A Valentine Story

VP Kahlua (Jora Honey Ku++ x Kahlette)

VP Kahlua was a striking 1981 golden chestnut mare with a flaxen mane and tail, sired by a Canadian National Champion stallion, Jora Honey Ku++ (Joramir x Hatties Honey Ku) and out of Kahlette (El Hilal x Kahla). She was bred by Ron Palelek of Vantage Point Farm, in Washington state. She had two full sisters: VP Antares, foaled in 1979 and VP Kahl Me, foaled in 1989. By virtue of her pedigree, do you know that VP Kahlua was almost 60% Egyptian in blood? Her paternal grandsire, Joramir, was 100% straight Egyptian, having been sired by the *Nasr son, Sirecho and out of the straight Babson Egyptian mare, Fad Roufa. Fad Roufa was sired by Faddan and out of Fay Roufa, a Fay-El-Dine daughter. In Authentic Arabian Bloodstock, Volume II, beloved author, Judith Forbis tells us that Fay Roufa was an exquisite mare and of her sire, Fay-El-Dine, she wrote, "the first generation Babson mares, particularly the grey Fay-El-Dine daughters, were more refined and fitted more closely in type to the R.A.S/E.A.O-bred horses we saw in Egypt in 1959."

Her paternal granddam, Hatties Honey Ku, adds more Egyptian blood through the mare, *Aziza (Gamil Manial x Negma), imported from Egypt by W.R. Brown in the early 1930's. VP Kahlua's dam, Kahlette, is a daughter of the straight Egyptian stallion, El Hilal (*Ansata Ibn Halima x Bint Nefisaa) and out of Kahla (Moneyn x Fa Gazal). El Hilal is interesting, as his maternal granddam, Nefisa,  whom Judith Forbis called, "a good-bodied and prolific broodmare", claims the mare Farida in both the tail female line of her sire and dam, further concentrating the influence of Farida, as *Ansata Ibn Halima also traces in tail female line to this wonderful and vital mare in Egyptian breeding.

VP Kahlua (Jora Honey Ku++ x Kahlette)

With the exception of El Hilal, all of the Egyptian blood present in VP Kahlua's pedigree are horses imported to America prior to the importations of the 1960's and 1970's, that is, the horses that we have classified as "Old Egyptian". Even though the "old" and "new" Egyptian horses share much common ground in their ancestral elements; the "old" Egyptian horses do not carry the lines of horses added to the EAO program, for example,  the Inshass horses, incorporated into the program after the Egyptian Revolution in 1952. What is significant to me is the 25%  which represents the breeding program of Prince Mohamed Aly Tewfik through horses like *Fadl, *Nasr, *Maaroufa, *Bint Saada, *Aziza, Balance and Farida. There's a reason why I included the below photo of VP Kahlua and that is, I wanted you to get a real sense of the rounded, flowing lines of this mare and of the body mass that she carried within these lines. She is voluptuous and her full, plump and round hind end, to me, underscores the breeding program of Prince Mohamed Aly Tewfik, as influenced as his program was by the RAS stallion, Ibn Rabdan (Rabdan el Azrak x Bint Gamila). I remembered a passage from Prince Mohamed Aly Tewfik's book, Breeding of Pure Bred Arab horses, in which he remarked on the prepotency of Ibn Rabdan. He wrote, "Some stallions always sire foals of their own colour and sex; let us take a dark chestnut like Ibn Rabdan, one of the Royal Agricultural Society's stallions, for an example. He always produces dark chestnuts, no matter what the colour of mares. This will go on until he covers a mare who produces the form and type of her own strain; if she is better bred she will dominate in the formation and colouring of the foal." I found it interesting that within the percentage of Egyptian breeding present in VP Kahlua's genetic fiber, the 5 lines to Ibn Rabdan, as far back as these lines are in her pedigree, are almost 10%!  If you are a believer in phenotype following coat colour, while not a dark chestnut as Ibn Rabdan was, she is still chestnut and that would explain the curveyness of her body!

In 1953, Douglas and Margaret Marshall of  Gleannloch Farms, Spring, Texas  purchased their first Arabian horse, a half-Egyptian mare bred by Henry Babson, sired by *Fadl and out of *Kostrzewa, one of the mares that Henry Babson had purchased in Poland. The mare's name was Fa Gazal, the maternal great granddam of VP Kahlua. The Marshalls bred Fa Gazal to a WK Kelloggg-bred stallion named Moneyn (Raseyn x Monica), to produce the mare, Kahla, the dam of Kahlette by El Hilal, as well as Bint Surf,  a US Reserve National English Pleasure Champion in 1968. An interesting story about Moneyn is really a story of his dam, Monica, a 1926 bay mare, bred by Charles Jewett of Indianapolis, Indiana. Both her sire, Tabab and dam, Sankirah, trace in tail female line to *Wadduda, a Bedouin-bred war mare, of great fame, who once covered a distance of 106 miles in 11 hours, while in pursuit of a caravan traveling to Aleppo. What makes this story even more remarkable, is that *Wadduda had suffered an injury to her pastern, in a previous tribal raid. She was an heroic mare, with a lot of heart, the battle scars on her body, a physical (and real) reminder of what she really was, a war mare.

In 1984, as a three year old, VP Kahlua made breed history by becoming the first mare to win what has become known as "the Triple Crown" - Scottsdale Champion Mare, United States National Champion Mare and Canadian National Champion Mare plus the World Champion Junior Mare title, all in the same year!

A couple of years ago, a woman by the name of Diane Loran, called VP Kahlua the most gorgeous mare she had ever seen. Diane visited Messiah Arabian Stud, as she was interested in breeding her mare to one of the farm's stallions. Diane remembers the experience in a Facebook post she wrote For the Golden Years of the Arabian Horse,

"Walking thru the main barn, I saw her stall...biggest one in the barn with her name plate on it but it was empty. I asked where she was. Tague Johnson was their breeding manager at the time, and he had been showing me around. He said, 'Oh, she's outside with her last baby.' He called for her (there was an open door to an outside paddock) and she came barreling in, covered with sand and dirt. She stopped and looked at us and "snorted", threw her tail over her back and then her new colt came in. She nickered to him and then they both ran back outside. Even covered in muck, she was such a QUEEN!"

VP Kahlua was bred to the *Padron son, Damascus Messiah (out of a *Serafix daughter, SX Daphne) and produced foals sired by this stallion. I'm not sure how she is represented today, as the resources that I have available to me, are not conclusive, as far as a production record for her progeny, through the present day.

True Colours (Thee Desperado x Daheda)

There was so much promise and potential written into the core of VP Kahlua's very being. She was everyone's favorite and charmed people with her extraordinary beauty. Naturally, one expected great things from this mare. Sometimes, horses are born into a period of time, where their greatness is not fully understood and tragically, the opportunity to best utilize their influence, is lost. I often wonder, what if she had been born twenty years later? What if she had been bred to an Egyptian stallion who shares common ground with her? The 1997 straight Egyptian stallion, True Colors (Thee Desperado x Daheda), with over 40 lines to Ibn Rabdan in his pedigree, also shares the same dam line as El Hilal, through Nefisa to Farida. Moneef, the sire of Nahed, True Colors' maternal grand dam, traces in her dam line to Halima,  the dam of *Ansata Ibn Halima, the sire of El Hilal. When I think along these lines, only then can I imagine a golden filly foal, whose True Colours would outshine the golden brilliance of any necklace, bracelet or ring, wrapped in a heart shaped box.  That would be the ultimate Valentine's Day present, all for the love of an Arabian horse.

***Many thanks to photographers like the late Johnny Johnston, the late Erwin Escher and Scott Trees, whose photos appear above. The story of VP Kahlua could not be told without their photos. And so, this blog post is lovingly dedicated to them, the very powerful visual storytellers of our breed.***