Run The Gauntlette - 'Small'

	Morning Flashlight with Run The Gauntlette as a foal

19 yr old 16.1 bay/brown mare by Chantro (TB) out of Morning Flashlight (Shire)

What can we say about Small except THANK YOU!

She is the most fantastic broodmare and a wonderful mother. She has given us 4 fabulous foals without any problems. It’s fascinating to watch her take the foal round the paddock first at walk, then trot and canter in the first two days of it’s life.

Small was the first foal of our first generation and was born in Yorkshire. Her dam was a gorgeous Shire mare that we had bought for £600 as a companion for our other horse. Small’s sire, Chantro, TB, had bred some good eventers and had excellent bloodlines through his grand sire Tudor Minstrel and on his dam’s side through Uganda, the best filly in France!

Small expecting a new arrival

Her best attribute is her movement: she floats, and she can really jump! She had no problem passing her SHBGB Mare grading in 2000.

She has a quirky temperament and everything is done by mutual agreement but she has to respect you or you’re dead! Having said that, she was easy to break and never a problem to ride - unless she wanted to go somewhere else.

When she first went to Classic at Beechwood Grange Stud, Josie Knowles rang me to say they had had a lot of problems with her. Apparently she stole all the other mares’ foals and eventually had to be put in a paddock on her own! We have a theory about that as well!

In 2008 we sent Small with Iorlith to the Muschamp Stud to have AI to Grafenstolz. Unfortunately she didn’t take, so we sent her to Epistolaire, a TB half brother to Classic, who was standing at Haras de Vacheresse. She was scanned in foal after the first covering.

Everything progressed normally throughout her pregnancy, she was 3 weeks behind our other broodmare, Iona, and the two appeared to be growing on a par. Iona delivered her foal, Abyssinia, in May 2009 and we waited for Small’s. By this time she was enormous – 3 months of high protein feed helped!

The due date came and went, she had not bagged up and we were worried. Eventually we got the vet. No foal!

It’s our opinion that the herd’s new Queen, Iorlith, had something to do with that!