A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Next Chapter

Part 1 of the Baby Boomer Series


Well, the Arabian mare, Krugorrs Heiress, is safely settled in. How this horse plays a part in my dream is much farther down the road. Since the story of her rehabilitation is a story in and of itself, I'm going to get back to the main story of my dream and I will post Heiress's saga at a later date.

We left off with my first Arabian horse, Scandalous, being in foal for the second time to the Khemosabi son, GS Khochise. The pregnancy has been progressing normally with my only real concern that the mare will present me with another colt when I'm really longing for a filly. My dream, after all, is to have a single Arabian mare that I can breed to produce my show horses.

Early in the pregnancy I had gone down to my friend Chris's house to see her two new fillies by GS Khochise. I'll never forget the day I walked behind her house and got my first glimpse of Keepsake LA.

While I really liked the other filly, I loved Keepsake. She was exquisite. This was the most beautiful face I had ever seen on a newborn foal. In the car as we left that day, I turned to Dave grinning. Not only could we do as well as we did the first time, now I knew we could do better.

That eleven months waiting for a foal can be torturous. I swear it seemed more like a year and a half than 340 some odd days. But finally the day arrived, or should I say night.

In the wee hours of the morning Scandalous presented us with a beautiful bay foal. As the foal first presented, I was already excited. The star I had so wanted on the first foal but didn't get, was prominently in place on the second followed by a thin strip and a big snip on its nose. There was no white, however, on the front legs.

The mare pushed the foal out to about the stifle, then she stopped between contractions. But the foal was already trying to get up, I grabbed his front legs and pulled him free of the mare, hoping his struggling had caused no damage.
I dropped the foal right next to Scandalous and heard that soft knicker that so touches the heart. The foal bobbed its little head around taking in its new world shaking its head at the mare's attentions.

I looked at this exquisite wet, glistening foal laying in the straw with the two even mid cannon bone white socks behind. .All I could think was colt or filly, colt or filly,!! I was just too darn scared to look. I wanted so much for it to be a filly but I had suspected all along it was a colt.

Dave laughed at me. So he decided he would do the looking. Grinning, he informed me that I had been wrong. It was a filly. I couldn't believe it! I had to look for myself.

I looked and then I looked again. I walked away across the stall looking back at this amazing foal. Then I walked back and I looked again. I just couldn't believe my eyes. Well............Dave was the one who was wrong. Scandalous had indeed presented me with another colt.

While I was disappointed, I was delighted as well. Even laying in the straw all folded up I knew this was a stallion quality colt. As much as I had loved Dandy as a foal, I knew that this was a better horse.

I had already decided upon a name if I had a stallion quality colt. I have a friend, Naomi, who helped me with my horses during Lindsay's illness. She had recently lost a colt who had been very special to her.

This colt had been the last foal of a mare she loved deeply but lost in a property settlement. The man had only taken the mare to further break Naomi's heart.

Several years later, Naomi got a call late one night the mare was foaling and in big trouble. My friend got there just in time to see her mare die from a ruptured uterine artery, not a fluke of foaling but the direct result of starvation and neglect.

Naomi scooped this pathetic, scrawny, worm ravaged foal up in her arms and took it home. She couldn't save her mare but she intended to save this foal. I watched her for four long years pour her heart and soul into trying to make up for this colt's horrible start in life only to loose him in the end. The colt died from massive scarring caused by the worms he had before he was even born.

Naomi was devastated. That colt was the last part of the best horse she had ever owned. She had loved that mare the same way I loved Scandalous. She had hoped to carry on her bloodlines, just as was my dream. Her dreams to reclaim her mare and raise her foals had all gone up in smoke with the death of the mare and now the death of that colt.

While I couldn't bring back her colt, I intended to honor his memory and the dream he represented. Just as her colt had carried the name of the mare followed by what the colt meant to Naomi, so would my colt carry the name of my mare and what both colts represented to the women who loved them.

May 22, 1996 was a very important day in my life. It was the first day in a series of events that changed my life forever. On that day, Scandalous Legacy was born.

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

The Next Chapter Continues

Arabian horse Arabian horses horses horse Khemosabi horse breeding