Seren Arabians: The Girls

Wednesday September 1 2010

Lest you think it's just the boys that rule the roost at Seren Arabians, there are a couple of gals that need mentioning.


Winter Queen, (by Silvern Idyll out of Queen of Diamonds), 21, is over 90% Crabbet, and was bred by the Duchess of Rutland, and bought by Seren Arabians in 2005. She's the dam of Seren Procyon (by Hanson) who, in August of this year, graded with the highest score for a 3 year old in the endurance section of the BEF Futurity performance grading, with a "higher first" premium, just 0.07 points below the score for "elite".


Winter Queen is also the dam of 2-year-old Seren Bellatrix Malika (by Hanson). She's over 90% Crabbet.


Shadowed Gold, 19, (by St John out of Magic Moonshadow), is 100% Crabbet. She came to Seren Arabians with Winter Queen in 2005. Since arriving here she has produced Seren Hanau in 2008 (by Hanson), the colt which the Atkinsons think will be Hanson's successor as primary stallion. She currently has a colt by her side, Seren Winged Shadow, by Winged Saint.


Seren Canopus Hanifa, 14, (by Hanson out of Hamatan), is 100% Crabbet, bred by Seren Arabians. She has been bred to Winged Saint.


Silihah, 18, (by Silver Fahd out of Malihah), is 100% Crabbet. Seren Arabians got bought her in 2005, as part of the big push to get more 100% Crabbet breedings going, when they heard that 53 Crabbet foals had been born in the time it took for 200 Crabbet adults to die. She's the dam of Seren Hanag (resident 2-year-old colt) and Seren Hanos (yearling colt living in Idaho with the Yosts).


Silver Serendipity, 4, (by Winged Saint out of Silver Ingot), is 100% Crabbet. Silver Ingot was treated for colitis for several months - and her gut problem turned out to be Silver Serendipity! (The mare's pregnancy had been mis-diagnosed.) Seren Arabians bought both the mare and foal when Serendipity was two. She's four now, and Silver Ingot is 27. Silver Ingot is a near perfect Crabbet horse, in Jan and Dom's eyes, and they have her down south at a facility where they would love to get an embryo transplant with her...


Seren Capella, 10, (by Hanson out of Seren Sirius Blue Lightning - who's out of the Seren foundation broodmare Blue Bandaila) is a high percent crabbet mare. Jan and Dom bred her, though she is now owned by Rebecca Kinnarney. She won the 2-day Exmoor Experience last year, completely barefoot, and she now has a filly foal by Winged Saint by her side.

The girls are a feast for the eyes, too. Who would you choose, if you could ever convince Dom and Jan to sell you a horse?

Seren Hanita - The Miracle Filly

Tuesday August 31 2010

It was a dark and stormy night...

...Unusually cold, wet, and windy - wretched weather for June on the fells of Cumbria.

A mountain rescue group was camping at High House, and Dom had brought the mares and foals into the barn for the people to see and visit with. He had just turned the horses back out, when from a nearby field, the pregnant mare Dominita came up from across the way to say hi to Dom. He said hi, and as she turned away to walk off, he got a glimpse of her tail, and something else - an amniotic sac.

The mare wasn't due to foal for 3 more weeks.

On shaky legs, Dom followed the mare to the very bottom of the field where he found a ghastly sight - a foal, who had just been born further up-slope, had rolled or fallen down the hill, and landed in the freezing cold water of a marsh in this frigid weather.

In the dark and the storm, Dom managed to drag the foal out of the water, "but the foal was all wrong, dreadful."

He ran back to the house and got Jan, and on the way out grabbed a large empty gunny sack (that large loads of gravel are delivered in), halter and lead rope, and they grabbed the mountain rescue leader and another woman, "We have an emergency - we need you now!"

The four ran back outside and down the hill to the mare and foal, where the men scooped up the foal and shoved it in the big sack and carried it up the hill, while Jan caught the mare and led her up to the barn and Laura opened the gates on the way.

They didn't have any stalls ready for foaling since none was expected yet, so they put the foal on bare rubber mats and rushed to scatter straw around it. They looked at the foal, and "It was a nightmare," said Dom and Jan. "She was convulsing from no oxygen, she had no hair, couldn't blink, had no reflexes, couldn't suck, could barely coordinate any movements, and she was freezing cold."

As an understatement, Dom says, "She just wasn't all that good!" They dried the foal off and covered it in straw and immediately called their veterinarian Jane, who promptly came out in the storm.

Jane gave the foal steroids to get its lungs working right, while Jan milked the mare Dominita. That in itself was a miracle because for one thing, Dominita had been a somewhat unbroke and difficult mare to deal with when she arrived a few months earlier, and Jan says, "I had never milked anything before!"

"But the mare was good as gold, totally calm and trusting," and Jan got enough milk from her for Jane to tube it into the foal.

From then on, the fight for the filly's life took on epic commitment. As former mountain search and rescuers themselves, Jan and Dom were used to dealing with emergencies and first aid, but all this was far beyond what they'd ever seen or done. They took hourly shifts for 2 days to attend to the foal. "It was a hellish experience."

The worst part was the convulsions, and trying to keep the foal from hurting herself. "I had bruises on my face and arms," Jan recalls, "from laying on her and trying to keep her head still." The convulsing lasted hours - a day - it's hard to recall how long it went on.

They dressed the foal in dog clothes - from the Atkinsons' dog search days - and hourly took her temperature, then either took clothes off or added more. The foal couldn't stand up to nurse - her skeleton was soft and bending so she couldn't support herself, so she was always laying down. Dom and Jan had to continue milking the mare, then squirt milk down the foal's throat while she laid in the straw.

After a few days, the foal got to where she could stand up if someone lifted her up, so Dom or Jan had to lift her up every hour or so to nurse. After a few nights, Jan found her up on her feet on her own nursing, and that night at 2 AM, the filly wouldn't let Dom take her temperature. "That was great! I knew she'd get better from there."

By the end of the week, the filly was looking pretty good - standing and nursing on her own, and getting stronger every day.

One might wonder why they took a chance on putting so much effort into saving a foal that had been absolutely on the limit of any chance of survival, but the reasons were obvious. "Where there's life, there's hope," says Dom, "and she wasn't suffering. As long as we could stop her from injuring herself, she had a chance."


"And mum was being so good," Jan added, always staying calm, and letting herself be milked by humans, letting her baby be handled.

Hanita's a big strong 2-year-old now, not showing any signs of her traumatic entry into the world. "She's very sensible and isn't defective at all."

She is, in short, a miracle filly.

Seren Hanita, 100% Crabbet filly by Hanson out of Dominita

Seren Arabians: The Boys

Sunday August 29 2010

I mentioned in my first article on Seren Arabians, somewhat in jest, that the Atkinsons have horses for sale... but they may not sell you a horse. They joked one evening about changing one of their ads from saying "Young stock to view" to "Young stock to view... but not for sale." They do want to make sure their horses go to good homes, but, well... they just have some good ones that they can't - quite - make themselves put on the sales list...

***


Winged Saint, a 100% Crabbet stallion, is currently the primary stud standing at Seren Arabians. His purchase in January 2009 was somewhat serendipitous because of the sudden death of Hanson - Seren's foundation stud - in July of 2009.

The 20-year-old stallion was bred by the Moulton Stud in 1990. By El Santo (a British National Champion) out of Silver Blue Wings (a successful show horse and sister to a dam of champions), he was inaccessible to breeders most of his life, never having been stood at stud by a stud farm. Nevertheless, among the few foals he did produce, he still managed to sire a British National Champion.

The moment he went up for sale in 2009, Jan and Dom Atkinson drove down to have a look at him. They knew right away they wanted him. "We didn't study him too closely to know he fit our criteria," says Dom. "He had an excellent temperament, conformation, movement, and he was 100% Crabbet and was a proven sire: he hadn't sired much, but he had sired (i.e. he wasn't sterile), and he had sired recently - including a National Champion, and a proven endurance daughter."

Now that he is officially standing at stud, he'll have a chance to prove what many people have though him capable of - being a successful sire and carrying on the Crabbet lines.

***



Three young colts have a paddock-with-a-view to themselves.



2-year-old Seren Hanag, 100% Crabbet, is by Hanson out of Silihah. He's a full brother to Hanos, the young stud colt that the Yosts bought last year and shipped home to Idaho.

***


The yearling Binley Winged Spirit, by Winged Saint out of Binley Silvern Grace was bought at 6 months of age by the Atkinsons. He's 100% Crabbet. Being very keen on his sire Winged Saint, they think 'Spirit' the younger will fit right in with their breeding program. When Spirit arrived at Seren Arabians earlier this year, he slotted right into the barn with Hanos and Perdu, and Hanos' dam Silihah.

***



The yearling Seren Perdaius (Perdu) is the last foal from Hanson and Blue Bandaila. He's 87.5% Crabbet, 12.5% Polish.

Perdu was 6 weeks old when his dam suddenly started losing weight. Within a week she had gone from being okay to desperate. She was diagnosed with lymphoma - a hopeless and very short prognosis. The Atkinsons set about to make the upcoming forced separation as least distressing as possible. They immediately set to weaning him off of his dam onto mare's milk replacer; and they separated Cally and Perdu and another mare Silihah and her foal Hanos, into their own small herd.

Perdu was 10 weeks old when Cally was put down. He spent one last time curled up with his mother, and then he went off with Silihah and Hanos, and never looked back. The Atkinsons successfully kept him a horse and not a pet foal, feeding by hand but keeping him in a herd situation.

Perdu - French for "lost" - got his name because he would wander off from the herd then start crying for his dam. He'd go up and check out all the chestnut mares and be chased away, and Silihah would come running up, bulling her way through the herd, and rescue him and take him away with her.

He's grown into a handsome yearling, one who hangs with his herd, but is not uncomfortable when he finds himself alone.

He's a full brother to the two geldings, Seren Vega and Seren Rigel, who last month took first and second in the Wessex Group C show.

***



In his own paddock, with a 'schoolmistress broodmare' is 2-year-old Seren Hanau, by Hanson out of Shadowed Gold. He's 100% Crabbet. He's a natural successor to Hansen because of his temperament - he's tremendously good-natured - and his size - the Atkinsons think he will reach at least 15.3 hands at maturity.

Jan and Dom laugh recalling his birth: "He was big when born, very mature. Within 15 minutes of birth he was cantering around his mother - he didn't go through that lying down phase at all, he was just phenomenal!"

***



Waiting in the wings, so to speak, is the foal Seren Winged Shadow, by Winged Saint out of Shadowed Gold. "He's a very nice boy, big, quite advanced for his age in physical and social attributes. He's got a lovely inquisitive, confident character."

Dom says, "I've got a horrible feeling he might be staying..."

Seren Arabians: The Foundation Horses

Hanson, photo by Jan Atkinson

Friday August 27 2010

A legend says:

Allah created the desert Arabian horse from the South Wind, "Men shall follow you wherever you go...Thou shalt fly without wings."

Another legend goes:

The Prophet Mohammed was wounded in battle. As he rode his treasured pregnant Arabian mare to safety, he dripped blood from his wound over his horse's shoulder as she bravely carried him away. When they reached his tribe, the blood on the mare's shoulder could not be washed off. When she foaled, the foal was marked with the same 'bloody shoulder.' Horses that thereafter carried this 'bloody shoulder' mark were prized and said to be blessed.

The Seren story goes:

The gray mare Blue Bandaila (Cally), started it all in 1989 for Jan Atkinson. Cally was the first horse she'd ever bought - stumbling upon her when she went to the wrong farm to look at a horse for sale. Cally coincidentally happened to be over 75% Crabbet, though that was not a factor in Jan's choice at the time. Cally was a 3 year old at the time, and after Jan started riding her, they covered the fells and valleys around home, and they soon found the sport of endurance. The gentle mare was a dream horse, "fiercely competitive, tremendously brave and surefooted when on rough ground or the high fells of the Lake District. She changed my life."

And, you know how it goes, Jan says: "Once you buy one horse, then you seem to acquire more..."

That's how she ended up buying Hamatan, a mare who was 100% Crabbet. Because of her, Jan decided to buy a 100% Crabbet stallion, and start breeding that particular type of horse.

That's what led Hanson to Seren Arabians. All Jan knew was that her stallion had to be pure Crabbet, he had to be gray, and he had to be the right size (big).

Jan looked at a lot of colts and stallions, but for one reason or another, they never were quite right. At some stud farms, the groom would hand Jan a whip or a stick to brandish at the stud while handling him. At one farm, the groom made sure he always stood between her and the stallion. She came to add one more item to that list of requirements: her stallion had to be kind and easy to handle.

Jan spent two years searching before she found him, in 1994. She made her way to Geoffrey Plaister's Imperial Stud, to look at 6 colts and stallions, nearly all of them full brothers... and Hanson was It.

"I immediately felt comfortable in a stable with him. I'd have never found another horse anywhere near what he was. You know how you just know when you've found something? Hanson was The One."

And he was. He was 6 years old, gray and big - 15.2, a classic looking 100% Crabbet horse, and powerful, but with a very gentle disposition. And Hanson was not just Crabbet breeding, but his parents (Hanif* x Sherilla) were bred at Crabbet Park. This helped Jan and Dom decide to not only breed Crabbet bloodlines, but to narrow their focus and to stay as few generations from horses foaled at Crabbet Park as possible.

Hanson was a delight to ride, and a pleasure to be with. Perhaps prophetically, when he was around 12 years of age, he began to develop the 'bloody shoulder' mark - and by the time he was 20, the mark had grown, and he had 'drops of blood' trickling down his foreleg.

Together, these two special horses Hanson and Blue Bandaila produced 4 foals: Seren Arcturus in 1988, Seren Vega in 2000 (in August this year, he won the Crabbet geldings 4yo and over class, Wessex Group C show), Seren Rigel in 2006 (alongside his brother Vega, he finished second in the Crabbet geldings 4yo and over class, Wessex Group C show), and Seren Perdaius (Perdu), in 2009.

Tragically, Hanson died suddenly last year, at age 21, after being collected for the assessment of his semen. And in a double blow, Cally suddenly died a month later from lymphoma, after having foaled Perdu.

Perhaps Hanson had been specially chosen to be blessed by Allah, or by the South Wind, or by the Horse Gods. And while he obviously was lucky to have a home at Seren Arabians, it's the Atkinsons who feel blessed by his presence.

"I've been very lucky, very privileged to have had him."


Cally (Blue Bandaila), photo by Jan Atkinson

The Crabbet Stud - A Brief History

Mesaoud, a foundation sire of the Crabbet Arabian stud, imported from Egypt to England in 1891

Thursday August 26 2010

The story of the English Crabbet Park Stud and the lines of pure-blooded desert Arabian horses produced there since 1878, has all the ingredients of an epic soap opera. It is a tale of ambition, riches, success, blue-blooded horses, mismanagement, survival of the fittest, scandal (for the humans) and tragedy (for some of the horses).

Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt decided to import to England and start breeding Arabian horses after their travels around the Middle East, where they encountered some of the world's finest Arabian horses. Their Crabbet Park estate in Sussex, England, was the birthplace of their line of Crabbet Arabians.

Their stud farms - Crabbet Park in England and Sheykh Obeyd in Egypt - produced exceptional horses throughout the decades - though some of the horses suffered (and died) from neglect, mismanagement, and ignorance - and eventually human scandal and self importance interfered with and undermined the horse breeding program.

Mistresses, "tyranny and spirit of discord", temper tantrums, and apparent drug abuse led to a physical separation between Wilfred and Lady Anne, and a split of the Stud farm and horses. What followed was more discord, lawsuits, feuding, shot horses, neglected horses, injunctions, and, eventually, gradual recovery and rebuilding of the horse program as the Stud passed on to the Blunts' daughter, Lady (Baroness) Wentworth.

Pure Crabbet horses occasionally trickled out into the world during times of family feuding and economic necessity (necessary even for rich royalty!) - including to America, namely to the Maynesboro stud in 1917, and the Kellogg Arabian Ranch in California in 1920 and 1936. This is where the Crabbet-Maynesborough-Kellogg - CMK - lines in America eventually came from.

The Crabbet stud was once again flourishing when Lady Wentworth died in 1957. The estate and horses passed on to Cecil Covey, the son of Lady Wentworth's stud manager. To pay the 80% death taxes on the estate, Covey had to sell almost half of the stud's 75 horses. The American breeder Bazy Tankersley and her Al Marah stud ended up with 32 of these purebred Crabbet horses.

The Crabbet Park Stud continued to run successfully once again for 12 years, until Covey found out that the government was going to build a highway from London straight through his property. It was too much for Covey at his age to start all over - and one of the saddest of all tragedies in the horse world occurred: after 93 years of selective breeding and history, the Crabbet herd was totally dispersed into the world in 1971.

The Crabbet horses didn't disappear, and though the carefully selected breeding program dissolved, and many Crabbet lines were subsequently lost or diluted, a few breeders continued to carry on the pure Crabbet tradition. Seren Arabians is one of these in the United Kingdom. Over 90% of today's Arabian horses in America has at least one ancestor that traces to Crabbet horses.

Today, as then, Crabbet horses are known for their even temperaments, hardiness, and athletic ability, carrying on the characteristics that were cultivated and refined over 100 years ago.



Lady Anne Blunt and Kasida

Today's photos from Seren Arabians here on Endurance.net

The Light Fantastic

Wednesday August 25 2010

The views, and the light from on top of the hill at Upper High House, are staggering. Every five minutes the light changes and alters the landscape and the views so that it constantly looks different. Add a few storm clouds, or a couple of horses galloping along the hill, and it could be a fantasy world.

Seren Arabians sits just inside the Lake District National Park, in Cumbria in northwest England. It's the largest national park in England, and includes England's highest mountain - Scafell Pike, and its deepest lake - Wastwater. You can see Scafell Pike from Upper High House.

The National Park has 3500 kilometers of rights of way and 12 of the largest lakes in England, for boating, hiking, climbing, and riding, along lakeshore wetlands, upland heaths, coastal dunes and arctic-alpine screes. Jan and Dom can take off on any number of trails and ride on 30 or 40 or 50 mile loops.

Here, a day spent outside sitting and watching the fantastic light and beautiful horses sculpt ever-changing pictures in the landscape, is a day well spent.

Seren Arabians

Wednesday August 25 2010

I've landed at Seren Arabians ("Seren" means "Star" in Welsh) in the Lake District of Cumbria, England - home of Jan and Dom Atkinson and Crabbet Arabian horses. They are carrying on very selective bloodlines from the original Crabbet stud (established in the 1870's) that ultimately dispersed in 1973.

Endurance riding friends Chris and Kara Yost of southern Idaho stumbled on Seren Arabians last year when visiting England. Ultimately they brought a Seren Crabbet stud colt home - one of the lucky few people to do so! Jan and Dom are very protective of their Crabbet offspring and won't sell to just anybody - you have to prove the horse will get a good home and will be used properly.


The Seren horses are lovely, sturdy, and allowed to be horses. They're known for their even temperaments and friendliness. They're brought up barefoot on steep hills where they develop good muscle and bone naturally, and they live in herd situations so they mature mentally and naturally - like horses.


The Atkinsons don't show (though 2 of their homebred geldings just won first and second place in the Wessex Arabian Horse Group Summer C Show, and one of their 3-year-olds just got the highest score this year, and the highest score ever for a 3-year-old and for a purebred Arabian, and the second highest score of all time, in the British Equestrian Federation Futurity Grading for endurance), and they have been too busy to do endurance lately.


But their horses - and their 'unconventionl' method (in Great Britain, and Europe, anyway) of turning stallions out with the mares and colts in herds and bringing them up this way - are speaking for themselves.

Irons in the Fire

Sunday July 11 2010

"Have you lost your mind? Crewing!!" Barbara White (39 Tevis starts, 29 Tevis finishes) said to me, when I told her I was going to crew Tevis this year.


I probably have lost my mind. Although Nance has offered me her horse Quinn to ride again (!!), I figured after shooting and reporting on Tevis one year, and riding it last year, this year it was time I crewed it, to get the full spectrum. (One of the main draws is, we crew get to eat at In N Out Burger in Auburn as we are moving rigs and racing to crewing spots!!!)

I am afraid Barbara is right: I expect that during and after crewing Tevis, I will wish I had ridden it! However, I am committed to crewing for Nance and the Yosts (we rode with 3 Yosts last year), and whoever else I can step in to help, by dousing them with a cool bucket of water when they come into Robinson Flat and Forest Hill (after I douse myself of course). Besides, I have to admit, I'm pretty darn proud of my 100% one-for-one Tevis record - the whole thing was an unrepeatable magical first experience - and I want to hold onto that for a while. : )




After Tevis, I'll be home in Owyhee a few days, then it's off to St Paul Minnesota for my alternate life as a sound mixer for The Gospel at Colonus - a black gospel version of Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus, featuring the 4-time Grammy-winning Blind Boys of Alabama, Chicago's Legendary Soul Stirrers, Minneapolis' Steele Family (you might recognize the voice of Jearlyn, who's often a guest on the Prairie Home Companion), and many other extraordinarily talented singers and actors and actresses. We have a week-run of the show at the Ordway Theatre. (You can see my June 2008 archives for the last show we did in Athens).

You can get a glimpse of the Athens show (a promo for Ordway theatre) here on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij6t_ofrZFA .

Then it's home in Owyhee a few days before heading off to Edinburgh Scotland (!) for a 3-day run of The Gospel at Colonus at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Here's a promo for the EIF on youtube (also clips from the Athens show):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO8ncyNZCMM&feature=related .


Afterwards, I'm staying on in Europe for a couple of weeks, visiting Seren Arabians in England, and covering an endurance ride in Belgium and at Florac, France - the pre-ride for next year's European Endurance Championship.


Then I'm back home a few days before taking off for the World Equestrian Games - covering the World Endurance Championship in Kentucky. And I'm looking as much forward to that as I am to riding in the Shawnee National Forest with Genie Stewart-Spears, before the WEG!

I get back to Owyhee the night of Day 1 of the September Owyhee Canyonlands... and I hope to saddle up Jose and ride 50 miles starting on Day 2!

Of course The Raven will be accompanying me on my travels, as well as doing some reporting on his Forevermore The Raven blog.

Stay tuned for some fun adventures - and look for me at Tevis - I'll be the one wearing my silver Tevis buckle : )