Monday, September 17, 2007

A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Search


Part 1 of the Baby Boomer Series

As it turned out the appointments that I set up with both of these breeders turned out to be only a couple of days apart. For me, with my double vision, going outside of my normal routine is pretty taxing. I wasn't sure if I would even be able to "see" what these Arabian horses were really like by the time I crammed the visits this close together. But it was the only thing that would work for each of the farms concerned so that was the way it was going to be.

The first farm where I went to look was the breeder in my area. I had spoken to him a number of times over the past few years and knew that he had some horses with the bloodlines I was interested in. The hard part for me was getting past his ego to even go look at his horses. Now that I was seriously looking for mares, I was hoping I could ignore his bravado to be able to see the horses for what they were.

Dave and Lindsay both went with me. Neither knew much about confirmation at the time but both have strong opinions about what they like and what they don't. Looking for horses was something of a family adventure.

When we got to the farm, there were only a handful of Arabian horses there. Even though this breeder had over twenty head at the time, most of them were at another location in a rented pasture.

I looked through the mares he had there and didn't see anything that I particularly cared for. None of the horses at this location were related to the Dare mares and those bloodlines were why I had really come so we headed off to the rented pasture.

On approximately forty acres were twenty-five mostly purebred Arabian horses. Most of them belonged to this breeder but a few belonged to a friend of his. Most of them were for sale and most were mares.There was a gelding or two and three or four foals. All of these horses had an assortment of bloodlines. I remember there was some Spanish blood, some Gainey and some Egyptian.

When we first arrived there were only a couple of horses to be seen. It wasn't until the horses realized that we were there that we heard the thundering of hooves as the horses emerged out of the woods converging upon us. Dave was shooting video of their approach.

At first the Arabian horses just ran around the pasture tossing their heads and wringing their necks playfully. Just like they knew we had come specifically for them, they put on quite a show circling the pasture several times, each vying for its opportunity to get our attention with their antics.

Once they'd had their fill of playing, they changed direction and came our way. With that many horses running straight at you, your life can actually flash before your eyes. For some reason mine didn't. I was too busy scanning the group looking for that special mare. Dave and Lindsay both took several steps backwards but didn't stay there long as we were swarmed by the herd.

All the while the breeder had been pointing out horses and rattling off pedigrees. It was interesting to me that I had been up front about the pedigrees I was in search of, yet every horse he pointed out was not from those bloodlines. He had a Litigator daughter he was very proud of but she wasn't my kind of horse and the list went on. Most of them were not my kind of horse.

But I had spotted a gray mare, well, actually two of them that I wanted to know more about. As we worked our way through the throng of horses we reached the first one. Her breeding didn't mean a thing to me. Her sire was his breeding and I didn't know the horses. If he gave me any farther back in her pedigree, it didn't register.

The second one was a Dare Malik daughter. While I didn't know Dare Malik, I certainly knew his sire, An Malik and his dam, Dare, the Virgina Dare daughter who was the dam of Scandalous's dam, Latoura Dare. This was the mare I was most interested in and this mare was not for sale.

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

Part 2






3 comments:

  1. Ahhhh...man...figures she wouldn't be for sale!!

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  2. I'm very interested in information you post about Dare line. Our new 2-year old gelding Orion goes back to that line. With his sire being Odyssey, he goes back to Latoura Echo, then Latoura Dare. I'ld like to know what draws you to that line and what characteristics they share. So far Orion has been a dream, very sweet and even tempered, yet very confident.

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  3. equinespirit, ya, isn't that always the way it is.

    showmama, I love this line of horses but it would take a book to tell you why. However, to start with being very sweet and even tempered yet very confident would be part of it for sure.

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