 1983. Smart Little Lena was also AQHA and NCHA's leading sire in 2001 and 2002.
Another milestone in curting horse history was set in 1978 when Doc O'Lena was syndicated for an unprecedented $2.1 million.
Doc O'Lena sired 1,313 registered foals, who earned more than 6,700 AQHA points. His progeny includes seven open world champions, six youth world champions and a total of nine reserve world champions in the open, amateur and youth divisions. Doc O'Lena's babies earned nearly $14 million in NCHA cutting competition and more than $320,000 in reining.
Doc O'Lena died in February 1993 at the Phillips Ranch in Frisco, Texas. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 1997.
AQHA and NCHA Hall of Famer Buster Welch said, - "Shorty did with Doc O'Lena in cutting what the guy who broke the 4-minute mile did for running: He opened - the door."
