“She wasn’t much to look at – just an ol’ plain-looking brown mare. But she was a great broodmare, one of those that we always try to go back to.”
Foaled in 1938, the mare’s name was Do Good. Frank Vessels Sr. acquired her in 1945, two years before laying out the match track on his ranch that would evolve into Los Alamitos Race Course. A daughter of St Louis out of the Duggan mare Flossie, Do Good was bred by Jim Harkey of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Unraced on sanctioned tracks, Do Good was a 3-year-old when she was bred to Big Joe, producing a filly in 1942. Bred to Chicaro Bill, Do Good, the following year, foaled Senor Bill, who became a successful ranch and working horse sire. Over the next couple years, Do Good was getting by on scrub pasture near Carlsbad when Frank Vessels Sr. and Huntley Gordon came through the Southwest looking for mares. Never guys to let money interfere when it came to horses, the two buddies found plenty of breeding stock, enough to fill two cattle trucks.
Do Good was more than just filler. Vessels bred her to Clabber, the first world champion racing Quarter Horse, which he and Gordon owned. The result was Clabber II, which was foaled in 1946, set track records in California and Nevada, and took his sire’s place when Clabber died in 1947.
Establishing herself as the blue-hen queen of Vessels’ band, Do Good produced nine winners and a then record eight Register of Merit qualifiers from a dozen starters, including the stakes-winner-producing Clabber Shu V; Do Good Bam, who became the dam of Alamitos Bar; stakes-placed Do Win; and, of course, Chicaro Bill’s daughter Chicado V, whose contributions to the fastest breed on earth includes champions War Chic and Table Tennis, stakes-winning AQHA Champion Three Chicks, legendary stallion The Ole Man and successful sire Triple Chick. But in raising her foals, Chicado V was only doing what her mama had taught her. Do Good, according to people who handled her, devoted her entire life to her babies.
Do Good was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2008.
Biography updated as of March 2008.