Monologue CF still looks his same old self at 20. If anything his eyes look even more bulging with age. I like the balance on this horse so much, and I wish he was used more. Wadha is in foal to him. I think I will breed him to Barakah next. Because of his high percentage *Wadduda blood (18.8%) he is being used by other Al Khamsa breeders on their *Wadduda tail female mares through Sahanad.
By far the nicest surprise of yesterday’s visit to see my horses was little Bassma Al Arab, now three months old. She is Belle’s daughter by Jamr Al Arab. She looks absolutely superb, and I hope she lives long enough to fulfill her promise. She is going to be grey. I confess having taken that breeding decision on a hunch, and I caught a lot of flak for it: parents’ conformations don’t match each other, pedigrees don’t match, foal will be small, etc. I tried it in part to test whether Jamr was fertile, after a few unsuccessful attempts with older mares. I also did because I felt the resulting foal could benefit from his broad forehead, his extra-deep jowl, his small muzzle, his very short back (which Belle lacks), his muscular arched neck, and his big “Doyle butt” – essentially a long, hip and a muscular thigh. And Jamr delivered on most of the above, building my confidence in my him as a stallion along the way. He even brought size (!) balance and depth of girth on top of that. Look at the outcome: The head is the same as the dam’s as you can tell from the…
I was pleased to see how my 2016 mare Barakah Al Arab (Wadd Al Arab x Jadah BellOfTheBall) had developed over the past two and a half years. I left her a gangly two year old, and she has filled up since. She certainly has some more growing to do. Wadd improved the shoulder angle and the length of the shoulder, added much needed depth of girth and breadth of ribcage; he left the head pretty much the same as her mother’s, except for adding more distance between the eyes, the ears are as long and prickled as her mother’s. On the other hand, Belle’s beautiful level croup and highly set tail are gone; instead Barakah inherited Wadd’s slightly sloping croup and the short hip which is a legacy his dam Wisteria. When going you don’t notice it as much. I did not pay as much attention to her feet as I should have. Overall, Barakah is an improvement over Belle, without having lost her “desert” look. By the way, I feel breeders needs to be as openly candid about their horses as they can, if they want to improve on them in the long term, especially if they do…