Untitled Document

29 June 2004

Art Deco

I am not an equestrian. It doesn't make me a bad person. I am just a suburban kid who didn't often run into the species who has faithfully carried us for millennia. There is a troika in the history of Man, and it involves the human and the horse and the dog.

We had dogs in my family, magical mutts whose warm tongue and solicitous gaze filled something up in our hearts. Horses are too big for suburban life, and we have bred them out of ordinary life. I never missed the loss, but realize now that I missed something essential in the partnership of the race.

The only time I dealt with horses was long ago at summer camp in Michigan. They had a horse program and a program for normal suburban kids who did not have riding as a central value. On our side of the compound we shot arrows and worked leather and beads like the Indians whose land we occupied and swam in the lake scooped out by the glaciers from the beach on our side of the compound. The long brown barracks were in the middle, with the mess-hall, and over on the other side there was a barn and some massive animals and flies and manure.

But there was something about it. Some of the summer programs featured a regular day where we actually we boosted into the saddles, and the horses encouraged to walk around a trail with us gripping the pommel of the worn western saddles with one hand and the reigns with the other.

One afternoon we had a line of fierce Michigan thunderstorms roll through the region. The mounted campers were off somewhere else. I found myself enlisted by a frantic-teenaged Counselor to help get the horses in the barn, and get their saddles off before the leather got wet.

I marveled at the cinch and girth and was quite proud that I was able to figure it out, untie the long leather latigo of the string girth and get the horse into the stall.

I have no idea if the placid animal was a mare or a gelding. Stoic was all I observed, the massive animal having to put up with kids not much more adept than me caring for them all day.

So it was with some mild amusement that I found myself piloting the Chrysler out to Loudoun County on a beautiful early summer day. My friend was a few days away from the physical labor that is driving her into the ground. She is trying to cope with a Barn Situation.

Like I say, I have not had to worry a great deal about the equine side of the house. I had sons and they played team sports. Had I been blessed with a daughter I'm sure I would be much more attentive to Barn Life and Politics, since in America horses now seem almost exclusively to be the purview of the women.

There is big money in those animals, and by report there are more of them now than there were at the turn of the century. As with anything in which there is big money, there are mountebanks and cads and great cruelty to go along with the beauty.

My friend need a break from that. She was interested in seeing a special animal, a stud of some repute. She slept and she ate and in a day or two was ready to plunge into the world of horses. She was a jumper, and she rode Dressage, and I gathered that there is a spiritual dimension to the old martial art.

There is a connection between Dressage, Zen, Taoism, and the riding style of the mounted warrior. A glimmering of the passion that constitutes the relationship between horse and rider penetrates even to me.

The fields and rich green trees and old stone buildings slid by the Chrysler. I thought that Virginia might be for lovers, but that is just an advertising slogan. The Commonwealth is old, as things go for Western civilization in North America, and it is really for tobacco and horses.

My freidn wanted to go see a famous Oldenberg stud who is semi-retired and living in Loudoun County. I agreed. The road trip was a fine way to spend a sunny Sunday. She called the Silverwood Farm where the horse resides and got directions.

The farm is deep in horse country, beyond Leesburg and Waterford and almost to the Point of Rocks, where Bobby Lee took the Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland twice.

The land around Waterford is filled with equine iconoclasts. The township raised a squadron of cavalry in the Civil War and they rode out of Virginia to join the Union Army. Despite the influx of nuevo phonies and the erection of the McMansions, this part of Loudoun County is a place where great farms stil stretch across the rolling hills and horses stand and observe the BMWs whizzing by on the black-top county lanes.

Silverwood Farm is off the main road a few miles, almost to where the blacktop ends. There is a dirt road that leads up to the paddocks and the barn and the indoor arena.

It was two months from the foaling season, and there were colts and fillies with the mares in the paddocks. Inside the barn guarded by a languid Siamese cat we found Art Deco, the sire of hundreds of Oldenbergs across the land. He is a Pinto, not a paint.

That is a signal distinction, so if you are like me, just nod and go along with it. Art Deco is by Samber out of Zorba. Or maybe it is the other way around. Not my territory. But Peracles and War Relic are on one side of his lineage, and Carajan and Herstwind on the other.

He is an Oldenburg warmblood Stallion of unmatched pedigree.

But he is not a homozygote. I listened to the woman who owns Silverwood describe his performance and capability. I gathered that not being a homozygote did not make him a bad horse. All it means is that he carries the both properties of a Pinto and a horse of uniform color. When a mare is bred with his seed there is not guarantee that the offspring will have his unique markings, white and dark bay in fanciful splotches.

So breeding a mare with his seed is a bit of a crap shoot and can dramtically affect the value of the baby.

Art Deco is twenty-one, old enough to vote in most counties in Virginia and in the old days I am not sure he wouldn't be registered. His brother is the renowned Fine Art, part of the breeder's habit of blending the names of the stud and mare that produce the registered lines.

You want the stats? I listened to the women talk and tried to nod in the right places. This is a complex and earthy business. Art Deco is an imported Dutch Warmblood, 16.2 hands high. He was born in 1983, and is considered to be a predominately black pinto. His color and lineage is approved by the Royal Oldenburg Association and is listed in the International Stallion Registry and bears the seals of the Rheinland-Pfalz-Saar International, the Oldenburg Verband, is classified as an Elite American Warmblood, an Elite of the IRC, a fully fledged member of the Pinto Horse Association, and holder of the prestigious Canadian Warmblood Silver Medal.

Which is to say that he is far more decorated than I am, and I was active in my trade longer than him. Though on the whole, I would have liked the opportunity to explore his profession.

He still is, incidently. I asked about that, whether he was still standing to stud.

He is.

Unfortunately for the stallions, real breeding is too dangerous for the mares and for them. For real coupling the mare must be drugged for safety and the whole thing makes me a bit queasy. The Stallions are milked of their seed and pre-labeled FedEx boxes were stacked by the door, neatly addressed, to be shipped overnight to farms where earnest people use ultrasounds of the mares to the determine the precise moment of equine ovulation.

Sounds messy to me. I helped impregnate prize cattle by manner one summmer and never have forgotten the experience.

We watched Art Deco as his mistress put him out for a turn around the arena. He made a pile of manure, advanced to the other end of the arena with a crisp step, and then got down and rolled in the dirt. This is his routine, his mistress explained, and then he put on a show.

He leaped and strutted and bowed and bucked. He had been a competitor in his day, a Grand Prix-level horse. His curly white mane danced with his gait and I watched my friend, thinking how extraordinary it was that she could control an animal of this power and grace between her legs, and make him dance and jump to her command.

When Art Deco was done with his demonstration we walked down the stalls to visit the new kid in town. Sempatico is the new Don Juan of the barn. He is the first approved homozygotic Oldenberg warmblood Pinto in the U.S. He is just here from Germany, and thus he still whinnies with an accent. But he will adapt as swiftly as the Governor of California.

Sempatico is approved by the Oldenberg Federation as a stud stallion, another big deal. His gaits are at 8, 9 and 10, whatever that might mean. But the key is that he is homozygotic. Any mare he is bred with, regardless of her lineage, will produce a foal of color. Big bucks. Brown FedEx boxes waited at the end of the barn for him to fill.

We thanked the owner for her time and walked back up hill to the car. I almost got there when I realized my companion was looking over the fence at a Pinto stud colt with remarkable color and a black curly mark on his snowy white forehead. His eyes were grave.

“He is an Art Deco baby,” explained the owner. “I call him Superman because of the black mark on his forehead that makes him look a little like Christopher Reeves. He hasn't been tested yet to see if he is homozygotic. He is still for sale. Right now he is $14,000 dollars. If he tests out as a homozygote, I will raise it to $19,000. If he isn't, I think I will ask $12,000.”

My friend was gazing fixedly, and the colt came over to look at her. She was still, and the colt nuzzled her face. I was filled with wonder and dread, because I knew what was coming next. And I was right.

“Would you go and see if my checkbook is in my backpack?” she said.

Superman just whinnied.