My Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz
Last week I saw “Belle” for the first time. Jadah BelloftheBall (I so don’t like that name and I want to change it) is Jeannie Lieb’s gift to me in 2013. I liked the mare, she sent all the right vibes to me.
Looking at her, you’d easily forget you are in the woods of Pennsylvania, and you would feel transported in time and space to Arabia in the early twentieth century (one of my favorite time and space combinations, but I don’t think I would have survived more than a few days there and then). She is a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz tracing in tail female to *Nufoud of King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, sent to Albert Harris in 1932. She is only five generations removed from the desert (from both *Nufoud and *Turfa), and she looks like she came straight out of there.
The mare is not without defects, I would have especially liked to see a deeper girth and a longer croup, but I don’t mind her just the way she is; I appreciate the big bone, the short and thick cannons, the large hocks and hooves, the high wither, the highly set tail, and above everything else, that overall look of a desert animal, camel, antelope, bird or even dog, the mixture of sweetness and roughness, of wild and tame, of strength and fragility. The blood mark on the croup accentuates that “fresh off the desert” look and must have come from the Davenports (cf. Thea Isis, Pirouette), as she has 90% Davenport blood. The looks is most apparent in the three pictures I took, below. Of course, she was still in her winter coat.
Owning her myself she showed her desert heritage proud in her disposition as well. She has extremely compromised vision in her right eye for an injury that most likely happened when she was young. You’d never know it though. She is totally accepting of what you throw at her. I don’t think she’s ever been saddle trained but nonetheless my then 11yo helper Zoe and I took her step by step and she took to it like a duck to water. When I hauled her, alone, to New England Equine Medical and Surgical Center to have her eye examined by a board certified ophthalmologist, the staff and the veterinarian couldn’t believe she was a purebred Arabian because she was SO GOOD while he did his exam.
She is a lovely lady. We enjoyed having her here!
She will be bred to Wadd this spring.
I am quite intrigued to have found this post. I am in Australia, and 5 months ago I purchased my first purebred Arabian mare, also of this strain. Despite tracing thru 3 generations of Australian breeding, 3 generations of Russian breeding and I don’t know how many generations of Polish breeding, the photos of you mare, the description of attributes – conformation and character all leapt out at me!