A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
This morning while looking at old pictures I stumbled on two photos of my first mare (or at least the first mare of my father’s stud that I considered mine): Halima, registered in Volume 1 of the Lebanese Studbook as Al Tuwayssa (Malik x A Tuwayssah mare by Radwan), was a 1986 grey mare of … Read more
This facebook website pictures some of the widespread desctruction that befell several historical sites and old cities in Syria. “Like it” or rather, dislike it..
I am quoting this passage of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s “My Diaries, being a personal narrative of events, 1888-1914” about his visit to the stud of the Ottoman Sultan in 1893, page 126: “In the evening we drove to the Sweet Waters and were shown the Sultan’s mares. There were, I believe, about 150 of them, … Read more
Check out the hundreds of beautiful photos of Davenport horses in Christine Emmert’sfolder of the ‘not yet sorted’ section of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website. Most photos were taken at Michael Bowling’s open barn/house in September 2012. Wonderful collection of horses including: Pretty Special CF, Eldar HD, Poeticus HD, Latitude HD, Porte CF, Pirouette … Read more
I am going to start a new series on this blog on “ten myths about Egyptian pedigrees”. Stay tuned.
Jeanne Craver sent me this photo of the black Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz stallion Jadah Sharuuq (Lifes Capade LD x Belladonna CHF by Audobon), a Sharp (no Blunt/Crabbet blood) stallion bred by Randall and Mary Sue Harris of Peoria, IL, from lines from Carol Lyons. This rare and precious stallion is just five generations removed from the … Read more
Recently I reactivated my “Daughters of the Wind” page on Facebook. Everything I post here will show there, and so will the comments you post here. One basic rule I learned from the social media types at my work is that, if you want to reach more people, you’d better go where they already are … Read more
The other day, Jeannie Lieb pointed me to an excellent Davenport Hamdani stallion which I had not heard about before: Titian CF (Riposte x Neroli by Regency), a full blood brother to my and Darlene’s Monologue CF. Look at his long neck and his balanced conformation.
Also from Facebook — and I gave up on trying to compete with it here, lol — comes this gorgeous photo which Edna Ehret posted of the asil 1984 Ma’naqi Sbaili stallion Dakhala Bashiq (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir), the full brother of my 1985 Dakhala Sahra, both bred by Jeanne Craver. Two failed embryo … Read more
Bonnie  Brown Duecker posted this photo on Facebook of her lovely 28 year old Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare Pretty Special CF (Lysander x Pretty Fancy by Ionian), one of the last Lysander daughters. Photo by Ch. Emmert.
These two photos of Ribal (Berk x Rijma by Rijm) I had not seen before.
One reason I enjoy keeping this blog is the unexpected encounters that I had the chance to make through it over its nearly five years of existence. One such encouter was the one with Obeyd al-‘Utaibi (“a.k.a Pure Man”) a ‘Ataiba Bedouin of Saudi citizenship who maintains the spirit of old Arabian Bedouin horse breeding — as opposed to the … Read more
Just like “code is poetry” to the WordPress blogging community, to me the way sires and dams, strains and names, tail males and tail females combine to make a pedigree come to life feels like the rhymes and rythm of verses in a poem. Bad pedigrees are like bad poems, I cannot read them without cringing. A … Read more
A great article by Rick Synowski by Michael Bowling and RJ Cadranell — of course, sorry — on “Reconstructing Domow”, that matriach of old American breeding. I never tire of re-re-reading it. I leased two Krush mares with Domow in the pedigree. The usual instruction with this photo: flip your head 30 degrees to the right … Read more