Walter had had real good luck with this technique in the past, leaving the splints on for a few hours. “Next thing I knew my friend Mr. Bill had to go to the hospital in Fort Smith. I called back to the farm saying I would be back around 3 or 4 in the morning and I would take the splint off then, they shouldn’t bother. Mr. Bill had a relapse and I didn’t make it home until 7 the following evening, the bandage had slipped, and massive tissue trauma had occurred…There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think about what Precious could have been like…” Precious shows tremendous heart on a daily basis. “She has Sabiya’s personality and is boss mare,” says Walter. “What makes Precious most happy is being a mom.” She has had two lovely foals by Samhan for Walter: a 1997 filly named Masada Malina and a 2000 colt.
The fall of the year that Precious was born saw the passing of another friend. “The wonderful old black Babson stallion Fabo was put down on November 15, 1992,” started Fabo’s obituary found in the V2 No.2 issue of Foundations. “He enjoyed a long and happy life, with good health until the last day, running around his paddock, asserting his dominance over the farm.
On the morning of the 15th, he apparently suffered the first of a series of strokes. Fortunately, assistance was available and he suffered very little.” Fabo, aged 29, had sired 23 Sheykh Obeyd foals.
Fa Asar now took the place of head sire at Masada. In 1994 he sired an exceptionally nice black stallion named Masada Sabar out of Zahara Sabiya. Sabar is of wonderful Saqlawi type and was purchased by Ritzy Arabians for their Saqlawi straight Egyptian breeding program. He has sired several foals for them and was started in dressage last year by Susan Mayo. “He has wonderful western type movement and tremendous stamina,” say owners Rita Dodson and Robert Bethke, “and he has a fine and long mitbah in addition to good neck length.”
Masada El Aba.
In 1995 Fa Asar sired Masada Mataan, a gray colt out of Masada El Aba. This was her last foal and she died peacefully earlier this year at Candy Cohn’s farm. When Mataan was a few days old a rear fetlock joint began to swell. “I thought it might have been joint ill,” recounts Walter. This valuable colt was immediately sent to the vet clinic at the University of Oklahoma where they indeed diagnosed the problem as ‘joint ill’ and recommended putting him down. Not wanting to give up, Walter brought Masada El Aba and her colt back to Masada. As the days passed and Walter worked on treating the joint ill, Walter came to the conclusion that the condition was misdiagnosed and called upon the local vet to take an x-ray. The results confirmed Walter’s suspicion; it was in fact a broken bone. Unfortunately, too much time had passed and the bone had set at a skewed angle. Amazingly, Mataan is still alive and is as active as any young colt his age, careening around the fields at high speeds, coming to abrupt stops, playing hard with other colts his age. Watching him in action you would never guess he had a crippled hind leg. In 1995 Fa Asar also sired the bay filly Mara Nadir, his first of four foals out of El Dahma Halima. He sired a second excellent Saqlawi type colt out of Zahara Sabiya named Masada Mamnon, who is now a lead stallion for Gert and Elisabeth Stam’s Babson program in Holland. Gert and Elisabeth also purchased Fa Asar’s 1995 gray colt out of Masada Adiva, Masada Massud. Massud has sired several replacement foals including Manara Samira, a lovely black Babson/Sirecho/Halima filly out of the elegant Matara Saafana. Massud is now owned by H.R.H. Lulua Al Sabbah and joins two Masada Marana daughters by SAR Fadl Halim.
While Fa Asar is now getting up in years and gets stiff in the shoulder from an injury long before he came to Masada, he still breeds several mares each year and is adored by all the magical mares of Masada. This year Fa Asar sired an exciting bay colt out of Bint Fabo, a black colt out of Masada Daalana, an exotic black filly out of Masada Adiva and for Anne and Grant Townsend a china doll black filly out of El Dahma Halima.
We backtrack to Wednesday, August 3, 1994. Daal Aba, Abby, was on lease to Walter’s close friend Vicki Butler and was four months in foal to her Babson/Sirecho stallion KH Seral Sireff. “It was a beautiful summer’s eve at Matara”, Vicki recalls. “Abby looked like she was ten years old while standing at the gate which lead to the five acre lake she loved to stroll around every evening after finishing her meal of special mix. But that day she turned toward me before I reached her and started walking a few steps to meet me and laid her head on my shoulder as if to say she didn’t really feel well enough to go. I turned to call Dr. Steve and I heard her fall. I turned back to her and knew she had had a massive stroke. I sat down next to her, laid her head in my lap to comfort her and Abby looked at me as if to say “thank you for staying with me.” It seemed to relax her just a little. She will always be in my heart and her spirit will remain with all who knew her. Abby is buried on the hill overlooking the lake she loved to stroll around.”
The foals out of El Dahma Halima, Adiva, Precious, Daalana, and Alissa mark the fourth generation to flow from Daal Aba. She is still represented tail-female within the straight Babson breeding group through Masada Faadah and her two daughters Mazala Bashira by Fa Asar and Mazala Jamila by Ahmed Fabah, through Dahmah Saafada (who has had three sons by Ahmed Fabah but no daughters), through Zahara Sabiya and her daughter Masada Anisah, by Fa Asar, and granddaughter Masada Malina, by Masada Samhan. Over the past 30+ years Walter Schimanski has taught all those who care to observe and listen that by breeding within a closed group such as the straight Babsons, or even within the larger pool of Sheykh Obeyd horses, the breeding risks and rewards are both great. Careful and diligent line breeding is the best way to fix type and produce consistency. However, any undesirable traits will be fixed as well. The effort requires great skill, critically assessing each offspring produced and only using superior individuals to perpetuate such a closed group. But, each generation of success produces more matched alleles resulting in a more prepotent individual. This means the ability to consistently stamp foals in that individual’s likeness, no matter what the pedigree of that mate. Once hybrid vigor is introduced, the matching alleles are lost and thus the breeding consistency. The introduction of desert imports by Ali Pasha Sherif, Prince Ahmed Pasha Kemal. Khedive Abbas II, Ahmed Bey Sennari, the Blunts and most recently the RAS to the original Abbas Pasha horses means Sheykh Obeyd breeders still have great genetic diversity and a potential to incorporate the blood of 62 foundation horses.
Walter experimented with more complicated compositions over the years than what is represented through Daal Aba and her descendants. His works included additions of Sirecho, *Ansata Bint Bukra, *Tuhotmos, *Fakher El Din, *Ansata Bint Zaafarana, *Talal, *Gamila, among others to primarily Babson blood. He produced beautiful concerti and symphonies with them. But Walter’s strength, what I think he will be remembered for, is the exquisite solo Babsons and the ethereal Babson/Halima duets. You are a maestro my friend.
The End.
All photos were provided by Walter Schimanski from his personal collection unless noted otherwise.