The New Journey..........Then There's Breeding....

Keep in mind that the timing on many of these events is intermingled among posts. To help keep related issues together sometimes the time line has been sacrificed. While that may not always be obvious, you may know more things about BG now than I did when I made my decisions. If you find yourself wondering "how could she?" the answer is probably in that timeline. For instance the events in this post actually happened towards the beginning of the events that led to the last post so you've seen far more pieces to this puzzle that I had available when I made the choices that led to this post

Part One


From the beginning of our endeavor, it appeared there was always someone interested in my horses. Even though we hadn't sold anything yet, the amount of interest that seemed to be there suggested that wasn't far from happening.

The hard part about the breeding business is the timing. Since the horses must be grown and trained to get them sold, the decisions about when to breed are like playing futures in the stock market. You have to make the decisions to breed based on what you think is going to happen. If you wait until it actually does, you end up out of stock when you've finally built up your clientele. By the time you've built your stock back up, those interested people have moved onto horses of other breeding and you're starting over again.

With all this interest in horses, it was decided I probably should breed something. Bey Aana is Storm's mother. My rule of thumb around here has always been when I sell a foal, I rebreed the mare. Aana came here as a rescue By now the mare was twenty and I was hoping I could get her settled but not sure. Getting this mare in foal was tricky right from that first season. I decided to try but I wouldn't be able to take extraordinary measures to get her bred. I just didn't have the funds.

I also decided I was going to breed Solidare. The mare was longing to have a baby and she was getting close to the age of twenty. If I was going to let her have one more foal, it needed to be done now.

The few years prior to this MD had been the one to help me cover mares. Obviously that wasn't going to work now. Dave had helped me before that but it is really not his thing. I asked BG if he could help me and he'd responded that he could.

Bey Aana was the first mare we bred because she was the first to come into heat. Everything went like clockwork for that breeding. BG didn't seem to need direction other than my personal preferences about washing and such. Also he didn't seem to be uncomfortable with any part of the experience where many people are intimidated by the exuberance of the horses.

Wouldn't you know it Solidare came into heat just as I was leaving to manage the Morgan horse show in Monroe. That's too far away for me to come home at the end of the day to get a mare covered.

I do not take lightly the process of breeding horses in hand and I do NOT trust just anyone to handle my stallion. I asked BG if he thought he could handle Legs to get the mare bred and he told me he could. I never would have asked had I not believed that BG had experience breeding horses AND handling stallions in that process.

I figured when I left that Solidare might be ready to breed on Wednesday. BG called me that day even before he bred the mare. We went over my process and then he called me afterwards to tell me it was done. Everything had gone fine. It was noisy but simple.

Normally, I don't cover my mares more than once a cycle. I know my mares and I know when is the right time. Not being there to actually see the color of the mare's urine and her response to Legs I didn't really know if this was the right timing or not. I had to rely on BG's impressions and I didn't really know what to think so I resorted to what the vets do.

I had BG keep teasing the mare. If she was still in in three days we'd breed her again. Now I should say upfront I know most vets would breed every other day but I also know how long Legs' semen lasts so I was comfortable with stretching to that third day. If the mare wasn't out by then, I would probably breed her even though I suspect that Legs' semen would have been good for one more day. If the mare didn't settle, her next cycle would also be during a horse show when I was supposed to be in Oregon so I didn't want to miss her. That timing is the only reason I would consider another cover.

On Saturday I got another call from BG. This time it was later in the day. He told me he was angry at Legs. He'd tried to breed the mare but that Legs had been a jerk.

When I asked him for details I found out he'd been to my farm earlier and tried to breed Solidare but didn't think things had gone as planned. From what I could tell Legs' had become too engorged to penetrate and BG hadn't gotten the stallion off the mare so he had ejaculated outside her. The fact that BG hadn't been prepared for the stallion to be too excited or that he didn't know what to do when that happened, gave me pause.

BG hadn't called me to tell me about this happening, he just decided he would probably comeback later in the day and try again. When he tried to breed the mare again. Solidare, by this time, was clearly out of heat. She clamped her tail down tightly and refused Legs. BG pulled Legs down turning him towards the mare. Then Legs kicked Solidare in the hock and that is why BG was so mad at Legs.

My heart sank when I heard this. I asked BG if he had teased the mare before he tried to breed her. His response was he'd done that earlier in the day. I knew then I'd made another big mistake. BG didn't know enough about breeding in hand to be handling horses that's for sure although he'd led me to believe quite the contrary. He was mad at Legs for a wreck, as far as I'm concerned, HE had caused both by not teasing the mare before he tried to cover her and the way he'd pulled Legs away from the mare.

If you know anything about doing in hand live cover with horses you know you NEVER turn a stallion away from a mare NOR do you get the stallion directly behind the mare as a way to exit. You want to keep those horses out of kicking range of each other at all cost.

I always pull Legs directly off the side of the mare parallel to her. Then I back him out of that area either can kick before I turn him away from the mare. Staying to the side the mare shouldn't be able to kick him either and both horses are protected.

Legs is normally really gentle with the mares BUT he was set up right from the start. He had no way of knowing the mare wasn't in heat. Had he been allowed to tease the mare first he would have known not to even get excited, let alone mount her and believe me Legs does take NO from a mare. While the stallion will continue to talk to a mare that is not in heat he will do it more quietly in what is an affectionate manner and not an excited one. He's one smart horse when it comes to women of the equine persuasion.

In this situation he kicked out in frustration which most stallions would have done. The horse has never had this experience before from one of his mares. The end result. well, my already crippled mare got kicked in the hock. While her hock did not look injured at the time, that is the hock that deteriorated and caused her death.

At the time this happened, I was livid but I really didn't know what to say. Until I got home and inspected my mare for injury, I just said nothing. When it looked like the only damage that was done was a couple of scrapes along the mares back (which I'm still trying to figure out) I decided I would say nothing more than to explain to BG how he should have handled the situation.

It was not until after the mare was dead and I had a diagnosis on the condition her back legs that I had any confirmation of what I had worried about from the time of this breeding. Am I saying that BG is responsible for the further deterioration of that left hock that eventually resulted in the mare's death? I don't really know. Is it possible? You're darn right it is. Is it likely? Probably so.

Any stress or trauma to that already compromised hock could have caused the deterioration we saw. The tendon in that hock is known to migrate as a result of illness or trauma. With the tendons in both legs already being migrated from the original issue, the likelihood that an incident like a kick to the hock could have increased the amount of damage is quite high. This incident is the only stressor to that hock that we know of that wasn't experienced by the other hock as well. The right hock did not deteriorate during this pregnancy. Only the left one did.

Granted Legs is the one that kicked Solidare but if BG had teased the mare as he had been instructed to do before he tried to breed her, neither Legs or Solidare would have been at risk. If the kick is responsible for the deterioration of that hock, then BG did, indeed, have a role in the death of my mare.

If I did anything to contribute to the death of my beloved mare, it was believing BG could do what he said. A mistake which I will most probably always regret more than ANY of these other things that happened in my dealings with BG.

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

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