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Seanderich
By Maria Paz Murga Igual
Born
in 1902, and pure Saglavy on both sides of his pedigree, Seanderich was
imported from Turkey in 1908 by a horse dealer in Istanbul named Alfred
Ismailion who bought horses for European governments. He had been
asked to look for a horse from the desert, with extraordinary type, for
Spain. He finally sent a message that he had found such a horse.
The importance attached to this horse was so great that an old retired
Cavalry Colonel, who was supposed to be the greatest authority in Spain
on Arab horses, was persuaded to go with the regular Commission to inspect
him, after which Seanderich was brought to Spain.
However,
he was never used at the Yeguada Militar as much as he should have been,
going there only after his son Eco was already established at the Yeguada
as a stallion. Seanderich appears for the first time in Volume XIII
of the Stud Book, but none of his get were registered until Volume XVII,
ten year later? It is not known how Seanderich was used in those
intervening years, or in what obscure Stallion Depot he lived.
In
some ways Seanderich was an even greater sire that Ursus because he was
a very unlucky horse and was only able to show his extraordinary quality
as a sire through two of his sons. One was Eco, who originated the
Barquillo line, and the other was Illustre, sire of Congo, the Ybarra-bred
horse that later sires so many excellent stallions and mares of the Yeguada
during the famous “T” year (in Spain, the foals of each year are usually
named in alphabetical order), such as used extensively at the Yeguada was
the year of the letter “I,” although not one of those horses remained!
His only known sons, Eco and Illustre, along with the photograph of Incauta,
are all we have to judge what this great, but unknown and underused stallion
might have been able to do for the Arabian breed had he had just half the
opportunities that the lucky Van Dyck had.
Copyright
© 2004 by the Spanish Arabian Horse Society.
All
rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic,
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permission of the author.
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