Let me share with you this picture of one of my all-time favorite desert-bred Arabian mares. *Al-Hamdaniah, the bloody-shouldered mare, was a present from the governor of the oil-rich al-Hasa province of Saudi Arabia to Admiral Richard Lansing Connolly, who brought her to the USA in 1947. Superstitious Bedouins believed that the large reddish spots on some horses’ shoulders were the blood of slain warriors, and considered that these horses brought bad luck to their owners. Others, on the contrary, valued these marks as a sign of purity and good breeding. Take a look at similar markings on the body of the mare Helwah, a Maanaghiyah Sbailiyah born in the Syrian desert in the early 1970s.