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*LEOPARD the
Arab and *LINDEN TREE the Barb
by Michael Bowling
from Arabian Horse
World July 1979
copyright by
MICHAEL BOWLING
used by permission
of Michael Bowling
first published in
the Arabian Horse World July 1979
PART 3
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STUMP'S GUY 1081-R,
halter
horse of their circuit - but the high point performance horse of the 1978
CRHA National Show. He is ncidentally six generations removed from the foundation, Colby-derived linebred CRHA sire FOX II. |
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"Barbaric"
colors appeared as the Colby stock and its descendants were linebred and
combined with other colorful range stock, and in fact most Rangerbreds today
are of Appaloosa patterns and are double-registered with the Appaloosa Horse
Club. CRHA itself has never been a breed founded on color, looking on this
trait, quite rightly, as unfixable and unrelated to using qualities. In a sense
the Appalooa breeders rather took advantage of this, seeing CRHA horses as
ready-made foundation stock for their programs, since better color-odds
resulted from CRHA crosses compared to solid-colored grade horses. Through
their Appaloosa connection, most CRHA-registered horses today trace to horses
of different sources from the foundation Rangerbreds--in fact CRHA is probably
unique as a non-color breed which is also devoted to outcrossing as a policy,
requiring only one line back to a foundation sire to qualify for registration.
The word
"leopard" has caused some confusion over the years, since it enters
into the CRHA record in two different ways. There are "leopard"
Appaloosa-patterned CRHA horses, and then there are those among the early
registrations, which seem to have been named for their relationship to
"our" *LEOPARD. In fact as far as is known, *LEOPARD was a typical
dapple grey who turned white in his later years; the "leopard"
Appaloosa pattern was introduced into early CRHA pedigrees by a son of WALDRON
LEOPARD, an Appaloosa horse of unknown background sometimes said to be derived
from the nearly-legendary STARBUCK LEOPARD.
The double *LEOPARD
grandson TONY was described as "snow white with black ears" which is
also rather intriguing. This sounds like a description of a black-and-white
"medicine hat" overo spotted horse, as much as it does anything. A
medicine hat Anglo-Arab does not really seem very probable (though it is
assuredly possible: some of the
"white TB" foals could be called medicine hat patterned, and I have
seen photos of an Arabian foal that also would qualify -- though come to think
of it, all of these I know of would be "white with red ears").
American horsemen have always had trouble understanding the continuity of the
grey phases and their changes and interactions, however, and my personal
nomination for "simplest explanation of the description" is that TONY
was a grey horse who turned nearly white before he went to Colorado, retaining
black pigment on his ears and perhaps his knees and hocks for a while, as
sometimes happens.
At this distant
remove, it is hard to know what to say about *LEOPARD and *LINDEN TREE as
individuals, let alone as breeding forces. It would surely not be amiss to
quote Randolph Huntington's descriptions of them, as quoted by Thornton Chard:
On *LEOPARD --
"He was a
beautiful dapple-grey (in 1880), fourteen and three quarters hands high; his
symmetry and perfectness making him appear much taller. As he stood looking
loftily over the meadows below, I thought him the most beautiful horse I had
ever seen. With nostrils distended and eye full of fire, I could imagine he
longed for a run upon his desert home. Addison (the groom) gave him a play at
the halter, showing movements no horse in the world can equal but the (pure
bred) Arabian. He needed no quarter-boots, shin-boot, ankle-boots, scalping
boot or protection of any kind; and yet the same movements this Arabian went
through would have blemished every leg and joint upon an American trotting
horse, even though he had been able to attempt the, to him, impossible activity...
the knee action was beautiful; not too much, as in toe weighted horses, nor
stiff and staky, as in the english race horse, but graceful and elastic,
beautifully balanced by movement in the hock and stifle."
As
to *LINDEN TREE --
"At that
time, the spring of 1880, Linden was a beautiful smooth, blue gray, which this
summer of 1885 has changed to a white-gray. In height he is the same as
Leopard, fourteen and three quarters hands...in build he was more compact than
Leopard, being deeper and broader; of more substance but with just as clean and
fine limb as Leopard had. The limbs, joints and feet of both horses were
perfect. The fetlocks could not be found; there were none. The warts at point
of ankle were wanting, and the osselets were very small. Large coarse osselets
show cold blood, mongrel blood. The crest of the neck in Linden was thick and
hard, the same as in Leopard. This fact will astonish some fancy horsemen, who
are led to believe that a thin crest is evidence of fine breeding. My experience
of late years is that a thin crest belongs to a long-bodied, flat horse, of
soft constitution. The mane in both horse was very fine and silky, falling over
so as to cause one to believe that the crest was a knife blade with blade up
for thinness. The head of Linden was the counterpart of Leopard in all ways; as
in fine, thin muzzle, lip and nostril; also small, fine, beautiful ears, thin
eyelids; deep wide jowls, etc."
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Photogravure of *LEOPARD,
age 16. (Courtesy Carol W. Mulder)
A "photograph of a
drawing"of *LINDEN TREE, age 6 or 7, (Courtesy
Carol W. Mulder) |
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The clincher for me is the fact that *LINDEN TREE is shown without a bit or
headstall. The clumsy photographic gear of the time, let alone the slow plates
then available, would not be suited to photographing horses at liberty. I
suspect there was a pair of drawings of the stallions and that the *LEOPARD one
was lost, but not before the "Wonderful Arabian Horses" print was
derived from them, while a photograph of the *LINDEN TREE drawing survived.
At any rate, we do
have what appear to be a reliable likeness of *LEOPARD and he is the one we're
interested in--he was the Arab and he appears in our pedigree today.
*LEOPARD's picture
speaks for him and; as compiler of this review I don't feel called upon to add
to this, except to say that *LEOPARD probably compared quite well with the
foundation desertbred sire of any Arabian breeding company--and that his
high-class origin and the repeated references to his air of quality and
breeding and his excellent trot suggest that we may wish we had more of his
genes in our modern Arabian population than we do. In any event he seems to
have had one of the finest, most proper necks ever to come out of the desert.
Evaluating *LEOPARD as
a sire is difficult, since his purebred descendants of the first few
generations all had much more of *NAOMI in their pedigrees than of *LEOPARD,
and all seem to show her very strong influence. Fortunately we do have photos
of ABDUL HAMID II and two of his sons, the result of crossing *LEOPARD into a
distinctly different breeding group. The photos of *LEOPARD's two sons and
three grandsons (see the crossbreds with this article, and the purebreds in the
article on the descent from ANAZEH) are a very attractive group indeed. The
weak loin seems to have bred on, and the calf knees (but not through ANAZEH),
but so has the fine reach of neck. ANAZEH's son seems to have slightly soft
pasterns, which I had not noticed before--interesting since a lady from Oregon
wrote and sent photos of "a granddaughter of a linebred *LEOPARD
mare" with the most extreme case of soft pasterns I think I've ever seen.
This is not the line from the ANAZEH son however, going back to EL SABOK
instead, and his pasterns, while a bit short, do not seem soft at all.
There are a good many
animals back in our pedigrees with soft pasterns, and many of them are closer
to today's horses, and appear through more sources, than *LEOPARD--so I find it
hard to invoke him as a cause of this fault today.
Well--there you have
them--"*LEOPARD the Arab and *LINDEN TREE the Barb," in Huntington's
phrase. *LEOPARD has Arabian descendants in large numbers today; both seem to
have influenced the Colorado Rangers and through them the Appaloosas; and if
truth be known it's likely that both are unrecorded far back in many
Standardbred pedigrees.
The fact that you have
just read this indicate that they've had an intellectual and historical impact
in the course of a hundred years, quite likely beyond what anyone ever
expected.