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Last
February, at our Arabian Horse Association of Southern California
meeting, I received a real surprise and treat. Bill Ainley showed
us some movies one of his relatives had taken at the Kellogg ranch
in the mid-1930's.
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Here
were those old time greats *RASEYN 597 under English saddle, FARANA
708 going through his stock horse routine, RALET 759 free jumping,
ROSSIKA 659, the trick horse, pushing her baby carriage, and the
liberty drill team spelling out "K E L L O G G "
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As
much as I enjoyed seeing all these long gone greats, my real thrill
was seeing JADAAN 196 with his rider in Arabian costume. JADAAN
brought back memories of my first visit to Kelloggs well over 30 years ago.
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During
those depression days of the 1930's we had horses -- the $50 kind.
One of our friends had a half-Morgan, and that was a big deal. The
total of all registered Arabians was less than 1,500, with about
half of those dead. You can see how rare a real Arabian was in
those days. Some of the circuses were still calling spotted horses
Arabians. The general horse public had very little real knowledge
of Arabian horses.
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The
Kellogg ranch did a wonderful job of introducing the Arabian horse
to the southern California area. You couldn't be involved with
horses for too long without hearing about Kelloggs and their
Arabians.
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When
I was nine years old, I made my first trip to Kelloggs. I was very
excited about seeing real Arabian horses. I don't know what I
expected, but somehow I was disappointed to see what looked to me
like regular horses doing the same things I had seen other regular
horses do at horse shows and circuses. Oh, sure, they were fat and
slick and they seemed to carry their tails much higher than most
horses I had seen, but they didn't look like the paintings.
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JADAAN
restored my faith that there really was such a thing as an Arabian
horse when he came charging into the ring with robes flying in the
air. He looked like what I thought an Arabian should look like. I
didn't even notice whether the rider had on glasses or a wrist
watch; I knew I was seeing a real Arabian horse.
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We
made many trips to Kelloggs over the next few years. I came to
appreciate the fact that these other regular horses were also
Arabians and had those characteristics distinctive to the
breed.
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I
then learned that the ancestors, for the most part, of these former
regular horses, had come from England, while JADAAN's sire had come
from the desert of Arabia. I knew I had been right all the time.
JADAAN was a real Arabian and those regular horses were imposters.
How could Arabians come from England? To a 10- or 12-year-old kid
this was a confusing state of affairs.
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As
I became more interested in Arabians, I found that our Arabians in
America had come from many places, including England, France,
Poland, Spain, Egypt, and that there also had been an importation
of 27 horses direct from the desert of Arabia to America in 1906.
This importation was made by Homer
Davenport and thus these horses are referred to as
"Davenports." I would recommend Homer Davenport's book, My Quest
of the Arabian Horse, to all those who are interested in the
background of the Arabian horse. I find this book very interesting,
as Davenport goes into considerable detail as to just what
qualities the Bedouin horsebreeders valued in their horses. These
comments are invaluable to those who want to produce the authentic
Bedouin-type Arabian horse.
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During
the 1940's I was in my teens and growing up with horses. When we
had visitors to our ranch such as Carl Raswan, John Douthit or Jimmy
Wrench, the talk always got around to the Davenport horses.
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Carl
knew many of the original Davenport horses, having purchased from
Peter Bradley, the man who
financed Davenport's trip, a group of these pure Davenports,
including JADAAN. Carl also purchased two more groups of pure
Davenports from F.E.Lewis which included LETAN 86 and ANTEZ 448. These
horses all came to California in the early 1920's and that is why
most of the present-day pure Davenports trace to California
breeders.
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By
the 1940's most of the pure Davenports were scattered across the
country and either no or very little attempt had been made to
perpetuate the pure Davenport breeding. John Douthit had GAMIL 1427
(Kasar 707 - Schilan 706). GAMIL, one of the most beautiful of the
pure Davenport mares, produced IBN HANAD 4165. Jimmy Wrench was
trying to collect a herd of pure Davenport horses. While Jimmy was
able to get a few mares, he never was able to find a stallion that
suited him.
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In
those days, things Arabians were far different from what they are
now. We had no Arabian magazines, not even Arabian shows until
1946. Breeding Arabians was more a matter of convenience then. Very
few people could take the effort to trailer a mare any distance to
a stallion. Of course, during the war years, there was the problem
of gasoline, and, even after the war, horse trailers were not at
all as common as they are today. In order to locate horses of a
particular bloodline, such as pure Davenports, you would take the
stud book and start with the imported horse and check all their
offspring and their offspring's offspring, making certain that the
horses they were bred to were of the desired bloodline. We did have
one advantage, though. All the horses were in one stud book.
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Jimmy
Wrench was the best tracer of Davenport horses, as his job kept him
on the road, and Jimmy always had time for a side trip to see
horses. Jimmy knew almost every pure Davenport horse in existence,
but the problem then was getting the owners to sell. If it was a
mare he wanted and couldn't get the owner to sell, he would often
try to get the owner to breed her to a Davenport stallion.
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ANTEZ
448 was about the only pure Davenport stallion in southern
California, and he met an untimely death in 1943.
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My
folks went to Texas in 1945 or 1946 and bought HANAD 489
(*Deyr 33 - Sankirah 149). HANAD was pure Davenport and equally as
well known as ANTEZ. We have owned several well-known Arabians such
as *RAFFLES 952, *RASEYN 597, and *AZIZA 888, but to me there was
always something special about HANAD. He had been at the Kellogg
ranch in the early 30's and was trained to jump rope, Spanish walk,
and other dressage gaits. Somewhere in his travels he had broken
one of his front legs. He stood with this leg bent at the knee.
When we would put a halter on him and bring him out, you would
forget all about his broken leg. He was all show horse. He reminded
me of Jim Kline's *TALAL, gentle as a kitten in his stall, but all
fire and 20 feet tall when you showed him off.
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Many
of the people who had pure Davenport mares brought them to HANAD,
and some beautiful foals were produced. Best known, of course, was
IBN HANAD.
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I
could only dream about owning an Arabian mare. Even though prices
were much lower than today, my income was even lower.
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One
day we had a visitor at the ranch, a Mr. Alvin Yoder of Corcoran,
California. Mr. Yoder had had Arabians for years but was now
wanting to retire. He had an old mare that he wanted to find a home
for. He would sell her at a very reasonable price. Her name was
POKA 438. We looked her up in the stud book and found she was pure
Davenport. She was by *HAMRAH 28, the leading sire of all the
Davenport horses. *HAMRAH was imported from the desert in 1906. She
was out of SHERIA 110, who was by *ABBEIAN 111 (the sire of Jadaan)
and out of *URFAH 40, the dam of *HAMRAH. As far as I was
concerned, this was the cream of the Davenport horses. Mr. Yoder
told me she wasn't in very good condition and was 25 years
old.
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I
bought her sight unseen, a mare that was seven years older than I
was, to breed to a stallion who was six years than I was. Even
though the price was reasonable, $250, it was still 25% of my
annual income.
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I
drove to Corcoran to pick up POKA. She was showing her age. Her
worst problem was her eyes. They were irritated, and the lower lids
were swollen. We would bathe her eyes several times a day, and that
seemed to make her more comfortable.
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I
bred her to HANAD in early 1947. She presented me with a stud foal
on February 28, 1948. The baby was very weak and had extremely
crooked front legs. I was sick about his legs, but everyone told me
they would straighten and, sure enough, they did.
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Carrying
the foal and feeding him was hard on POKA and she died shortly
after we weaned the baby. She was a very sweet dispositioned mare
and a good mother.
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I
named the foal TRIPOLI, a name that had stuck in my mind from the
North African campaign of World War II.
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In
the summer of 1950 the North Koreans attacked South Korea, and I
found myself in the Army. I lost my interest in horses and asked my
Mother to sell TRIPOLI.
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Twenty
years later the flame of my romance with the Arabian horse was
rekindled. I visited Charles
Craver in southern Illinois, the man who had purchased TRIPOLI.
Charles is without question the most knowledgeable person
concerning the Davenport horses I have ever met.
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It
is a funny thing that my time in the service resulted in my losing
interest in horses, while Charles found his interest in the
Davenport horses as a result of his time in the service. Charles
was in the Navy during the Korean War and was stationed in the San
Francisco Bay area. On his free time he would visit Arabian
breeders. On one of these visits he met Jimmy Wrench and came under
the spell of the romance of the Davenport horses.
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In
the summer of 1970 I visited Charles Craver and TRIPOLI. It was a
gratifying experience to get to talk to Charles and to find that he
values TRIPOLI for the very same reasons I had in mind when I bred
him.
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TRIPOLI
had been produced with due regard to the family strains of the
parents and with a desire to produce a pure Davenport offspring. It
was my hope before the mating had been made that the foal to be
could play a part in the continuation of the pure Davenport horses.
The key part TRIPOLI has played in the continuation of the pure
Davenports was beyond my wildest expectations.
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Another
interesting aspect to the story of POKA and the Davenport horses is
that today all but three of the horses on our ranch trace to POKA.
My Mother started, like most breeders, with a very divergent group
of horses. Not only did we have many different types of Arabians,
but very diverse bloodlines. We had Polish, Egyptian, English,
South American--you name it and we had it.
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A
few years ago I talked to my Mother about the fact that she had
eliminated all those other lines. She told me that for her purposes
of extremely intensive inbreeding to SKOWRONEK through *RAFFLES and
*RASEYN she had found her Davenport bottom lines the most
dependable.
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One
of the values of the Davenport horses, in my opinion, is their
closeness to the desert in terms of generations. From what I have
read and observed, our western ideas concerning the appearance of
an Arabian horse are sometimes in conflict with the ideas of the
desert Bedouin. What I am saying is that some of us may value short
speed, size, high leg action, an extended trot, color, etc., while
in the desert, as the Emir Abd-el-Kader says. "Color counts for
nothing, size for little,and blood is everything."
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Many
of the travelors to the desert criticized the conformation of the
Arabian horses and the breeding ideas of the Bedouins, but most of
them were astounded by the soundness and endurance of the Arabian
horse. And, after all, it is we who value their horse and not the
other way around.
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