Saeed Abouhome
An Al Khamsa Stallion
The story of a small gray asil desert horse.
Meeting Saeed
Saeed Abouhome was born in Grass Valley California, in the heart of the Arabian endurance horse country. Saeed, which means "happy in the morning" in Arabic, came to me at the age of 10 or 11. When we met, he was a neglected gray horse, with very long, Aladdin like slipper toes, standing in his urine and poop in a 12 x 12 mare motel. Not very dignified for any horse much less such a royally bred little gray guy.
He would stare at me whenever I came by. His face, which wasn't sad but had unemotional weepy fly covered eyes, began to enter my dreams. No doubt he was sending me these dream messages. The person who owned him thought he was too much horse because he would rear, buck and strike when she drove him in the round corral, so he rotted in his small poopy pen. I finally offered a dollar for him. Sold!
Where Have You Been Saeed?
I called the facility that handled his rescue, and they told me a young girl found him starving in a pasture. It turned out his owner had died but nobody took care of the horse! She must've been the kindest person because she paid to have him gelded, a significant expense for a young person, and he was then able to enter the Madera facility. Saved! Well sort of...
From there he was transferred to Prather, in the California foothills, to a so called rescue that lacked proper resouces for proper care. It was there he languished until traded for a lame racehorse and brought to where I kept my horse, Amal in Sanger. Finally deciding I had to help this little gray horse, I took him in. It was too sad to see him in his present state.
It took me a long time to track down this story and cobble his history together. Not knowing his name, I called him Don Juan for long, because he was a former stallion and obviously a lover. I called him Juanito for short. Juanito had very nice conformation but was very asymmetrical; his neck went left, and his head went right, one eye was higher than the other and he had old scars on his hind legs like he'd tangled with a barbed wire fence at some point in his life.
I turned him out into a very large green pasture with friends and trimmed his feet back to healthy. Stallions are usually kept by themselves, away from other horses and often jailed, so he was very happy being in a small gelding herd in such a big pasture and was often seen playing, rearing and playing bitey face. After a time, I tried working him with a flag, but he just froze solid into an unblinking gray statue, so I just let him be a horse for a couple years after which time I did start him in groundwork and racehorse trainer, Earl Baze, put six quiet rides on him, my daughter doing the seventh ride.
Saeed is Asil
After some time, I submitted some mane hair to the Arabian Horse Association to see if he was registered and in their DNA database. Low and behold, we got a hit! He is a purebred or asil Al khamsa Arabian meaning his bloodlines were rare and pure desert bred tracing to the Bedouin tribes. A foundation Arabian of which only 2% of Arabaians claim. He was born in 2008 and his registered name is Saeed Abouhome. Juanito now had his real name back. I now see why he was a little peeved by such a cutsie name like Juanito being used to a big royal Arabic name so fitting for the small gray horse.
I tried several times over the years to obtain his registration papers but to no avail. His breeder would not send in the necessary duplicates to complete a transfer of ownership. Why the breeder would not honor Saeed and let me have his papers is incomprehensible to me but then why he’d given Saeed the stallion to a friend to abusively train as a Mexican dancing horse is also incomprehensible and extremely sad.
As a young Mexican dancing horse in training Saeed had his bitted head tied down between his legs with the reins attached to the cinch. I can tell this because he has scars on his tongue. He was probably placed in a stock (a very small livestock handling corral) and whipped until he would piaffe. I know this because whenever I asked him to do something, like get in a trailer, he would get very nervous and piaffe. "How about this? Does this make you happy?" He would work his mouth like a foal. Poor Juanito!
Flying Under the Radar of Brace and Worry
I moved my gray ones into town and I was able to visit Juanito and Amal every day because they were boarded five minutes from my house. I started doing Ray Hunt style groundwork with Juanito as well as classical dressage lateral work on the ground. He is on the forehand and his neck needed so much help, so we did a lot of stretching using modified Baucher flexions and he also received chiropractic and body work. We worked every day on relaxation.
It took him a couple years to stand still to accept the saddle pad and saddle. He had so much worry and getting the pad on was the most difficult. Once the pad was finally on, he would give up and let me put the saddle on, moving off less. Maybe he figured it was just inevitable.
I worked above him on the fence and was finally able to get on, but he would always walk off with worry. He did, however, have a very nice forward walk so I didn't interfere, just went with him. "First you go with the horse. Then the horse goes with you. Then you go together." A wise quote from the book True Unity by cowboy Tom Dorrance.
The Tao
Juanito has a lot of brace in his jaw, poll and neck and although I've been able to get his head and neck much straighter, it's still a bit asymmetrical . I felt like I couldn't make any progress, he was so braced when I got on. Not having any local help, we finally contacted trainer/clinician Patrick King who has a social media presence and with whom I've worked with before. "Carla, you need to fly under the radar of the brace and never use the slightest force," he told me. What? I thought I was being soft!
Today in the book Tao Te Ching, by Lao-tzu I read this passage, "The soft overcomes the hard." Juanito is starting to give up his brace. It only took a couple days of flying under the radar. He already lives in the Tao.
