Hes A Peptospoonful Dies
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- Created on Thursday, 09 February 2012
- Written by QHN Staff
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As of Wednesday, Feb. 8, Hes A Peptospoonful was fine and loving life, according to McDavid, and says that it was a complete shock to everyone at Tin Top Road Stallion Station. “He was perfectly normal. He was in better shape than he’s ever been in because we swim him in our aqua tread almost every day. He was playing in his outdoor pen yesterday, like he always does, running around.”
When Hes A Peptospoonful was returned to his stall that evening, he was fed and he ate his food like he always does, saving a few cubes to snack on later. Kendal Kern, who works at Tin Top Road Stallion Station, saw him between 6 and 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8, and he was fine. Kern then took a horse to the aqua tread, and when she saw him again around 7:15 p.m., he was lying in his stall dead.
“We don’t know what happened; we just don’t know," McDavid said. "We sent him to Texas A & M to do a necropsy on him. This was probably going to be a good year for him because Kelle Earnheart won at Tunica, and Dean Holden has won recently. So things were really looking good. I guess, actually, the word devastated doesn’t really do justice to the way we feel.
“We may know something preliminarily in the next day or two. We probably won’t really know until next week. They are going to do tissue samples and stuff like that and that will take a little bit of time. We’re getting a lot of industry support. There’s a lot of people that have them and love them, and we’re getting a lot of emails and calls from people.”
Amy Cannon, Madisonville, Texas, bred Hes A Peptospoonful (Peptoboonsmal x Miss Smarty Rey x Smart Little Lena). John A. Harrah, Reno, Nev., originally owned him. David Wayne Miller, Bend, Ore., bought him in late 2000 and sold him to the McDavids.
The 14-year-old stallion has a number of top-earning performance offspring, and he was the No. 8 sire of the Top Sires in the Equi-Stat Cutting Statistics of 2011. Some of his leading offspring are: Cherry Chex Dually (04M, $253,450), Spoonful Of Cheerios (03G, $236,344), The Silver Spoon (03G, $234,039), Little Silver Belles (03M, $201,763), A Spoonful Of Style (04G, $140,455), Crossing Red River (04S, $133,302), Shes Ful Of Diamonds (04M, $122,399), Echos From The Past (03M, $106,702).
“Spoonful” made an immediate impact on the cutting world during his late fall debut at the 2001 National Cutting Horse Association Futurity in Fort Worth, Texas, with trainer Brad Vaughn, Galt, Calif. They won the first three rounds of the Futurity Open with 221.5, 223 and 221.5 scores.
Prior to the 2001 NCHA Futurity Open finals, former prominent Fort Worth area automobile dealer David McDavid and his wife, Stacie, purchased the stallion for a reported $1.5 million. The horse and Vaughn then placed eighth in the 2001 NCHA Futurity Open finals with a 217.5 finish and they earned a combined $50,726 at the show.
Due to his immediate appeal as a breeding stallion, Hes A Peptospoonful competed only sparingly from that point on. He did carry his co-owner, Stacie, to a Derby Non-Pro Championship worth $12,012 at the South Point Winter Championship in Las Vegas, Nev., in February 2002. Spoonful finished with $72,951 in career earnings.
A total of 204 Hes A Peptospoonful foals had earned a combined $3,547,169 at the time of his death, according to Equi-Stat records. His fame included serving as the linchpin behind the “Spoonful Million Dollar Bonus,” payable to any of his foals if it won a Futurity Open title at the NCHA Futurity in Fort Worth, the past several years starting in 2009.
