“If you bet on that little horse, you won’t win peanuts.” Owner C. R. Jones recalls the origins of his horse, Make It Do’s, nickname, and it traced back to his racing career. Jockey Jack Robinson dubbed the gelding “Goober” and said the 875-pound runner was “no bigger than a peanut.”
Make It Do, a 1964 sorrel gelding, was by champion Breeze Bar out of Camelot Broom by Camelot’s Little Cuero. Make It Do, or Peanuts, as he was better known, was bred by Judd L. Morse of San Jacinto, California. The gelding won six of 22 races and earned $5,792. C. R. Jones of Lakeside, California, bought Make It Do as a three-year-old, hazed on him a year, and then began steer wrestling on him.
Make It Do carried many legendary cowboys to world titles in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association competition during his career. Aboard Make It Do, Tom Ferguson won six PRCA all-around titles and three steer wrestling titles; Frank Shepperson and Bob Marshall both won world champion titles steer wrestling and 10 cowboys rode the sorrel gelding at the National Finals Rodeo. Make It Do won the PRCA world championship in steer wrestling four years in a row, 1976-1979, and he won the average at the Calgary Stampede five consecutive years. He went to the NFR every year from 1973-1980, and each year, at least five of the top 15 cowboys rode him. Of an estimated 450 runs at the Finals, cowboys wrestled 225 consecutive steers from Make It Do’s back before ever missing one. The one that did get away set up on the cowboy.
When Jones retired Make It Do in 1981, more than $1 million had been earned on the gelding in rodeo arenas across the country and Canada. He was turned out at Jones’ Lakeside home. Make It Do is a member of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado, the Pendleton Rodeo Museum in Oregon and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma.
Make It Do died in 1995 after complications from a twisted intestine.
Make It Do was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2009.
Biography updated as of March 2009.