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We so much focus on the modern beauty of the purebred horse, and even see so many hyper-beautiful perfect Arab (designer) horses in the advertising pictures, so what's about our true and natural "beauties"? Do we still see and can we still honestly respect them? The horses in the pastures - naturally beautiful as they are! Or maybe these breeds of Arabian horses that we find in the desert countries - like for example in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the local bred horses and lines coming from the old history of this area and centuries ago.
This month we will join the Al Khalediah Arabian horse show which is an international ECAHO A-rated show. Besides the ECAHO classes, we find also the "Saudi Desert bred" classes, where these classical Saudi desert bred horses have their own agenda. These desert breds are definitely not of the today's ethereal modern show horse look - but they are excellent horses, most valuable and most beloved, and held in a high esteemi in their countries of origin.
Seeing the number of entries in these Saudi desert bred classes at the al Khalediah show, seeing the enthusiasm and excitement that the audience gives to this breed, cheering maybe even more than for the "show horses", you really understand and start to enjoy these classes. The overall look of these desert breds are not what we are used today from our "show models" - but they are fantastic horses, with great substance, great movement ability, and some of them really show the beauty in type and look according to our modern show standard that you could easily place them in an ECAHO class and nobody would see any difference. So it is quite arrogant to think that the purebred show horses are the only "beautiful" ones.
The above picture and our new 'Monthly' presents the mare AL BAYDAH (Mehneer x Eiman) that belongs to the King Abdul Aziz Arabian Horse Center (KAAHC) in Dirab - photographed in a lovely natural place and stones in a wildlife resort a bit outside the Saudi capital Riyadh. AL BAYDAH combines the blood of Saudi desert lines with those of Crabbet and Egyptian in an excellent way, and produced several foals at KAAHC to already create her own dynasty. |
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