Oleander B

Mare – Bay – 1996 – ster

Many thanks to Carlene Blunt and Gary Lane for making the purchase of Oleander B possible. The additon of Oleander brings our breeding program to a wholeness that is difficult to describe. Weigelia, Oleander’s granddam, was our first superstar mare. Weigelia was bred by Eugenie van Dam. She became the UTV champion mare in 1984. After producing two foals in Holland, a Volkmar and a Ramiro daughter, Weigelia was purchased as part of Argus’s foundation broodmare band and exported to California. Through no fault of her own, things eventually fell apart for Weigelia, and she was deemed unbreedable and broken down with two serious suspensory injuries. Well, I fell in love with her. She was the most majestic and kind horse I had ever seen. Carol and I made a huge leap of faith and bought her. Weigelia made the trip from California to New Hampshire. At first, we couldn’t get her pregnant either. Again, fate intervened, and our first stallion prospect, Ichnaz, jumped out of his paddock, jumped into hers, and bred her. She took. Nautilus SSF was born and is now the beloved riding gelding of Grand Prix rider, Melinda Johnson. Miraculously enough, Weigelia then took on the first try with frozen semen to the not-yet-Olympic Ferro. She gave us a filly, Oegelia SSF. Two days later, Weigelia became cast in her stall. In her struggle to get up to take care of her filly, she prolapsed her uterus and burst the major artery. I can’t tell you how long and how deeply I grieved over her death. Long enough that I sold Oegelia, the Ferro filly, to my friend, Karen Grande–the filly just couldn’t replace the mare for me. Fortunately, along came LaVita, and, as you all know, few horses could be as perfect as she…but, I have always wanted this mare line back in my life. The summer that Weigelia died, Oleander was the UTV champion filly and was selected for the Borculo foal auction–we intended to buy her. Little did Carol and I know that I had picked out the same two fillies as Gert van der Veen–he ended up with Oleander B for Debbie Springborn and we ended up with Oladaula. There are forces at work in our lives over which we have no control, however. Eight and a half years later, Oleander B finally joined the SSF mareband. As you can imagine, the mare has our hearts completely.  She is a lovely, gracious mare, and she fills a mareline void left by her grandmother. Oleander brings the blood of Havidoff and Ramiro to our program, and she comes with her own successful history of not only having been a UTV champion and selected as a Borculo foal, but also having made the list of the top ten mares in North America when she received her ster status. In 2006, her first breeding year with us, Oleander produced an exceptional Diamond Hit filly, Buttercup SSF. Her second foal for us, DaVinci SSF, by UB-40, made the the KWPN-NA’s top five dressage foals of 2008. SOLD