Pep, the Arabian Horse Goodwill Ambassador

There are untold snippets of equine history waiting for us to find them, so I run a quick daily search on auction websites for clues about Southern California's horsey past. My search was rewarded recently when I found this small snapshot of a horse

 with an envelope, in an auction listing. 

The envelope was the clue to the horse's identity, because the printed return address reads:

W.K .KELLOGG ARABIAN HORSE RANCH

POMONA, CALIFORNIA

I've seen that heading before. There are examples of it in the collection of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona. I believe that the letterhead paper that went with the envelope, featured a drawing of the Kellogg stallion *NASIK in the foreground, with a background of the San Gabriel Mountains and fluffy clouds surrounding the horse like a full-body halo.  The typeface is the same: rather narrow capital letters. 

Source: W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library collection

Knowing from the landscape in the photo and the envelope that the horse in my small photograph was probably a Kellogg Arabian, and that the envelope probably came from the late 1920s to mid-1930s, I started comparing the image to other pictures of the Kellogg Arabians from the Ranch's heyday. Then I scanned the photo and envelope, and sent the images to some equine history researchers I know who could tell me for sure if my hunch about the horse's identity was correct.

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While I waited for the researchers' answers, just for fun, I ran the horse photo through Google Lens, a search function driven by Artificial Intelligence. Remember, the old photo clearly shows that the horse had a wide white blaze and four stockings. 

It's important to remember that machines are only as accurate as the information they have been given, or are allowed to use. So while AI can be helpful in some cases, it certainly does not yet know how to correctly identify Arabian horses. I ran an online search using the same image four times in a row, and AI gave me four different answers:

1) First, it said that the horse in my photo was the Arabian stallion EL NATTALL.

Here's El Nattall. He did not have a wide white blaze and four long white stockings. 

El Nattall. Source: Arabian Stud Book, 1953.

So I ran the search again.

2) AI told me that the horse was in my photo was the Arabian stallion *EL ARABY.

Here's *El Araby. He did not have a wide white blaze and four long white stockings.

Source: All Breed Pedigree

I searched again.

3) Then AI told me the horse was the American Saddlebred stallion SENSATION, the son of Rex Firefly and Ware's Sensation.

Source: Pinterest

Except that the son of Rex Firefly and Ware's Sensation was actually called Sensation Rex. And he did not have a wide white blaze and four long white stockings.

4) In my final search, AI said the horse was the American Saddlebred mare "RWGC GOLDEN FIREFLY BHF."   

Source: Pinterest

Here's Golden Firefly. (The extra letters stood for "Reserve World's Grand Champion" and "Broodmare Hall of Fame." Google may have found this wording in a Facebook post and assumed the letters were part of her name.) She only had three white stockings. 

The moral of the story? You can search, indeed you probably should search online -- but please try to verify the findings with human beings.

You're better off asking a couple of folks who actually know Arabian horse history. My two friends confirmed my educated guess: the horse in the photo was indeed the famous Kellogg Arabian stallion PEP AHR #611. A chestnut horse, foaled in 1927, Pep was the son of two other Kellogg Arabians, the stallion Letan and the mare Fasal.

And as I looked back through my files, it appears that the same photograph had been published in the Los Angeles Times on January 5, 1930! W. K. Kellogg had saved it in a scrapbook, which is in the collection at the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library. 

Let's see:

Yep, same image, neatly edited (in a day long before Photoshop) by the Times' staff in the page layout.

Pep was foaled in March 1927 at the Kellogg Ranch. He is pictured here with his dam, Fasal, and W. K. Kellogg himself.  

Source: W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library
(author's photo of image in the WKKAHL collection)

The chestnut colt was named after one of the most popular Kellogg cereals of the day: Pep, made of wheat and bran. The company had introduced it in 1923. 

Like the other Kellogg Arabians, Pep was -- even when young -- a celebrity magnet. Here we see him and Mr. Kellogg (left) with cowboy stuntman and movie star Tom Mix. 

The publicity machine worked both ways: many celebrities photographed at the Kellogg Ranch with the Arabians were also featured in magazine ads for Kellogg's cereals. (That subject is worthy of its own blog post.)

A photo of nine-month-old Pep was featured in this spread in the Pomona Progress-Bulletin published December 31, 1927.

Pep's lead rope is being held by a local Boy Scout.

Pep won first place in his classes at the Orange County Fair and Los Angeles County Fair in 1927, and was Champion Stallion at the 1929 Orange County Fair.

A naturally bright young horse, Pep became a regular feature at the free Sunday Horse Shows at the Kellogg Ranch. A souvenir postcard identifies him as "THE OFFICIAL GREETER AND SHOW HORSE."  He could open a box, remove a handkerchief and give it to trainer J. L. "Lou" Treesh, return the handkerchief to the box, and close the lid. Pep also teetered on a plank, told numbers by pawing with a foreleg, said "yes" or "no" with a nod or a shake of his head, untied knots, and would lie down and then sit up like a dog. 

Source: Author's collection. 

Newspaper accounts show us that Pep headlined a special appearance of several Kellogg Arabians in Whittier, California in 1931.

Whittier News, May 15, 1931

This 1935 newspaper ad promotes one of Pep's last public performances in Southern California, this time at Torley's Grocery Store in Ontario. 

This ad appeared in the November 1, 1935 issue of the Ontario Daily Report newspaper. 

I haven't been able to determine whether Pep actually appeared at the grocery store or not. Either way, he was about to make his exit from the Kellogg Ranch stage; he was for sale. 

In her book The Romance of the Kellogg Ranch, Mary Jane Parkinson quotes from an October 1935 letter from Ranch manager Herbert H. Reese:

"Pep received an injury in a fall which damaged his graceful tail carriage, and he never developed satisfactorily as a saddle horse, so I decided to price him to parties in the Philippines at $1,000."

The Pomona Progress-Bulletin reported Pep's sale on November 13, 1935, with no mention of the buyer's name. 

Parkinson also quoted from a Los Angeles Times article that said not even Reese knew the name of Pep's new owner. The anonymous buyer had specified that he wanted "the best Arabian stallion available." 

Documents in the WKKAHL collection show the name of Pep's purchaser as "Getz Bros. San Francisco for export to the Philippines." Getz Bros. purchased two other Kellogg Arabians in September 1936, Nareyna and Raabas. 

The sale of Kellogg Arabians overseas in the 1930s and '40s is also worthy of a separate blog post.

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Many thanks to Carol Woodbridge Mulder, Dolores "Dee" Adkins, and the staff at the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library, Special Collections, University Library, Cal Poly Pomona, for their assistance.

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A photo of *Nasik, this time under saddle, appeared on another version of the Kellogg Ranch letterhead. It's printed in two colors and the typeface is different than the example above. 

Source: W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library

Tom Mix's visits to the Kellogg Ranch are the subject of another of my blog posts:

https://californiahorsehistory.blogspot.com/2025/08/looking-gift-horse-book-in-mouth-tom.html