Cruiser is Who He was Meant to Be

Way back when I bought Cruiser, I was given his papers. He is not registered as a Morab, but as a Half Arabian. I don’t even have proof that his mother was a Morgan. I just took the word of his previous owners. Quite honestly, they could have told me he was half St. Bernard, and I wouldn’t of cared. I fell in love with him, so none of it mattered.

I knew the name of his father, but nothing else. The papers only listed his parents. Over the years, I would check the All Breed Pedigree website and see if his father was listed. Well, last month, someone finally put his pedigree into the website.

If you have never looked up your horse, be sure to take a visit. It is here that I found out that Cole is related to the famous Standardbred, Dan Patch, and the Morgan I wrote about that was exported to China, Magellan. It shows lots of pictures of the ancestors, too.

Finally, I knew Cruiser’s Arabian ancestors. I started to look up all his grandsires. What I found was they were all foundation Arabians—mostly CMK Arabians. What does that mean? Cruiser’s father was bred to excel in endurance riding. Anyone who wants to successfully compete in endurance looks to horses with his father’s breeding.

All his life, I marveled on Cruise’s energy. I could take him on a 3-hour, fast ride and bring him home looking like he was just coming back from a short stroll—as long as you looked past the dried sweat, you would have never known. He just never gets tired and would trot all day. I always said he was my 100-mile horse. I used to pretend I was riding the Tevis Cup on Tevis day. I was disappointed the year it was canceled due to forest fires—and rode out on our own mini Tevis ride that day without them.

I never had the resources to take Cruiser out and compete him but was satisfied to ride him like crazy here at home—pretending I could compete if I wanted to. Now, I think I really could have.

Even now at 24, he has more energy on the trail than most other horses. Well, now I know he wasn’t a fluke. He is exactly who he was bred to be.

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Comment by Jackie Cochran on December 23, 2011 at 3:32pm: Ooooh, you lucky, lucky lady. CMK Arabians are the mixture of Crabbet (England, Crabbet Stud, General Stud Book), Maynesboro (Crabbet, I think old American breeding) and Kellogg which had Hamadie, Davenport (both EARLY Desert bred). Crabbet (including a direct importation from Crabbet farm including *Raseyn and *Nasik, all interbred. Wonderful wonderful horses, descended from and very like the desert Arab. Look them up on the web, this is the type of Arab I like, not the fake Saddlebreds, beautiful horses with substance, well sprung ribs, deep through the heart, and oh those shoulders!

I'm prejudiced, my first horse, an Anglo-Arab was probably half Davenport and at one time I owned 2 pure Davenports. I imagine that your horse has the Davenport DB's *Hamrah 28 (stallion), quite possibly the war-mare *Wadduda 30, possibly *Deyr 33 (stallion, son of a war mare) among others. The advantage of the CMK over the pure Davenports is that they have a much, much wider gene pool, since the CMKs, besides the Hamadie (*Nedjme 1 (mare), Obeyran 2 (stallion)) and Davenport and *Naomi/Maidan/*Kismet Arab race horse lines importations, include the Blunt desert imports and some other Old English blood lines, plus the Ali Pasha Sherif Egyptian bloodlines that Crabbet farm imported to England (especially Mesaoud!!!), some of which go back to the Abbas Pasha who specified the celebrated Arab mares he wanted for tribute.

Of course he can go forever. Many of his ancestors were celebrated and highly valued war mares of the Bedouin, horses bred to go forever even when hungry, thirsty, hot and wounded.

His American Morgan and Standardbred lines are good horses too.