Beauty within the Broodmares

Broodmares and the Beauty Within
by Bonnie Allen Rombach

In 1979, my husband Franz and I were experiencing burnout with our riding school in Aachen-Brand, Germany. Fifteen years in a fishbowl keeping boarders, school horses, breeding horses and sale horses well-fed, groomed and healthy; and trying to maintain a balance between owners, students, buyers and members of the local riding club, was destroying our health, our family life and our marriage. In 1980 we moved to Canada to be famers, away from conflict and people pressure. The only connection with the past that we decided to bring with us was our yearling Hanoverian colt, "Lorbas". He was the best bred colt we had ever raised, and we just couldn't leave him behind.

Our farm in souther Ontario was set up for raising cattle, hay and grain with good pastures and plenty of stabling and storage. Buying cattle was a new and exciting experience, but one buying experience turned out to be an omen. Franz wnet out to buy calves and came home with a dark bay, Standardbred, trotting mare named, "Chocolate Fancy." She was Kentucy bred with a nice top line suited to a riding horse, but she was being dumped because her owners could neither make her pace nor get her in foal. As Franz led her down the ramp, my brother-in-law's last joking words in Germany came to mind: "When I come to visit you in Canada and find more than three horses on the farm, I'll have to shoot them." Erwin knew that his brother and his family would never be cured of that disease that consumes everyone who has ever been infected by the "Equus" virus.

By Erwin's third visit, the cattle population had dwindled to zero and the horse population had increased to more than twenty. A significant number of this increase was due to Fancy. She had a foal every year for six years. But more than being an excellent mother, she was the leader of the herd, the "alpha mare" and she took her job very seriously.

Fancy never had to raise a foot to another horse, she only had to turn her head and glare if someone was out of line. They followed her willingly. She led the herd for their morning and evening gallops around the pasture, she led them to water but always drank first, and she chose the area of the pasture to be grazed. She took responsiblitiy for their safety when anything threatened.

One night during a severe electrical storm, I was very concerned about the location of the herd because one of the fence lines contained a row of maple trees. If horses stood under a tree during a lightening strike, they could die. As I searched the field with each flash of lightning, I was astonished and relieved at what I saw. The herd stood in the lowest, safest part of the field away from the trees. As is normal behavior, the horses had their backs to the storm with their heads lowered as if in a trance, but Fancy stood fully alert at the front of the herd with her head up into the storm, facing them, as if to say, "trust me, you are safe here."

On another occasion, when I was home alone in the afternoon, Fancy, leading the herd, came galloping up the lane to the front field near the house. She made a noisy fuss until I came out to see what they were doing there at that time of day. As I approached her, Fancy went to one of the other mares who was bleeding profusely from several wounds on one leg. The other mare had most likely caught her leg in the fence, and Fancy brought her to the caretakers for the help that she couldn't give.

Another very special member of that herd was the Anglo-Arab mare, Tara Shimar. When I first saw her, it was a typcial Canadian February day---cold, windy, and miserable. She was a flea-bitten gray with wool like the abomindable snowman from living outside in a run-in shed, but there was something very special about her.

We were looking for an experienced broodmare and an easy keeper to give our young stallion a positive encounter for his first time covering. Tara was a fifteen-year-old foundation stock Canadian Hunter (Canadian Sport Horse), by an Arabian stallion out of a Thoroughbred mare, sixteen hands, mother of four, and with the "wisdom of age" in her eyes. Even though she had been a field hunter for years, she was correct of limb with nary a splint or gall, and when she trotted down the icy, lumpy, lane, she floated as if she were on spongy, smooth, arena footing. Franz and I looked at each other and kew that this was the right mare for Lorbas. She was a wonderful teacher for him and in the years following, he always seemed to have an affinity for grays.

As we anxiously awaited Tara's first foal and the moment of parturition came, it looked as if the foal was coming wrong because the first foot was upside down. I raced to the house to call our vet, Hew Llewellyn, for help. He was in a town that was normally a forty-five minute drive away. In moments he was in his truck speeding to our farm. Franz had delivered several foals before in Germany, so he decided to go in to check the position of the foal. It was only slightly twisted, and Franz eased the legs and head and neck around to aid the foaling, which with a little assistance during the pressing, went smoothly. When the vet arrived in less than half-hour, mother was up and cleaning off the baby. The vet was just as excited as we were to see what Tara and Lorbas had produced, so we named the youngster after him, Lucky Lew.

Lucky was a cheeky, bold, baby, but Mama knew how to handle that quite nicely. One day while bucking around the stall, Lucky planted a very solid kick to Mama right in the belly. Tara gently but firmly returned that kick to the right spot and Lucky learned his lesson.

Lucky was just the first of eight beautiful foals that Tara had with Lorbas. When we bought her, we felt that if she produced one or two foals, she would pay for herself. Who would have thought that she would go on producing year after year well into her twenties!

Her second foal was the filly, "Lara". When Lara was born, we missed the foaling and were very concerned when her legs became somewhat swollen. I had hysterical visions of joint ill, but when Hew examined her, he said she only had a few hairline scratches and she needed to exercise. Tara seemed to know this as well, and she kept her baby walking for hours, only stopping to graze and let her foal feed and rest before returning to her walking routine. By the next day, the swelling was gone and Lara was well on her way to growing into a beautiful, 16.3 hands, chestnut mare, and a champion in dressage.

Tara, being gray, actually was the "horse of a different color" in our herd. Our horses remained out to pasture day and night during the summer months, and Tara could usually be seen near the herd but never in the middle. All of the other mares and foals were chestnuts and bays, and they kept her at the outside edge.

I will never forget one early spring day, when we had just turned the other mares out in the field next to the house. I decided to first put Tara in the smaller paddock next to the field. She was twenty-three years old and due to foal in aobut two weeks. Tara would have none of this segregation stuff but as i was going out of the gate, I turned to see if she was all right. I was horrified to see her back a few strides off the fence, and then before I could stop her, she cleared that fence just as easily as could be. With her tail up and that beautiful floating trot, she took her place at the edge of the herd where she belonged.

The philosophy that Franz, a very German National Federation (FN), professional trainer and teacher, has always adhered to is the old adage that "a good horse is a good horse." Many breeds have qualities that can add to the gene pool, to produce outstanding sport horses. Not the least of these is the beauty within those special broodmares like Chocolate Fancy and Tara Shimar.