In 1955, my grandfather, veterinarian Dr. Leonidas Euclid Irby, took a Tennessee Walking Horse named Sunset Sue E. in a trade for a bill owed to him for doctoring a friend’s horses. Had it not been for that particular event I doubt that I’d have ever been born because my father, a Tennessee Walking Horse trainer, and mother, an avid horsewoman met through involvement in walking horses.
Following my grandfather’s horse trade, in order to transfer the horse’s registration papers into his own name, Dr. Irby joined the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ & Exhibitors’ Association and began to study and breed horses – with the breed officially established 20 years prior in 1935, and recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a distinct breed in 1950.