This season I am planning a larger number of breedings than any year before, in part because many mares are not getting younger, and in part to avoid a situation like last year where too few attempts lead to no offspring in 2017. Years without foals are sad. In the event of five pregnancies, then… well, we’ll see. First, DA Ginger Moon (‘Ginger’), who is 20 this year, will be bred to Bev Davison’s Subanet Jabbar SDA (Summer Sonnet SDA x Bint Bint Subani). Ginger is a Doyle-Pritzlaff Egyptian tail female Rabanna, Jabbar is a Doyle-Babson tail female Gulida, so they should match, with plenty of Abbas Pasha lines all over the resulting foal’s pedigree. Pictures of Jabbar in the Idaho mountains follow. Thank goodness for horses like him, bold movers with high withers, extravagant tail carriage, short backs, naturally arched necks, expressive eyes (not the inflated ‘parrot eye’ of show creatures) and a flawless pedigree. In other news today, my Haykal jumped two fences and bred my two years old Barakah. That was not in the books for this year.
Mohammed Abdel Sattar Tahoon from Egypt did what many Egyptian and other horse breeders and lovers have been dreaming to do since the time of Lady Anne Blunt. He went looking for the fabled ruins of Dar El Beida (in Arabic, the “White House”), the stables Abbas Pasha I built for his collection of Arabian in the middle of the Suez desert. And he had these photos taken. While I was living in Egypt 2013-2015, my friend Ali Shaarawi told me about the ruins of Dar El Beida, which I thought had all but disappeared. No roads lead to it. Abbas Pasha I had caravans of camels supply it in water and fodder. It fell in disrepair after his death, and some half a century later Lady Anne Blunt, who camped near the site, described its ruins as inhabited by owls and jackals. This is the same place Von Hugel described in late 1860 when he attended the dispersal auction Ilhami Pasha held for his father’s collection.
It’s breeding season again, and a number of great matings are being planned and conducted across the country. Porte CF (Portico x Recherche) is in Southern California with Carrie Slayton who bred him to her two Davenport Haifi mares, Brighton TAH (Ascendant x GH Janet) and ADA Skylarking (“Birdie”, Palisades CF x Lustre CF by Javera Thadrian). They are two of my favorite Davenport mares, photos below, with Birdie on the right. Carrie also bred Porte to what is now also her Hadba Enzahi RL Zahra Assahara (Portent x Antezzah). We now co-own Zahra, and if the offspring is a filly, she is mine. See a nice video of Porte below. He is owned by Jean Diaz.