When Your Broodmare's Your Teacher

Original article written by Marzy Dotes posted 12 years 0 weeks ago

There comes a time in every broodmare’s life when each time she heads to the shed, the clock starts ticking.

Usually the countdown begins when she turns 12 and each year she survives after that is borrowed time unless she’s pensioned to live longer without producing foals. But most of them die while birthing their foals at that age or older with their names being ticked off by the news feed.

They come in different categories when it comes to the emotions they elicit from their owners when they finally do drop dead. Some owners grieve the loss of particular mares, while others breed their mares hoping that it’ll be the last time they go to the shed. Some get sent to the cemeteries while others including the broodmare of iron, Shalevet Pass are pensioned until their deaths, thus affording them a longer lifespan to frolic in the meadow or pursue an alternate career. Though alas in the case of Shalevet Pass, the fates afforded her only several months of leisure.

This year, I’ve lost quite a few broodmares and pensioned several others but none of them were horses that I had since my first breeding season.
None of them are Jaguar Princess.

I’ve put off her breeding further and further into the season even though I’ve picked out the final round of studs already. Even though I’ve already made the decision about her fate if her time is up, it’ll still be difficult to imagine a breeding season without her. The only comfort is I’m convinced she’ll be one of those lesson horses that’s eating the prized flowers or a fox hunter that steps on its tail, thus meaning that at least she’ll be busy getting into trouble.

She’s a medium sized black mare now 12 years old who miraculously came to life at the age of six, a daughter of Sunday Silence and out of Joy Passer, who’s by Buckpasser. She never raced but immediately got started in the business of producing offspring who would do just that just like her dam. When I picked out her pedigree, I had no clue what I was doing or that the real-life horses that have popped up in the SIM often bore little resemblance to their flesh and blood counterparts. The Sunday Silence/Buckpasser cross had only been done with that particular mare three other times so it wasn’t as prevalent in her offspring as others like Seattle Slew for example. Joy Passer keeled over at some point but who could blame her? During her lifespan she produced over 70 foals, all female so it’s hard to blame her for being exhausted.

Regardless of her mismatched parents, Jaguar Princess didn’t turn out to be that bad of a mare. All of her offspring so far galloped “great” or “winged” but on the racetrack they reflected the disparity often found in that category of gallops as the quality of thoroughbred dirt routers continued to evolve. Not all “wings” are equal after all, and the value of that gallop has been heavily debated as to exactly what information it reveals about a horse’s potential.

By obtaining a broodmare so early, I had broken one of the cardinal rules of not getting involved in the breeding side too soon but then most people seem to do that anyway. It’s just too tempting to resist, the desire to match a mare’s bloodlines with a stallion’s and come out a winner at least in your mind. In reality, there are so many other factors that come into play with whether or not a racehorse succeeds at the racetrack even those that look great on paper. It’s that challenge and the rewards it can reap that prove to be what attracts many people to attempting it. It’s a siren call that not many can resist.

My first attempts probably didn’t even look good at the two dimensional level because as it turns out breeding winners including stakes winners is one of the hardest skills to learn let alone master. There are just so many things that factors into it, including bloodlines and how they match together and whether or not they will click the right way at the right time. There are random slides and then there’s the skill that is needed to know what to do with a racehorse to maximize its potential on the track whether it’s a stakes horse at Desert Oasis Park or Louisville Downs or a claimer up in Alaska.

Enough formidable issues that should keep a smart person away from breeding but somehow that’s not the case. Despite our better judgment, despite the admonitions to be patient, people do it anyway.

I tried to do the best I could with Jaguar Princess but that certainly didn’t happen right off the bat. I’m not sure it’s happened at all but it’s been an interesting experience.

I matched her up first time out with a sire with the nice sounding name of Tiger because it seemed perfect to hook a mare named Jaguar Princess with a stud named after a feline species and at the time to me, dirt routers looked alike even those that weren’t really dirt routers.

I’d like to say it was some brilliant deduction that led to that breeding decision but I really didn’t know much at the time and I didn’t really ask for advice like I probably should have done.

This handsome stud is an offspring of royalty in the forms of Enforcer and Hall of Famer Cadeauje who is among the most formidable mares in history. Enforcer sired both top milers like the recent pensioned god, Original Tough Guy and classic routers like another Hall of Famer, Sun Raider. Cadeauje produced nine millionaires and Hall of Famer Big Dreams. Both her male and female runners proved to be great in the breeding shed which left Tiger with a huge image to live up to during his own stud career. Now at 13, he’s not sired as many winners as his half-brothers Radee and Something Better but is still trying to find his way as his stud career is winding down.

Most of his runners who won races weren’t routers at all, but milers as those coming from studs with routing pedigrees seemed to be someone confused at those distances themselves.

I bred Jaguar Princess to him partly because he was on special but he wasn’t really a good choice, and that showed I wasn’t very good at researching bloodlines. Because for one thing, the mare seemed to prefer longer routers in her studs. The result was a colt named Tiger Princess and it wasn’t until the horse was about three that I figured out that it was a colt and not a filly and thus misnamed. Now that’s not the end of the world when you consider the others included in that category notably Untamed Princess. This son of Untamed not only was a champion racehorse, but is standing at stud. Still, Tiger Princess didn’t prove to be very successful, breaking his maiden after I sold him in probably the only circumstances where he could win, a walkover. But I learned two lessons here, to better research which studs to match with your broodmare and to be careful when issuing gender specific names. Though in the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that just days ago, I named a yearling colt Scottish Senorita.

Don’t Mess was picked as the sire of Jaguar Princess’ second foal, a gray colt named Peruvian Mist who turned out to be the highest earning progeny of hers so far with nearly $100,000 in his wallet. Don’t Mess is a son of Giacomo and a half-brother to the likes of Depths of the Sea and Promise Not to Cry, so he had a decent pedigree. His win percentage was pretty respectable and his stud fee fairly cheap so he seemed like a good choice. I did feel proud that by her second foal, I had started researching pedigrees better and he turned out to not be a bad runner at all.

Under his current and more capable ownership, Peruvian Mist has been very nice doing well at stakes races in Trial Park and Junior High. He managed to win the Dare to Dream Stakes about a week after one of his half brothers won a Dare to Dream maiden race which was kind of cool for Jaguar Princess to be able to produce two winners of that series of races on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The horse that won that latter Dare to Dream race was Jaguar Eyes, a son of North American Champion Three Year Old Colt Flames who had retired not long before and received a lot of attention for breeders for good reason. The gorgeous bay stallion who wore both roses and carnations during his illustrious career is Oak Park’s top son and is out of Wedon’tneedwords who produced one other millionaire in Wildfire before her death. Flames done great at stud so far siring 174 winners including 16 who have won stakes, the most notable is Louisville Derby winner Flame and Smoke.

Alas with Jaguar Eyes, his win in that maiden race at Trial Park was the only time he hit the board in his career. He’s still racing as a gelding in the claiming circuit up in Alaska and though I had sold him, I wound up weakening as I often do during the year end bargain sale and bought him back for $100. So although Flames was an amazing sire, he didn’t mesh well with Jaguar Princess, and in his four matchups with Sunday Silence mares didn’t produce very much with their average earnings being roughly $11,000 per runner. That again speaks to the value of doing quite a bit of research on sires before you breed to them and including examination of their histories of crossing with various maternal bloodlines. If I had done that research more carefully, it would have indicated that Flames probably wasn’t the best stud for my broodmare even though he works very well with many other mares.

Next came Jaguar Heat who’s a daughter of one of my favorite sires, Derby Report. Although now pensioned, he was a very user friendly sire for neophyte breeders because he proved to be quite forgiving to mares of less than stellar bloodlines. And that’s the kind of mares that most newer breeders have in their stables to work with in the beginning. He had a very high percentage of winners from his runners, of over 75% and his runners averaged a rather generous $58,000 per start. So before his pensioning, he was always a good stallion to hit up for a chance at a quality foal. He’s sired primarily routers though his top earning foal was Derby Dreams (who’s out of a Mighty Big mare) who’s a classy source of bloodlines for milers and short routers.

Jaguar Heat produced works which like most of Jaguar Princess’s foals were quicker at the longer distances. She couldn’t break 59 seconds at five furlongs but wound up breaking 1:24 at seven. The latter of course occurred after I sold her but she’s doing well for Royal Celestine with two wins in four starts.
Baltimore Crown winner Thriller (who’s a son of Loki Dynasty) sired Jaguar Thrill, a black filly now two who finished 11th in her first start which was at a mile on the dirt. It’s not very likely that any offspring of Jaguar Princess will like that distance so hopefully when she stretches out further, she’ll improve. However, in her last race, rather than getting the one piece she needed, she used two pieces she didn’t. Thriller as a sire is ranked second in wins for third crop sires but he and other studs like War Daddy and Literature in that very competitive group are leading in different statistical categories. His record with Sunday Silence mares is not that stellar though one of them Astonishing Act has hit the board in stakes competition. But he certainly loves mares by Oak Park and sons of his like Braveheart.

Jaguar Princess’ latest foal, which is now a yearling resulted from a matchup with Long Island Classic winner Literature who looks pretty balanced and strong so far in both speed and stamina. Whereas his half brother Philosophy (by the speedy Buckingham) looks to be a strong influence of dirt milers and short routers, Literature by the Hall of Famer Throne looks to be favoring longer routers that look to be very quick. So far he’s standing mighty in the shed with 95 winners including nine stakes winners. He topped the third crop sire list for overall winners and placed second for stakes winners. His top earner so far is Compositions who’s out of the nice broodmare More though expect to see more stars by him making their mark on the racetrack soon as he makes his mark as a stellar dirt routing sire.

The most distinguished thing about this breeding with Literature was it was the first done after utilizing the services of bloodlines analyst Liza Doolittle who afforded this particular crossing with a B+ rating. This new development likely had a large impact on the breeding industry which will become clearer when the generations of foals bred under it hit the racetracks. But Literature’s complete package of stamina and speed seemed to be a good mix with Jaguar Princess.

She had a white yearling filly by him which shocked her a bit when it was born because there hadn’t been any foals of that color so far and it appeared kind of random. So far she has put in some nice works including five furlongs on the dirt in 58.21, the fastest by far by one of her foals. It still remains to be seen how she’ll perform in the racetrack. Even with good gallops and nice works, that’s where the true tests of a horse’s ability take place.

At 12, it’s clear that Jaguar Princess doesn’t have that many foals left to produce and each one could easily be her last. When mares hit this age, the clock starts ticking and as it hits for the first broodmare in your stable, it’s a reminder of how much time might have passed since you got started. It gives you an opportunity to look back and see how far you have come rather than looking ahead and seeing how far you have yet to go.

This time out, she’s matching up with War Daddy, one of the hottest dirt routing studs having sired the winners of the Louisville Derby, the Baltimore Crown and the record blasting Louisville Oaks. He’s very hot right now for good reason but he’s still got got a five-figured stud fee which is important if your breeding budget includes pensioning a mare if necessary.

Hopefully if it’s her last date, it will be a defining one. That’s the hope of any breeder when they send a mare to the shed whether it’s her first foal or her last.

That the foal will combine the best of both of its parents into something even better which is the hopes of any breeder.

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