AV MONTOYA & STOCKDALE ARABIANS Having gone through the loss of both my parents and a very serious brain operation, John my husband, felt relieved when I said we were never going to keep another entire or stand a stallion at stud. To just enjoy our few remaining mares and their female babies seemed idyllic. Why do the best made plans go wrong. With so much new time on our hands and nothing to keep us at home, no stallion to worry about, we enjoyed many holidays and visits to other studs. One open Day held in 2005 at AV Arabians in particular was a first visit for us and we looked forwards to going back to Sussex, a county we both had lived in before moving to Devon.

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Caroline Reeves the owner, put on a wonderful day, many people were there and we saw all her beautiful exceptionally well bred horses. A chestnut mare stood out for us, she was by Balaton had movement and pizzazz, a huge eye and something about her that reminded us of our first bred stallion Zacaria. Her quality stood out. She came into the sand school with her colt foal at foot. He had her quality, her pizzazz and her movement. He never once put his little tail down; straight up like a flag he made sure we could see him. He was not listed as being for sale. We realised the wonderful breeding of the mare, Metelica 8 and had no idea who the colt was by. On driving home we stopped the car, John turned to me and said how much he liked the chestnut colt out of Metelica, I agreed he was a really good colt and with my judges hat on agreed he was a very good colt. The car magically turned around and headed back to Caroline’s, we found Caroline and eventually with a plea from us to buy the colt with no name, we all agreed he should come to Devon. Montoya was named after a racing car driver, he carried the AV prefix which I didn’t like but to have such a good colt made me realise that the stud who bred him needed to be recognised and acknowledged for breeding such a good animal and I compromised within my soul!

Montoya was a sharp boy, easy to do but still quite sharp, we liked the challenge and he soon loved our regime and flourished. To show him as a yearling and to send him away was not an option for us. We really loved this chap and had made leaps and bounds with his education from us, all beating a path to becoming ultimately a riding horse for me! So we asked an almost unknown (then) Amanda Holloway to have a go at showing for us. Amanda came over nearly every weekend and played with the colt in the school and formed a good bond. His in-hand showing career has been deliberately kept to a minimum. We didn’t want to sour a lovely lively fun chap. Amanda had some fun. She could run and Montoya could trot. His show results were wonderful. The best thing was that at the end of the year he would still go out in his paddock and play, he had never soured and he loved life. We wanted to keep it this way. Part of us wanted the bit of glory from the European shows, but to see our happy horse playing in his paddock at home means more to us than any rosette. We know he is a good horse and other people do too.