Family Trees, Part I

I know quite a lot about some of the family trees of my horses/mules, and some of them I know nothing whatever. Lendri, Sriracha, Uma, and Big Frank can be sort of generally described, but the details are not knows. Uma and Sriracha both came from a miniature donkey sire and a miniature mare, both presumably red mares. Lendri came from a spotted donkey sire and a pony mare of unknown sire or color. Big Frank came from a mammoth donkey sire and a Belgian draft mare. Other than that though, I'm not sure. 

The rest of them have pedigrees behind them though! For the sake of brevity, I'll split this post into two. I think it's so interesting to know where your animals come from and to see what can be produced through breeding. If I had a gazillion dollars I would definitely be further invested in this.... but I do not.

The discussion of Dylan and O's family trees is very interesting - since O is bred to Dylan, the resulting baby will be a combination of all of these things, which to me is very special.

O-Ren:

O is of course very special to me. We have been through so much together, and truly, she is my best girl. 

But, she comes from a nobody pedigree. At least on her sire's side. 

Who?

Well, I can see where she gets her short neck from *cough that mare*. 

The stallion is a nobody from French lines that I know nothing about. Supposedly, right before his stallion testing he contracted EPM and was unable to complete his requirements. Although supposedly he won some things in hand. He's handsome but he did nothing and I have no information on him whatsoever. I've even asked my contacts in France who are Selle Francais breeders and sellers. They don't know anything about him either.
His dam was a TB, so basically O is almost 3/4 TB. I just like to pretend that she isn't. Supposedly the dam evented up to Prelim, but it's not clear if that really happened or not. All I can tell is that she was small, and particularly unattractive. The sire improved on this mare A LOT.

O as a baby. The caption in red does not appear to be correct as I think it says '15 or '18?  

On both sides of her pedigree she has crossbreeding, particularly to Nearco line horses. She has Nearco four times in her pedigree. A lot of TBs do, of course, but to me that's a heavy emphasis on one family line. Some of the big names that show up multiple times in her pedigree include:

Nijinsky

Northern Dancer 

Nearctic

Nearco 

Fleet Nasrullah - Nasrullah - Count Fleet 

Raise A Native

Native Dancer 

Man O War - Fair Play - Hastings -Bend Or

And others.

To me what stands out as a red flag the Raise A Native breeding. Those in particular were known for spindly crooked legs and a bad attitude. O inherited all of that to some degree, although her legs are not so spindly and crooked that they kept me from either using her heavily as a sport horse, or from breeding her. She has held up both in terms of soundness and in brain, so she earned that in my book. Still, Dylan's soundness and depth of bone did factor into my choice. If he was less stout in his limbs, I probably would not have chosen him as a match for her.

Gawan D'Amour

Nearco

Raise A Native

Dylan:

Dylan comes from an unbroken line of FEI level ultra-champions. He is no exception to that. The breeding clearly works. 

Baby Dylan!

His sire is the PRE stallion Plata Leon, and his dam is the rather innocuously named Snow Flake. I think it probably got translated from Spanish and didn't sound nearly as pretty in English, but that's just a theory. Dylan himself is a PRE but his ANCEE paperwork did not get filled out when he was younger, so he only has IALHA papers. But he is full blooded PRE.

Plata Leon

Plata Leon

Plata Leon is a son of the famous Regalado II, an FEI level dressage stallion who was imported to the US from Spain. Regalado II shows up in both Dylan's sire and dam sides. 

Regalado II is a son of the even more famous Leviton, one of the greatest breeding PREs in Spain - he was the number one military breeding stallion in the Military Stud program and produced more champions than any PRE alive at his time.

Leviton's sire, Agente

Also in Plata Leon's pedigree is the famous Legionario III, one of the most influential Spanish stallions serving as a foundation for the breed in the US. If you collect Breyer horses, you probably have his model - he was their first ever Andalusian. 

I could go on and on. Every horse in his pedigree is famous. And I know very little about Spanish bloodlines but even I recognize the names!

The things I am hoping to get out of this breeding:

Ridiculous flashy movement

Ability to turn on a dime

Excellent stamina

Strength and soundness

In short, an ideal combined driving horse and also a dual purpose dressage/working equitation horse. 

It is also guaranteed to be grey, and maybe not the most mentally stable of horses. But, I can't imagine myself with a mentally stable horse anyway, so that's fine by me!