Lena's Diamond Chex is one of four tobiano sons of Doc O'Lena.

The silence is almost complete, except for the wind blowing slightly, the quiet rattle of the leaves, and the soft movement of the horses. Len and ! ! Linda Schultz have ridden to the base of the North Sister, Len with his comrade Mighty War Drum, the Paint stallion they call Drummer, and Linda on her trusted tobiano gelding, Quantum.
The couple enjoy this most of all, leaving their Bend, Ore., home and taking a day ride to the majestic mountains that surround them.
“In the late summer and fall,” says Linda, “we just love to go on those high mountain trails up in the Cascades. “I love to watch cutting and reining and working cow horse events,” Linda continues, “but I really have no desire to participate. My desire is to ride my horse up into the mountains and look at the wildflowers and all the little cascading waterfalls, those big beautiful green meadows, and where you have to crank your head straight back to look at the top of the mountain, it’s just so close to you. It’s like a little piece of heaven up there.”
The Schultzs have always liked recreational riding. Neither Len nor Linda grew up with horses, but! ! one of their favorite things while dating was to go to a place near Concord, Calif., rent horses by the hour, and go riding.
When the Schultzs married and moved to western Oregon where they raised a family of seven children, six sons and a daughter, they also continued their interest in horses. While running their carpet- and upholstery-cleaning businesses, Len and Linda kept horses for Len to ride while hunting and for them both to use on the trails near their Corvallis, Ore., home. Their children grew up around horses and learned to ride and feed, and pitch stalls, but they never developed the passion for horses that continued to weave through their parents’ lives.
When they “semiretired,” the Schultzs moved away from the wet winters of Corvallis and found a home in the Tumalo area of Central Oregon.
“If you draw a line from Sisters to Redmond to Bend and back to Sisters again,” Linda explains, “it forms a perfect triangle. We’re smack dab in the middle of tha! ! t triangle.” The area is lush and green, mainly irrigated hay farms. They found it one year when Linda suddenly realized it was green everywhere around them.
“I said, ‘This is where I want to live,’” she remembers, and her son replied, ‘Yeah, you and everybody else. There’s never anything available (for sale) out here.’”
Later, when the Schultzs were serious about moving, they found their current Skyview Ranch on the same road. The ranch house rests above a bit of valley facing north, with the Three Sisters above their left fence, Smith Rock visible in the northeast, and Mount Hood to the north. In the dark of a Central Oregon night, they have a view of the stars, leading to their choice of the name “Skyview Ranch.”
So far, Skyview Ranch sounds like a pretty fine place to live —a beautiful view, a couple of good horses, lots of trails for riding, and the clean fresh air of the “Golden Triangle.” But there are other horses grazing Skyview’s fields. Horses that car! ! ry some of the finest of current and Foundation Paint and Quarter Horse bloodlines, bright-colored horses that please the eye; athletes that excel in the arena. Far from Len and Linda’s beloved mountain trails, these horses are designed to be experts in the performance events.
“We’re trying to breed well-bred tobianos for reining, cutting, working cow horses, with lots of good Quarter Horse bloodlines,” says Linda Schultz. This is their other life. The Schultzs’ pride of the moment is the 1992 stallion Lena’s Diamond Chex, one of only four tobiano sons by American Quarter Horse Assn. (AQHA) Hall of Fame sire Doc O’Lena, whose versatile offspring have won over 14,562,000 National Cutting Horse Assn. (NCHA) dollars, and over $321,500 as reiners. Lena’s Diamond Chex is out of Diamond Lill, a mare representing Foundation breeding in both the Paint and Quarter Horse breeds.
They call him “Cutter,” and he’s already established himself as a using horse. He has Register Of Me! ! rits in reining, calf roping, heading and heeling, and won both the Oregon Reining Classic (Open and Novice) in 1999 and the roping at the Houston Livestock Show under Robbie Schroeder. His first foals are five and are being shown in roping, reining, and cutting. Linda feels he is on the edge of making a huge impact on the using horse world.
“I bought a weanling of his and liked her so well that I started breeding mares to him,” Linda says, adding, “I’ve got three of his daughters—one of my favorite mares is a beautiful buckskin daughter of his.”
Linda gave the horse’s owner, Glen Evans, a call when a 2001 Lena’s Diamond Chex foal arrived, and found that Evans had decided to sell the chestnut-and-white stud.
Linda says, “I couldn’t believe it—I know how much he loved that stallion. Glen said he was going to be real particular about who bought him, and then said he would sell him to me. I said I was flattered, but I was sure I couldn’t afford him. He said he’d be ! ! willing to work out a deal.
“My husband and I talked about it, prayed about it, talked about it some more, drove down to see the horse, and it was love at first sight. He’s such a wonderful horse, with a wonderful disposition.
“So many stallions that are nicely bred and are good performers have diminished body size—they’re tiny. Cutter is 15 hands and a good 1,200 pounds. He’s still a beautiful performer and he’s big and stout enough to do the roping,” she says.
Versatility is one of the prime ingredients the Schultzs are looking for in their foals. Linda is the ranch research specialist, chasing down talent producing horses. “I love to study pedigrees,” she says. “It’s fascinating. I love to read about these horses that have done well, especially on some of the older ones. If you weren’t involved and you didn’t live back then, how else do you know about these good old horses?”
In choosing stallions, “I try to find the stars before they get expensive,” Linda! ! says.
An example: Last year, the Schultzs bred to a son of Smokum Oak, Shawn Renshaw’s Smokums Prize.
“He won the Snaffle Bit Futurity two years ago,” Linda says, “and right now, he’s the top money earning NRCHA horse of all time. He’s won over $200,000, and he’s only five years old.” The Schultzs’ ultimate goal is to mix the Quarter Horse working lines that are so popular in today’s arenas with tobiano Paint horses, breeding for Paint babies with exceptional performance ability.
As far as breeding for the double-gened homozygous Paints that guarantee color in their babies, Linda says, “I don’t necessarily breed to get homozygous horses. But when I breed good horses to good horses, and I happen to be lucky enough to get (a homozygous foal), I’m overjoyed—that’s one more step to getting better bloodlines into the tobianos.” Too often, Linda says, “If you have a homozygous horse, it has a missing part to its pedigree,” so she is delighted when she has what she co! ! nsiders a complete pedigree.
“The foaling season before last, I took my tobiano daughter of Doc Doll, not homozygous, and bred her to Color Me Smart, who’s not homozygous, and got a filly that was homozygous. She has Doc Doll on the bottom and Color Me Smart (Smart Little Lena x Doxs Painted Lady) on the top, so she has a full pedigree.”
Linda says, “Homozygous stallions and mares, if they’re used properly with responsible breeding, are a boon to the tobianos, and people can then bring more Quarter Horse bloodlines into the Paint breed without getting a lot of breeding-stock babies. That’s where the value lies, in my opinion…not to breed homozygous to homozygous, but to breed homozygous to Quarter Horse…and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Price is a factor. The Schultzs bred to Rooster (Gallo Del Cielo, ranked the number one top sire of reining horses sold at auction), in part because his breeding fee, at their maximum of $4,000, was a bargain compared to his full ! ! brother, the popular Grays Starlight, at $10,000.
“When we bred to Hollywood Dun It,” Linda says, “his fee was $4,000, and that’s kind of our top level. We can’t really spend $9,000 to $12,000 on a breeding—we don’t have that kind of money.”
The Schultzs blood test their horses, checking for the homozygous gene, and Linda uses that knowledge when scheduling her mares to outside stallions.
She says, “I can’t spend $4,000 on a stud fee—by the time you get your mare in foal, the cost is actually at least $5,000—and then end up with a breeding stock (uncolored) baby. But if I breed a well-bred homozygous mare to one of these famous Quarter Horse stallions, I’m pretty confident of what I’m going to get.”
Under their LS registration prefix, the Schul
tzs are developing a small but choice band of mares. “We have been keeping an average of two fillies from each foal crop,” says Linda, “and this year we’re planning to keep three. I specifically breed certain mares ! ! to certain stallions, hoping for fillies to keep.”
The herd now includes daughters of Color Me Smart, QT Poco Streke, Doc Doll, Hollywood Dun It, Lena's Diamond Chex, Docs Hickory, Smart Little Lena—a full sister to Lenas Wright On—and a tobiano daughter of Smart Chic Olena. Also, there is the first tobiano filly sired by Mr Melody Jac, half-brother (through sire Hollywood Jac 86) to Hollywood Dun It. Quick research shows that Hollywood Jac 86’s blood pumps in the hearts of seven of the top 25 reining sires in 2001—and Hollywood Dun Its’ offspring have won nearly $3,000,000 in reining.
Now the Skyview breeding program moves to a more complex level.
“As time goes on and there are new young stallions on the horizon, if I see some that I really like and want in the program, I’ll pull them in,” says Linda. “But ultimately I’m hoping to breed basically to my own stallions. We own syndicate shares to Color Me Smart and QT Poco Streke, two stallions I really admire, so ! ! I’ll continue breeding to them, but for the most part, it’ll be our own sires. It’s a pretty intricate thing, but the ultimate as a breeder is to have your own babies as broodmares and as stallions.”
Skyview Ranch has four stallions, in addition to Lena’s Diamond Chex. Len’s using horse is a homozygous black-and-white stallion, Mighty War Drum, by Champion team penning horse MightyLuckyJoe and out of Little Dixie Robin.
“We’ve had him since he was a baby,” says Linda. “He’s my husband’s riding horse—he packs and hunts and is a good mountain horse, and he makes babies that are quiet and gentle, just like him. Good trail horses and cowy, too. We have a buckskin filly by him and out of a Lena's Diamond Chex daughter.”
They also have three of their own on the calendar, charged with proving themselves. One is a 1999 chestnut homozygous tobiano stallion they call LS Delta Flyers Peppy, out of Gay Bars Diamond and by Delta Flyer, himself out of the great Paint Cutting ! ! Horse Hall of Fame mare, Delta, and by Peppy San Badger. He is in cutting training for now, but will take a vacation for breeding season, resuming after his spring job is finished.
Also standing with a limited book is the two-year-old homozygous bay LS Smart N Hot, by Color Me Smart and out of a Doc Doll daughter with Mr San Peppy and Doc’s Hotrodder on her bottom side. Linda plans to use him on some of her Quarter Horse and nonhomozygous mares.
“From now on,” says Linda, “the babies I keep either have to have a really famous Quarter Horse daddy or there have to be two of my stallions on the pedigree. I want to breed my stallions back and forth with the other ones’ daughters, and then I’ll have my own unique program… eventually.
Toward that goal, Linda is counting on their buckskin tobiano Hollywood Dun It son, LS Dun It In Color, out of a QT Poco Streke daughter.
This colt is the embodiment of Linda’s breeding philosophy. She bred two homozygous bay QT Poco S! ! treke mares to Hollywood Dun It, hoping for a buckskin tobiano colt. The first of the mares to foal dropped a flashy buckskin colt with black points and minimal white, a striped mane, and a couple of lightening bolts of white across his withers and rump.
“I couldn’t have sat down with a paper and pen and made him better than he came out,” laughs Linda.
He will join the other Skyview stallions this year. There is already a lot of interest in the young stallion, and Linda has bred him to a very few of their own mares; his first foals will arrive this spring. In fact, this busy spring will bring the first of LS Delta Flyer Peppy’s babies, and their first breeding season with Lena’s Diamond Chex.
Linda juggles the research and pedigree chores at Skyview Ranch, while Len is deeply involved with the breeding, handling and starting of the young horses in the round pen. Len also takes charge of raising and putting up all the hay they use on the ranch, using those green m! ! eadows below the house.
“My husband is picky about hay,” says Linda, “and you know what you’re getting when you grow it yourself. Len does all the cutting and baling, and we all buck the hay.”
Their youngest sons, 17-year-old twins Derek and Brent, help with the outside chores involved in a successful horse ranch…feeding, cleaning and fencing. They resist the riding though…”Unless,” Linda laughs, “there’s a girl to impress.” This is not a business for the impatient—blending and working toward improving any breed of horse. It involves choices: which mares to keep, which mares to sell.
“Sometimes you have to sell what people want to buy,” Linda has found, “not necessarily what you want to sell,” but the rewards are great,” she says. “We’re going to do this as long as it’s fun and our health is good, and right now we’re having a blast.”
When all the babies are born and the hectic breeding season is over, when the veterinarian has gone home with her complete lab-! ! in-a-pickup, when the hay is in and the tractor is idle, then Len and Linda Schultz load up Drummer and Quantum and ride back out to the Three Sisters. There they find once again the last piece in their “little bit of heaven”—that pure relationship between a person and a horse.