Bar Okay

Bar Okay, SI 81 -- born 1969.  Sire: Okay Gray TB, by Revoked TB.   Dam: Cherry Bar Angel by Denny Bar. Okay Gray sired many ROM Race foals including TAAA, Smart Deb. Photo by Gary Lake.

Dad (Frank Dickinson) liked gray horses. He had observed that a lot of the rodeo arena performance horses were gray. After Silky Fox's burials, Dad hunted for a replacement continually. Finding another Silky Fox kept him busy for his senior years. Bar Okay met most of Dad's critical requirements.  He was athletic, gray, speed bred, was a good handling horse and unrelated to Silky Fox and Skips Count mares.

Marketing people like color, pure hue colors.  Colors market easy whether it is Texas Longhorns or horses with flashy, splotichity, brindle, bold markings and rich colors.  Odd colors sell. By pure hues in painting color theory, a hue refers to a pure color - one without tint or shade. Colors of horses attract the eye for a value color on hues close to  "gold, silver, white, black, red, blue." Value colors could include a golden palomino, black, bright red chestnut, a silver or dapple gray, a dark grullo. Mixes of colors have special values like a golden buckskin, blue or wine roans, pintos, appaloosas; in Texas Longhorn cattle we have brindles and blends of brindle/appaloosa/pinto, all in one.  With Texas Longhorns we have a tri-color of several blends of color similar to a blood bay or smoky colors like on a spanish dun mustang. Regardles of what people may say or think they like, values evolve for marketing toward pure hue colors.

Dad loved a dapple gray. He had a lot of gray horses over the years. Dad raised one of the few gray daughters of Three Bars. Historic Arab horsemen chose grays for endurance desert use due to the white hair color reflecting the sun and the dermis skin tones of a gray horse are black with an extra layer of protection to prevent sun penetration or cancer.

Dad didn't promote Bar Okay like he did Silky Fox. He didn't want the work of breeding a zillion mares at all hours of the day and night. As a result Bar Okay doesn't show up much in the record books, but his progeny were well used in the rodeo arenas for every event. There were a lot of gray horses in the arenas and most people didn't even know where they came from. A lot of people could have started with Bar Okay and done well.