12/04/06 Scamper clone

With all the effort and hours it takes to make it to the NFR finals this week, (where I just happen to be), especially in the events requiring a horse for a partner, the recent news that Charmaine James successfully cloned her famous barrel horse Scamper leaves a bad taste in my mouth. By cloning Scamper Charmaine has opened a Pandora's box that stands to forever change the sport of rodeo. Rodeo Blogger Ralph Clark asks us to imagine a line of several Mossy Oak Mudslingers or Little Yellow Jackets bucking out? How about 23rd century cowboys riding the same top stock that they ride now? When that happens there will be no serendipity left in rodeo, no wild rides on renegade stock, no barrel racers on ex-race horses. It is a travesty when $150,000 buys you a Scamper clone and it destroys the legacy of Scamper who was deemed unridable when Charmianes father purchased him from a feed lot cowboy. Is it an insecurity or too much security that takes a one in a million horse and turns it into merely a millionaires folly?