“There’s more to a cutting horse than size. Lynx Melody might have been little, but she was big enough to get the job done.”
Foaled in 1975, the sorrel mare was by Doc’s Lynx by Doc Bar and out of a Leon Bars mare named Trona. She was the first mother to win the National Cutting Horse Association Cutting Horse Futurity. Her trainer, Larry Reeder, said in an interview, “I realized she was small, but it didn’t matter – I knew she had the ability. You don’t measure a horse’s ability by the height of her withers.”
Lynx Melody was purchased by Billy Cogdell at the 1977 NCHA Futurity Sale, in foal, for $6,500. She was ridden up to two weeks before she foaled, and her colt was put on a Shetland mare so her training could continue. In December 1978, after foaling that colt, Lynx Melody made the journey to Fort Worth, Texas, to compete in the NCHA Cutting Horse Futurity. Spectators had nicknamed Lynx Melody “Little Bitty;” she stood only 13.3 hands, and they joked about the six-foot cowboy riding her. The crowd of 6,000 plus audience members were not disappointed on the night of the finals as they watched Lynx Melody’s spectacular showing.
Reeder’s stirrups hit the sand several times when the mare displayed her moves. During her last run, she kept alert, got down in the ground, and completely outsmarted every calf she faced. At one point, during her finishing performance, she gave a calf a hard stare, lifted her right front foot, and moved it several times in a clockwise motion, as if saying to the calf, “Try me, just try me.”
It was this type of maneuvering that gave Lynx Melody the high score of 221.5 and $63,817 in first-place winnings for her owner and rider. She also won the 1979 NCHA Derby and was named 1980 NCHA World Champion Mare. Her lifetime earnings totaled $113,681. She had 16 registered foals, and 15 of those went on to compete in NCHA as well.
The Cogdells not only won the NCHA Futurity in 1978 with Lynx Melody, but again, in 1999, with Shania Cee, a daughter of Lynx Melody and Peppys Boy 895. Lynx Melody was the first futurity-winning mare in the history of the futurity to produce a winner of the big event.
Lynx Melody was retired and had her own paddock called Melody’s Meadow, right beside the Cogdell’s ranch home. In September 2004, at the age of 29, Lynx Melody died in Canyon, Texas.
Lynx Melody was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2008.
Biography updated as of March 2008.