Arabian Horse Industry Breeder Stories

the Arabian horse breed has been around for thousands of years living among the desert tribes of the Arabian Peninsula through the ages the Arabian horse has become domesticated and formed a bond with man that to this day is still a sought-after treasure keeping history going are countless men and women who have dedicated their lives to continuing the Arabian horse heritage through breeding every year phenomenal Arabian horses are produced by the breeding industry many of the horses go on to have successful showing and breeding careers because of their great start in life from their breeders we wanted to take an insight gloves of how these breeders got to where they are today so we sat down to learn more about their great stories and memories from their time in the breeding industry a story that I remember growing up with my father who loved to tell stories would tell this about how we got into our first Arabian my parents were out looking for a riding horse for one of my older sisters and they happened upon a very - today in the Egyptian world a very very well known farm that st. Clair's who have worldwide influence on the on the Arabian horse so they happen to be in the same city that I grew up on in and my parents went to visit this farm and this white Arabian stallion stuck his head out the door and Witte then my dad said now that's my kind of horse and what he did was he traded his dune buggy for a down payment for the horse and thus began our our first stepped into the Arabians and I was young at the time I probably was probably six or seven and it was this white Arabian stallion and I would take and I would hop on him bareback with just a halter and lead rope he would neck rein and I would I'd push the lead rope on one side to make him turn one way and I'd push my hand on the other and ride him around the farm and I remember my mother saying julene you get off that horse right now and you put a saddle and bridle on that horse and I'd always say oh it's fine don't worry and the things that we do when we don't know better and I don't know how I'm still alive sometimes lived through my childhood but I would tie him to my old rusty swing set with a garden hose and hose him down I mean this is an Arabian stallion with mirrors all over the farm holds him down with like straight into his face I remember him just standing there you know and sometimes when I'm trying to give baths to horses like these days I'm like how did I ever live through that so his name was Bar name was Tut and he was just it was a wonderful horse and a perfect example of what I mean even the stallions make wonderful family horses so and actually my father would tell a story I'm also about the same horse that something happened in our neighborhood out in the country where I heard of like five or seven horses got out and the police came and they were trying to round up this horse as my father said bull you know I have an idea do you want my help oh no no we're get it we'll get it well a couple hours they came back and they said all right well what's your idea and so my dad got on tight and wrote him out and all the other horses followed followed him back and they caught the horses so if you really are attracted to a horse I was always lucky I always had horses in my life come to me I never I never really felt like I had to do an effort to get a horse I always in some way had them come to me in some way they always ended up with me I had answered ah oh my Hollinger he died in my arms I was a small child I had his Arabian horse world and there was a picture in from unsolder Sinan as a fall and I went to my mother and I said I want that fall in two years later he was in my barn I was living on the other side of the world and still that horse came to me and this happened to me many times you know I even remember that I was in Belgium and I was looking at these first pictures that the hick column took when he went to Cather of the horses from our young farm there were these pictures of Asia and of Amar and all of the animals looking at these pictures I was like look at these pictures five years later I was a stock manager it's it comes to you a good horse and you love it it's always gonna come to you and I think that's the most beautiful thing I can say about that there's a lot but I think I think what probably a pivotal point for for me in the Arabian horse was I went with my parents to Poland in 1995 and I've always been fascinated with it with the history but when I learned of the history of the Polish studs and saw the horses and the combination of how they raced the horses and showed the horses and the versatility of them and the beauty of it it was there was something that and this sounds a little corny but it's something that touched your soul and it really became part of me and it's why I started working for I work for polish prestige and I started working for pride of Poland and I just have a great passion for those horses and that was I think that's kind of what started me down the road and in the history of what they you know they risk their lives for these for these horses and so that was that was really appealing to me you know it's far as funny antidote I mean you know I think what's interesting about the Polish horses is everyone kind of used me it's just I I just love them the Polish from polish bloodlines but that's not necessarily a case I mean it's more of a philosophy that the that the Arabian horses is versatile and it can do every discipline it can be from racing to in the show ring and that's something that you know when I talk about being a Polish fanatic it's that the you know it's a it's a philosophy more than just specific bloodlines over the fifty years I've shown not a lot not two not not great numbers but I've always had something that I was showing and my claim to fame in the national world is co-ed of Phoenix the Western horse that has been many times national champions with his own or other owners so to speak and my seven-time national champion cahuita called me Emmy who is my half Arabian that I sold as a three-year-old but she is now back with me and as a brood mare but my greatest thrill in showing was I'm in region 12 in Georgia and we have a spotlight Futurity program like the signature program here in Scottsdale so I bought a breeding created my child raised him to a yearling took him to the spotlight and it's an amateur you have to show so I had to show him myself he won both classes he won the Futurity class and the auction class and it was before the home crowd you know so I still have this mental image of taking this horse out of the ring he despised audacious yes I still have that mental image of taking him out of the ring and the home crowd giving me a standing ovation that is that was the high point of my career and he's since been sold and still going on and winning is a halter horse and a Westerners I had a Mary years ago that was delivering a pole and its front legs were turned back and I was fortunate that we had a good vet that was pretty close to us but you know when you read it in a book it just says you reach in and you you turn the foals feet up so that it can get in position to be fold or you put a rope or something around the legs and pulling up well none of those articles that I read said anything about the mayor contractions and how difficult was to do that and so actually the vet showed up and we were pretty sure the umbilical cord was broken because this mare had been trying to deliver this boat for probably a half hour by the time he got there and it's that the head was out of the fall and the vet said you know Dean he said to me I think I can save the mare I don't think I can save the pole and he said just I'm gonna pull both legs out it said he actually gave them the full the mayor some drugs so she stopped contractions and he was able to straighten the legs out he said I'm gonna count to three and when I hit three just pull as hard as you can and so we pulled this baby out and the baby the mayor was standing in the aisle away the baby hit the ground and I thought oh man you know and she he reached over with some straw and he rubbed the full space and she sat up and she stood right up she never struggled to get up for anything and I mean it was just like the most amazing thing in the world that I I didn't sleep that night and I don't think I slept like the next three nights it was it was amazing but that that's some you know something that happens and it's encouraging and discouraging at the same time changed my life in the United States from Holland and it was definitely life changing of course for me was fantastic show horse he was a u.s. national champion halter he was Canadian national champion English pleasure you know Arlen Arlen on horse that could do both and but on the person now there was my friend I could go to the store and I could stay with him at night and I could you know do things with him and there was love of my life so that's the horse that was never gonna do I think a very personal story is that we have a mayor who is blind and she was about five years old and she contracted leptospirosis and she gradually went blind over about a six month period in both eyes and we never bred her and we were concerned about breeding her but she's a very beautiful man and we decided that we would breed her firstly to one of our own stallions he was related to her he was a half brother but we decided that we would take the risk on a fall you know without a huge investment and see what the mayor did how she would react to this fault see if we could get her to to accept a folde letter fullness without you know her blindness getting in the way and we had a nurse mayor lined up that if this fall or if this mayor would not accept this fall for whatever reason that we had a smear that could raise default so we had it all organized and the mayor came up to falling and she had a completely normal falling without any problem at all everything was completely normal she's a mayor that that we still turn out in a pasture she has a friend she has an old mare that lives with her that's her sort of her seeing-eye horse and the mare foaled and she had a very lovely filly and when she stood up after falling she refused to move she refused to to lift her legs off the ground and she shuffled around the stall through the straw until she encountered her baby with her feet and then she left you know put her head down and she'd found her baby and she raised that baby as if she was a side admit but when it was in the stall the baby learned very quickly to stay either in the very center of the stall or in the corners under the feeders away from where the mayor would walk and in the beginning we put a little halter on the baby and we put little bells down the side so that the slightest movement of the foal the bells would ring and the mayor would know where it was and so she would go out in a 14 acre field with her baby and the baby would zoom around like a completely normal baby but her blind mother would know exactly where she was and would deal with it in a completely normal situation and I think that that's a true testament that this Mae knew that that if she'd moved her legs and lifted them off the ground she may well have trodden on her baby she didn't do that and she shuffled around that stall until she found her baby and we never needed the nurse mare and now we've gone on to have three more falls out of this mare she's now in fall for the for the fit for a fifth fall in total now and all is completely normal she is dealt with like a normal cited me and and I think that's a special story and a testament to the horses themselves I think you know for me I enjoy showing and again they like Brent mentioned they have different personalities and so I enjoy working with them and I show mostly halter right now I used to ride but they they are so different and every one of them you know responds differently to to you so but I think for me like I said I enjoy working with the babies I enjoy working with the notes starting them out and for me there's nothing more rewarding than seeing you know the fruit of what we've what we've produced you know the following year when the babies are coming they start developing their personalities then and they kind of they kind of grow up you know it but you had they they need a good start it was funny because my mother was really the one that was the most passionate with the horses I mean my whole family you know loved the horses but my mother was I think passionate about them and we lost her back in 2006 and I ended up leasing a stallion that in the tail female line goes back to one of our main foundation mirrors and and fairly close up like only about four generations away so it was incredibly incredibly close up bloodlines to something to a horse long ago and it was Mother's Day and I had that year was one of the years that I had 12 mares falling and was you know watching everybody and nobody looked close to falling and so Mother's Day in the morning I remember still very specifically and this was four years ago that I was sitting at my computer working and I thought someday it'd be really nice to have a full on Mother's Day wouldn't that be just kind of neat to kind of honor my mother and so the day went on and I was actually supposed to be leaving the farm and mid-afternoon and things happen that I ended up still being at the farm and ended up was cutting down trees next to a pasture and I'm standing there helping with this process and this this mayor I'm you know looking out over the pasture and this mayor walks over to this fence line that's 20 foot away from her fence line and whinnies at the stallion and I still remember I said oh never Cirie quit teasing that stallion in your condition and she turned and she looked at me from like 200 foot across and I was just like really in your condition you know weeks from folding you're gonna be like teasing this boy so she walks over to her hay pile outside and she's eating a little bit and then she pees all of it and I'm like why you're wasting your hey what are you doing well she walks away and as she's walking away I'm like why is their urine still going out and I thought what's wrong and then I'm like did her water just break and I'm like oh my goodness and so I'm watching her and then I see these feet starting to sick and I'm like oh my goodness so we cut off the chain saws went running out and she sat down or she laid down there in the pasture beautiful peaceful afternoon and had a filly and so my mother's name was Mary Ann and so the filly of course is named Hadiya Mariana it was Good Friday many years ago and my daughter showed Arabians and we were heading to Iowa for a show and I had a mayor that was gonna fall probably in the next week or two but she hadn't laxed or anything yet and we're loading the car and just out of the corner of my eye I saw someone something just kind of run scoot in the pasture with this mirror and I'm thinking holy smokes what was that at first I thought it might have been a dog and I went down to the fence and here it was this bowl and it was a Versace fall and it was Good Friday so we named her calla lily and she went on to be a national top ten sweepstakes Joey and she won regional of in that year actually she beat the filly that was champion filly at Scottsdale that year at regional evident saw and that was my first Versace fall and she was really really special yeah so that was a story that turned out well too it's being able to see generations of a breeding program come together over 30 years and being able to remember a great-great grandmother of a foal though that is born and then see that full grow up and produce itself and being able to hopefully play a part in the perfection of the Arabian horse which doesn't exist but that's what we're all striving for us to breed that perfect horse so just seeing each generation go as we breed farther and farther down the line is very rewarding I have about two funny stories and this is about bloodlines because you're talking about now keep in mind that the winter Steen's and by collectively I mean my parents and I have kind of been through when the first time we went to Poland it was all about pure polish pure polish and pure polish because we didn't really understand we hadn't really we hadn't really talked to the directors we hadn't really fully understood the system we kind of had this American perspective I remember in in 2004 we were going there and ghazzal off chicag who is not technically a pure polish horse was that Jana Pulaski and this was something that you know for the winter Steen's this was a little tough to swallow and like he was he was standing at a very iconic stud and he was not a pure Polish stallion I mean you know other stars could kind of be forgiven because there's a lot of Polish in their pedigree and stuff because all clearly was you know you know half Egyptian and so that was hard too that was hauled that hard to square and it was really a great learning experience for us because we realized that we saw like pianissimo we saw those wonderful gazelle daughters and that it was really an epiphany that it is really about breeding better horses and it's not about restricting yourself to certain bloodlines and so we we kind of had this you know we were kind of going through this transition well one of the stars that are my my armed at my parents farm was a monogrammed daughter that was part of the she was the dam she she her dam was one of the mayors that came over from the in exchange for the monogram lease and a lot of people would come to the farmers here because she was everybody kind of knew about her and I remember one time I was waiting for my parents to come down and we were down in the in the barn and that this lady is looking at the monogram daughter and she looks up and she goes you know monogram isn't pure polish you know and you know his Stan was from Russia and so yes there's I was just about to say something and my father walks into the barn he goes yeah he's actually from Oregon and I think it really encapsulated that you know it's not about where the horses are from necessarily it's about they all come from the same place in the desert it's about you know the quality of the horse the other thing I was directed shala pianissimo was lost to the to the breed not too long ago was you know arguably one of the most beautiful mayors and as I mentioned that was a you know she kind of turned our thinking around when we saw her as a yearling and in Jana Pulaski director chela one time said that director cursed Olivette which was was his predecessor always lamented that palaka which was his peony Simha and pianissimo his great great grandmother he always he always lamented that he never he never reproduced her you know and she won in Paris and he was you know the pride and joy Anup Alaskan youth always like you know I was never able to reproduce that and director trellis said he he realized from crystal ovitch that he didn't need to reproduce penis much he just needed to leave something for the next generation to to do that and so that always struck me that it wasn't you know it's always not about the next the immediate generation it's about leaving the foundation for the for somebody else well I've been blessed in my career to have been Kemosabe z-- last caretaker or he was the last caretaker of me to okay he took very very good care of me and because of him I got to meet some amazing people from all over the world but when Kemosabe first came to me his fertility I me was he was older his fertility was not very good and mrs. husband came to me one day and she said you know he hasn't bred a mare a live cover mare in a many many many years so if you have a really good mare let's live cover him and maybe that will help him and I told mrs. husband I didn't think that was a very good idea but we had a mare at the ranch that a very famous mayor that was very kind and gentle and I knew she'd be all right with Kemosabe so the vet was there and and we decided to go ahead and do what mrs. husband wanted and live cover Kemosabe so we live covered him and he dismounted from the mayor and he started shaking all over and the vet was there and he said take him back to his stall quickly and I did and he's shaken and almost collapsing and I thought oh no I just killed Kemosabe so the vet checked him out and he he regained his breath and and regained his consciousness and I called up mrs. husband and I said you know Kemosabe is okay don't worry but we live covered him as per your suggestion and business husband don't ever ask me to do that again so so I said but don't worry is all right the vet checked him out everything's fine so within 20 minutes mrs. husband is pulling up to the ranch and I go out to the car to greet her and I said Ruth I promise you he's okay and she gets out of her car and she walks over to his stall she goes I know he's okay I trust you I just wanted to come see the smile on his face I had just bought her and I had gone down to buy her because Christine said maybe she'd be a great riding horse for my daughter and it was a rainy day and Jim Lowe was the trainer down there at the time and he they'd explained to me she was green she still would need to be finished and I had a great trainer bubble seller up up north so I would have taken her up there and to finish and I really did go down to buy a horse for my daughter but Jim it was a rainy day we had to go to a covered arena and Jim led her in to the arena and he was starting to say nuh Carol you know she's she's pretty green and I looked at Christina and I said it is this a horse you want me to buy and she said well yes Carol this is it sky young daughter who she was a huge fan of that great great stallion Khayyam and I just looked at her I think it was the face that was sticking out of the barn door who and I first fell in love with that book of horses and the Arabian and I said okay sold and she said but you haven't seen us right or yet and I said I don't even care she shortly after that got a little injury and I thought you know instead of trying to get her ready maybe we should just breed her and I had just come to Scottsdale and seen Steve Heathcott show a beautiful mayor name famous facts who was a claim daughter and she was by Fame VF and that's how I decided okay I have a kind of daughter at home I'm gonna breed to fame VF and I did that year and the resulting fool was showcase breeding is that is that was that was my specialty and for at least my my area of major influence when I was at university was studying equine science under the banner of animal science and then studied reading genetics so that whole idea of of breeding took me to Poland when I was a young man at the age of 22 which then turned into a five year stay in Poland and so I've pursued reading at at the top level of the industry now for all of my professional career fortunate enough to work with a group of fantastic people in Australia by the name of mala where a mullah hua Arabian stud who do a wonderful job breeding Iranians in very much the same vein as the Polish real estate stud so to have experienced generations now of horses in breeding programs not only through my direct experience over the course of my adult life but sharing in that collective experience of the of the breeders that came before me whether those were the breeders in Poland or the breeders in Australia there's essentially 12 to 15 generations of horses in my mind that I always think of every time we go forward breeding in the next generation and I think that's always the most exciting part is every spring whether it's the spring in the northern hemisphere or the spring in the southern hemisphere which I'm fortunate enough to sort of get a constant spring and the foals just keep coming on some side of the planet and so there's always some level of excitement to see how the genetics from that last generation came forward to make what is going to potentially change the breed for the positive in this current generation for me if it's just something that I do even though I have a career in real estate I try to at least feed my horses once a day on my own all 55 of them and I enjoyed its it's like mowing the lawn or doing the art but what you find out is when you spend time with them you get to know these are raving horses and they're very very much like people they are all total individuals and have their own personalities their own weird quirks good or bad just like people and when you spend time with them on a daily basis you get to see that you know and you have to take the good with the bad or not but it's it's kind of fun because it's just like people some some are a little moody some well you know and then there's other ones you just everybody loves you can't help but love them so I think that's probably for me I like anything with four legs in the tail I really do it just so happens that I have Arabians and I and I love them though but because they really are and you can talk about all day I think it's like having children until you have them you really can't experience it I think that's kind of how it is at the reining horse until you really have one and spend time with it and get to know you'll see I have a favorite story but I favor I obviously favor the Polish blood I've imported a lot of Polish mares and immigrants pure Polish but I like out crossing the Polish with the Egyptian horses I mean I'm not a hundred percent all Polish a hundred percent all Egyptian I believe in doing what produces a better horse if it means crossing it with Russian blood or if it's crossing with polish horses or Egyptian horses I'm for that and for a better horse we had a very famous mare called his stopa and stoah is in she's she's found in horses and show horses and breeding horses around the world so she's it made a huge huge impact and she spent most of her life in our care and when I was a senior in high school she was starting actually junior and senior in high school she was starting to get pretty sick and she was you know we babied her and cared for her and made her like a special brand mash every single night and shed arthritis and so we would squish like 30 clove cloves of garlic because it helped with the arthritis and she got ginger that we cut up and and carrots to make it all palatable and like Chinese herbs and so we would make this amazing concoction for her and then she slap it up and I just had this little bran mash face and she was an amazing amazing mayor and she we were all there when she died it was in 1993 so a long a long a long time ago but when you asked about it especially met with a mare it's just caring for her and and kind of like being there for her in the end so you know you you think about what events have happened that have created this bond I can tell you a quick story the first time my wife and I were alone was fun everybody was gone and Carol and I were having a cocktail we naturally so important and I looked at her and I said something's wrong with my bosoms and she saw how can you know that as I had no way of knowing but I know something's wrong for my voices she said let's go see her walk down the lines and there was this horse politic and so I knew what to do because we've got instructions about everything on our private thing and and so I called with that of course and I immediately got the what's up and walk the horse etcetera and you know that was to this day remember it sounds funny but I mean it's just as long that she knew that I helped her in the family and I think and also you know I'm a little old to be riding horses like George still does but I took up driving and I have a driving goose and the first time out was reserve champion the second time I was champion and it isn't about me it's about the quality of instructions that I'm using about the quality of the horse that I was right it is it just an unbelievable experiment you

Channel: Arabian Horse Association

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Id: 1hnbvx4F6xc

Length: 34min 1sec (2041 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2016