17/06/2026
His name meant "pretty good" in Spanish. He turned out to be one of the greatest Quarter Horses who ever lived.
Foaled April 10, 1944 near Rocksprings, Texas, Poco Bueno was a plain brown c**t out of a mare named Miss Taylor — a mare who wasn't much to look at herself but always threw good babies. His sire King had been purchased for just $800. Nobody expected the c**t that came from this pairing to change Quarter Horse history forever.
He was a late bloomer with thick muscling that made him look slow and clumsy rather than athletic. When E. Paul Waggoner first saw him as a yearling at a Texas show in 1945 he saw something nobody else did — and bought him on the spot for $5,700. Waggoner shipped the brown c**t to his ranch in Arlington, Texas and put him in the hands of legendary trainer Pine Johnson.
Johnson admitted later he doubted the horse the moment he saw him — too heavy muscled, didn't look like an athlete. Then he climbed on. Poco Bueno cut his first cow so cleanly and so fast that he flipped Johnson clean off his back. The roping plans got shelved immediately. A cutting horse legend was born on the spot.
He won Grand Champion Stallion titles at Denver's National Western Stock Show, the Fort Worth Stock Show, the State Fair of Texas and the American Royal in Kansas City. He earned his AQHA Championship. But it was what he passed down through breeding that truly built his legacy — generations of Poco-bred horses known for toughness, natural cow sense, and a fighting heart that refuses to quit.
His own trainer said it best — that out of every horse he had ever worked with, Poco Bueno was the greatest. Gentle. Smart. Easy to handle. And nearly every one of his c**ts carried that same temperament forward.
He died in 1969 and was buried standing up across from the ranch entrance — a four-ton granite marker still standing watch over the spot today. In 1990 he was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame.
A brown c**t nobody expected much from became one of the true foundation legends of the
