Today, I Learned About Man O' War!

Today, I learned about Man o' War, aka my mom's horse's great great great grandfather!

You might know that I'm a crazy horse lady. One of my favorite descriptions I've heard of crazy horse ladies is that we're a more expensive version of crazy cat ladies. I currently have one horse of my own, a mare (meaning lady horse) named Barbie (pictured below), who is currently wintering in South Carolina until I find a new home for her and it's safe enough to bring her here to Minnesota. I've known Barbie since the day she was born, almost 18 years ago, and I've been privileged enough to be her owner, courtesy of my parents, since 2004. 

#wcw = my goofy, gorgeous, generous, giant-hearted best gal on four legs. She puts the "horse" in my "horse crazy" (and my "horse poor," of course), and I can't even remember a time when I didn't love her.

A photo posted by @ngiverson on Sep 9, 2015 at 3:54pm PDT

My mom has three, including the first our family purchased in 1998, when riding was a family affair that included my mom, my sister and myself. That mare, whose barn name is Target, was 10 at the time and pregnant with a filly (meaning baby lady horse), who we named Izzy when she was born. As with any horse (or other purchase, really) one gets from someone else, one can only know what one is told about that horse by its previous owners and sometimes the histories get tough to keep track of. 

Partially because of that and probably partially because I was just a kid when we brought her home with us, I don't really know what Target's background was, but I do know that she was a challenge to ride. Target remains, to this day, one of the sweetest, kindest, gentlest horses I have ever met. She desperately wanted to please her rider, but she wasn't always mentally or physically capable of doing what we asked and tried to teach her. 

Nonetheless, she will always have a soft spot in my heart and will always have a home at my mom's. She'll be 28 in May, which is very nearly geriatric in the horse world, and has been retired for some time now. It's the least she deserves for the many joyful and educational years she brought us, and the love and kindness she continues to bring.

For fun, here are a few photos of Target and Izzy from back in the day, courtesy of my mom.

Target and Izzy just moments after Izzy was born.

Taking a stroll, probably one of her first, at just days old.

Izzy flaunting it for the camera.

She was so cute!

Anyway, I recently joined a group on Facebook called Junior Rider News, a community of amateur riders, talent scouts, brands potentially offering ambassadorships and the like, which is equal parts ridiculous and fascinating. At the risk of sounding old and bitter, when I grew up with horses, social media wasn't a thing and the only people I had to compare myself with were my fellow 4-Hers and the other horsemen we saw at local shows. JRN epitomizes basic (and not necessarily in a good way) equestrians as far as I can tell so far - asking for critiques on equitation (meaning a rider's form while astride), asking opinions on a horse's confirmation (meaning how the horse is put together or built) or how much everyone had paid for their horses or what color they should use to monogram their newest saddle pad to best accent their horse's coloring, along with a few sarcastic posts and wars in the comments, all interspersed with selfies posed with horses and Starbucks cups photos taken from the saddle with the horse's ears perfectly framing the landscape. It's like a car crash I can't look away from.

Much of this group is well-intentioned albeit vaguely trite chatter, but every now and then a nugget of something interesting surfaces. Today, that nugget was a screenshot someone had posted of their horse's bloodlines from allbreedpedigree.com. I had never heard of this site before, was intrigued and so poked around a little bit, running queries on all my favorite horses. My own mare and her dam (meaning mom) weren't listed, but Barbie's sire (meaning dad) was. I'm not sure how the site is populated, as Izzy wasn't listed either, but Target sure was - and look who's back there a few generations!

Now, you're probably thinking that "Man o' War" sounds familiar, but you might not remember why. To save you the trouble of searching, here's the link to his Wikipedia page. The short version is that Man o' War was the winningest Thoroughbred racehorse of his time, losing in just one of his 21 starts, was the winner of the Belmont Stakes and Preakness Stakes (aka two of the jewels of the U.S. Triple Crown) in 1920 (though technically the Triple Crown wasn't exactly a thing yet) and was the Horse of the Year that year, too. He is also sire to (meaning baby daddy) 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral. Man o' War is also in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and is immortalized as a statue at the Kentucky Horse Park. Man o' War also appears in the bloodlines of American Pharoah, who, of course, won the 2015 U.S. Triple Crown, the first horse to do so since Affirmed in 1978.

So! Pretty cool that our own dear Target is a descendant of the late, great Man o' War. She is, however, thanks to years and years of varied breeding, a registered Quarter Horse, unlike Man o' War, who was a Thoroughbred.

I'm certainly no expert on breeding or genealogy, and I do think there's far too much superfluous breeding going on the horse industry (and most domestic animals, truthfully, but that's another blog post), but I'll always be grateful for the road that Target's ancestors took that brought her to us.