Tuesday, August 28, 2007

A Baby Boomer Gets on with Her Dream of Arabian Horses


Series starts here

After the long drawn out events of Lindsay's brain cancer, it took a while to get to a place financially that I even felt like I could look towards my dream. While I had continued to show Arabian horses all the way through this troubled time and had actually even shown Scandalous during a season, the breeding part of the dream had come to a standstill.

By the time I did finally decide I could think about breeding my first foal was a grown horse, a huge grown horse. He had matured to 16 hands and he was as sweet as a horse can be. I had no doubt in my mind the way to go was to return Scandalous to GS Khochise.

By then the beautiful black bay Arabian stallion was owned by Betty Chapman and was well on his way to amassing more championships that any other Arabian horse in history. While it was great to have the stallion gain all that notoriety, it also meant that his stud fee had gone up considerably.

I was, however, due to the quality of my mare and the horse produced by her mating to the Khemosabi son already, able to negotiate a package on the breeding fee. I agreed to purchase a number of breedings for the price I had paid originally. That made the cost more manageable.

So it was that in the spring of 1995 Scandalous went to visit GS Khochise. The Arabian mare began showing the minute she stepped off the horse trailer. Just the sound of Khochise's voice was enough for her.

Unfortunately, we didn't get her settled as easily as we had before. The stallion was breeding a lots of mares and the vet was doing a lot of palpating to see what mares he could hold off on breeding trying to stretch semen as far as possible. Scandalous's system just didn't take to all of that intervention.

By the time we finally did get the mare in foal, I had accrued a pretty hefty vet bill. Believe it or not, the charges were running over $1000 a cycle. It was the third cycle before we actually got the mare settled. My nerves were shot and so was my budget but at least we had a foal coming the following year.

In the meantime it was time to do some thinking. If it continued to be difficult getting the Arabian mare in foal, there was the possibility that I would not get a replacement for her. She had only had two foals and both of them were colts. While I had no plans to be standing a stallion, there was the possibility I would not get a filly out of this mare.

Early on I decided if the mare had a colt and it was stallion quality he would be kept intact until I knew for sure I had a filly to replace Scandalous. Little did I know how prophetic these notions were.

To be continued.............


Part 2


8 comments:

  1. That cute little colt looks like Scandalous Legacy! that is such a cute baby picture!! that is a great picture, very beautiful horses. And great post! cant wait to read more!

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  2. your daughter is beautiful!

    congrats to her :)

    whew, I bet your relieved

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  3. ignore my previous comment.

    I meant your foal is beautiful!
    Overcoming hardships and achieving the dream has been proven by you...I hope I can only be so determined one day.

    omg is it monday?

    my 3yo has been the brat from you know where today.

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  4. Thanks, bunnygirl, that is one of my favorite pics. The foal has such attitude.

    kim, that is the gelding, Scandal Sheet, that Rachel is riding. He was my first foal.

    barngoddess, I don't know about overcoming the hardships, I think I'm still knee deep in those things. But I don't let them get me down. I'm going to make this thing work one way or another!

    I really appreciate your support, all of you!

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  5. Oh, well, Sheet and Legacy have the same white snip on their nose/lip, so I thought they were the same horse. So they are full brothers then right? so is Scandalous Sheet 17-18 years old? and Scandalous Legacy 16? or 15?

    I thought Dandy was your first foal.. or is he your second foal? anyways, it would be neat if you put a post just to name all the foals you've had over the years, starting with your first foal, and ending with the foals from this year. :)

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  6. Kim, Dandy is Scandal Sheet, Dandy is his barn name. He is the oldest and my first foal. He was 17 on July 1 of this year.

    You are right, Scandalous Legacy (barn name Legs) is a full brother to Dandy. Legs is 11. There were 6 years between the two because of Lindsay's illness. Legs' birthday is May 22.

    As for a list of all of the foals, the first thing that comes to mind......is this a test?? lol I know I'm into 20 something for numbers because Legs has over 20 babies.

    I have a place in mind I'm trying to get to in my dream story. Maybe after I get there, I will do a post with all of their names and ages.

    I wish I could figure out how to put captions on my pics but blogger is a pain about stuff like that and I haven't figured that out yet. If anyone knows, I sure wish they're let me know. Then I could identify each horse with the pictures I post.

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  7. OHH. That clears some things up. Cause I didn't know Scandalous Sheet's barn name is Dandy. Legs is an absolutely beautiful Arabian Stallion. So I can see why Legs, at 11 years old, already has like, 2 dozen babies :)

    And it's no test, I just think it would be neat to learn more about your horses, and their names :) but it may be hard to remember them all... since you've had so many. Oh, and I'd eventually like to see Legs baby pictures. His brother Sheet was such a cute baby. And it's so cool you have all the pictures for your postories. But I wouldn't know how to add the captions. I just type right under the picture.

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