Photo of the Day: Monsoon, 1967 Kuhaylan Hayfi, USA
I think this stallion, Monsoon (Tripoli x Ceres) is stunning. I am sorry about the poor quality of the picture. He was born at Craver Farms in 1967 and it is a shame he died young [well not so young, says Joe Ferriss, my memory is failing me] and therefore left little progeny.
Well, he wasn’t THAT young. He put on a spectacular showing under saddle at the 1982 Al Khamsa convention in Rockford, Illinois and he was age 15 at that time. I think he was exhibited on numerous Al Khamsa gatherings after that as well.
I think he lived to be quite old actually but Alice Martin would be the one to verify his passing. If datasource is correct, he was 28 years old when he died.
But he was truly handsome, with excellent elastic movements. He was of wonderful temperament but also very noble and carried himself high and proud. Somewhere I have a black and white photo of him trotting along side of a Saluqi and it shows his tremendous reach. I will have to hunt for it.
One of the losses that we regret the most was a colt named “Mon Cere.” He was by Monsoon out of his dam, Ceres. Ceres died of colic when the colt was about a month old. He had a bad reaction to the standard milk replacer, and we took him and his “stepmother” Fairy Queen to the University of Missouri vet school to make sure we did not lose him. They found a formula that he liked and did well on, and called to say we could come pick him up. The next morning, as we were getting ready to leave, they called to say he had died, apparently of an aneurysm. He was such a special colt—very much like his sire.
Monsoon was one of my all-time special favorites, and his fan club, like that of Tybalt, was large. Alice showed him at the Nationals in dressage when he was 18. Alice wrote a beautiful memorial to him. I’ll ask her if she has a copy.
Charles wrote this about Monsoon several years ago:
This is in response to your E-mail requesting information about Monsoon. I know what I think about the horse, but I doubt that I will ever get it down to the written word.
We bred Monsoon to a number of mares and the foals were just fine. From our point of view the most important of them was Bint Dharebah, who was out of Dharebah (Dhareb x Antarah). We felt that this was probably the best breeding Monsoon would ever get, and we let it represent him in Davenport breeding from Craver farms.
Monsoon was technically a Kuhaylan Haifi, but there were also very strong Saqlawi elements in his pedigree, and they showed strongly in his individuality. He tended to flattish musculature and an upright neck carriage. He had a rather straight profile and rather straight rear leg conformation. He was a dark chestnut with flashy white markings. All these are usually thought of as Saqlawi features. When he died we saved his skull. It had an unusually large cranial capacity. He was a gentle horse. Never hurt anybody or anything, but he was quite masculine in attitude.
Basically, Monsoon was a Hanad type horse to which had been added the fineness of *Reshan. It would have been practical to use him to develop a breeding group of Davenports. Unfortunately, we have always been limited in what we could do in horse breeding because we just did not have enough room for an additional group of horses. In order to add eight or ten more Monsoons we would have had to short the groups we were already working with, and they needed to exist, too.
I rode Monsoon a lot and he responded well to my idea of training. At 15, he went to Alice and adapted to her riding, which was not the same as mine, and he did well with that, too, but I had taught him that he should not go from a trot to a canter and back, and I think it took a while to get him over the idea that switching gaits in the ring was a break and not to be done. He was a charismatic horse. People enjoyed watching him.
Everyone always thought he was taller, sometimes a hand taller, than he
was. I don’t think I ever managed to get him tired.
Charles is being kind to me. Monsoon took about two years for me to get a flat walk all the way across the dressage ring diagonal. I used to pray as we approached the free walk and later the extended walk. Charles had taught Monsoon to piaffe very softly. Something about my aids for extending the walk brought out piaffe repeatedly. I received many three’s and four’s for walk before I ever got my first seven with Monsoon at the walk. That was a red letter day for me.
The other problem I had with Monsoon, thanks to Charles’ training, was the canter depart. At first the outside leg behind the girth gave me haunches in. Next there was the humiliating period where, I was sure, the exact same aids from the walk would give canter sometimes, and other times . . . walk.
Eventually Monsoon taught me which set of aids to use for each movement, we showed successfully up to Third Level. I had a large judge stop me after one ride to ask if she could buy him. I was astounded as she must have weighed 200 pounds. I said (ever tactfully), “How big do you think he is?”
“Oh, 15.3 or 16 hands,” she replied. I measured him at 14.2 or 14.3 on a tall day. When he approached a mare, I swear he could raise his withers two or three inches. Then the judge might have been correct. His long, fine neck was placed high on his body, Monsoon carried himself splendidly when I was finally able to get him to consistently carry his poll as the highest point of his head and dextrous neck.
My favorite moment with Monsoon came as I walked down centerline towards the judge after a satisfying ride, the one that qualified Monsoon for the Nationals at age 22 at Third Level. Bela Buttykay was an (then) AHSA “I” judge that I respected a great deal, but did not know personally at that time. Maj. Buttykay (Hungarian Cavalry) rose from his chair, grandly took off his hat with a sweep into a bow at the waist, and said, “What a magnificent Arabian stallion.”
Maj. Buttykay was a good judge of horseflesh and dressage.
Hello,
Monsoon was a wonderful horse from the pictures I have seen. One of my favourite photos of Arabian horses was of Monsoon that I saw in an advertisment of Craver farms around l997 in Arabian Horse World and it is very much in my mind even after so many years and has influenced me a lot. I took it out of the magazine to keep it but after so many years I cannot find it any more. It was a head shot with Arabian halfter. Maybe the Cravers still have it and can share it with us?
Matthias
I know exactly which headshot you mean. I also took it out of the magazine and hung it framed on my wall for many years until it finally succumbed to the yellowed brittleness of age. A work of art, as are many of the Davenports!
I would love to see that photo..
That photo was before digitization, but I will find it and scan it in for you. We have some movies of him, taken in 1980, and they are glorious, but on 16mm film that is damaged. Have to figure that out, too!
Monsoon was a horse you could never forget.
What a fine horse !, lovely anecdotes about his dressage too.
Only in the last few years have I been aware of the Davenport blood in my own horses…enjoying seeing the lovely horses of these lines on this website, they are not as well known here in Britain.
Some one mention breeding for Tripoli type? Monsoon was certainly that via this photo. Perhaps others will appear from time to time?
Sad that Tripoli was perhaps the last Saqlawi stallion
possible? Then according to what I read, DNA findings,
Reshan is a possible Saqlawiah?
Odd? Perhaps? Yet, the possible is always a reality, yet
to be realized.
Jackson
Jackson, the strain names these horses were given (Kuhaylan, Saqlawi) are much more recent (350 years old maximum) that the genetic patterns of mtDNA (thousands of years old). So similar mtDNA types does not mean same strain, and same strains does not mean same mtDNA types..
Edouard: Aha so here is a clear explanation of how and why mtDNA is going to NOT coincide with strain.. So Asils mostly are pretty much going to have similar or very similar mtDNA. And strain DNA markers are generally going to be pretty similar as a general rule, but may be slightly more different than the markers of the general population of Asils? Hope i have that correct.
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
I guess I misunderstood Michael and the point he was making, as to strains and DNA? But then I think I just read into what he said as to tail-female lines.
350 years maximun, seems a short time ago. I read all the time on this blog and elsewhere that the strains
came about via events and breeders.
So are Davenport – Bradleys now simply, A Craver strain with various members, tail female, of that strain? Be interesting to hear your comments? I have my own thinking, wondering what others think?
People did this with the Doyle’s and Pritzlaff, Craver
Strain Arabians, interesting. Glad to hear you say
the strains and DNA are not related, am sure that this
is something you have visited with Michael about.
Jackson
Hi,
Jeanne that email about Monsoon was to me, about two years ago. I greatly appreciated Charles input and have saved all of his emails.
Laura
I know it was! I saved it, because I felt it was a good one….
We have two young Monsoon granddaughters here (both by Ascendant; a gray yearling out of Petit Point CF and a bay foal out of Aureole CF). I especially see his energy and carriage in the Aureole filly —
I assume that Ascendant was bred to the dams using frozen semen right?
No, Ascendant is quite happy to do that himself! I don’t know if Michael has frozen semen from him….
I believe Michael’s repro vet is rather discouraging about success with frozen semen and older stallions, so Ascendant has not been frozen.
I consider these two Monsoon photos to be iconic images of the Arabian horse, right up there with George Ford Morris’s *Abu Zeyd images, although I only saw Monsoon himself once, in his stall at the Nationals in the early 1980s. Never in my wildest dreams when I was admiring the pictures all those years ago, did I expect to end up with Monsoon’s only breeding son, but Ascendant came here in 2007; I co-own him with Carrie Cabak.
I can’t see that Ascendant looks like Monsoon (to me he’s one of those Davenports that’s leaped right back to the stamp of the foundation mare Hasiker; interestingly RJ Cadranell sees Monsoon’s daughter Bint Dharebah as the modern reflection of Hasiker’s dam *Reshan). Ascendant does have the energy and intense personality that I associate with Monsoon.
The plan was to regenerate the Monsoon sire line. Ambar and I each leased a Ceres-line mare in 2007, but the mares were not cycling productively and Ascendant himself had a habronema problem that we needed to clear up. In 2008 he settled Ambar’s Petit Point CF; last year we tried Betty Ball’s Genuine Tes LD and Aureole CF and as reported, Aureole settled and produced a filly. I keep thinking of her as “the Monsoon filly,” I have to remind myself she’s by Ascendant.
If I could have any mares in the world to try for a colt from Ascendant they would be Aureole, who’s now retired, and Javera Chelsea. None of us locally was in a position to breed any mares this season, but I’m pretty sure Ascendant would be glad to try again next year. He’ll only be 32.
Bruce, no, Jackson is closer to the mark: there is no similarity of mtDNA types among “asil” lines.
Just for one example, yes, *Reshan and Basilisk have the same mtDNA and so ultimately must trace to the same mare, further back than pedigrees are recorded. There are other similar examples, and there are also cases where mares of the same recorded strain have different mtDNA and so must descend from different maternal lines.
The mtDNA types are not just older than strains, they’re older than breeds. At the time of domestication, the dam lines were randomly assigned across the population divisions that would develop into the future breeds.
Re frozen semen, it is perfectly true that an older stallion may not give the semen quality of a younger one, and indeed some stallions don’t freeze at all BUT if you have a valuable old horse of whom you wish to preserve the blood after his days, it may be worth a go, if the semen is quite dilute you can always use more straws. To be fair though 32 yo is quite a challenge!! (and quite a credit to his owners). I bred a foal for myself last season I used semen from a 21 yo stallion on a 20 yo mare , I can see the resulting foal through the window as I type, nothing ventured nothing gained!
ps Just remembered we had frozen semen delivered that was collected when the stallion was 27, it was excellent quality.
pps Could never get tired of looking at that Monsoon photo…
Moon soon to this day is still my favorite Arabian of all time. I actually had the honor of showing him to a win in halter I think ’80 or 81
Strains names came from the Bedouin, DNA comes from the horse!
All the Bedouin Arabian Horses come from the Bedouin, the breeders of all these Bedouin Horses. Hopefully DNA
will relay why we see what we are seeing. Yet, with all said and done, what will we take back to our horses.
Perhaps why this or that breeding gives this or that result, informed insight creating cooperation of allowing
our horses the freedom to continue. This site creates a
passion that has been missing for many years.
Edouard has challenged every one to think and rethink
their intellect, bringing many into this blog from all
areas of the Bedouin Arabian Horses and their various
locations. Then an open debate on the past and present directions of individual breeding farms. I for one
have been learning about the various writers and their horses.
Perhaps what is most admired is lack of judgment!
Just open debate of ideas and ideals, so what is next
besides this coming next moment? Edouard, you have challenged the communication of all. Michael you have
set the standards for research. (You and Your Wife)
Personally I think the Bedouins would wonder about us all? Just as I do even now! Passion is indeed fun!
Jackson