Tribute to Quantador: The Show Hunter Champion Who Touched Hearts

Quantador, or Q and QB as he was known, was at the forefront of the well-bred Warmblood dominance of the show hunter classes. Q had it all; type, temperament and movement and was initially destined for a career as a dressage horse. Just when Q was really taking off with his young teenage rider, Arielle Stella, fate dealt a cruel blow, and the anticipated years of success were stopped in their tracks. This is his tribute.

Foaled in Hanover, Germany, in 2008, Q was by the impressive Quaterback who was the Three-Year-Old Bundeschampion. All eyes become riveted on Quaterback when he appears and, he was blessed with an outstanding type. "Quaterback was considered one of the best sires for passing on movement" (- Superior Equine Sires), with his most famous offspring being Isabel Werth’s currently successful Quantaz. Quaterback’s dam line goes back to 2003 World Champion Six-Year-Old Poetin (Brentano II/Sandro Hit). Q’s dam was by international dressage competitor Velten Third, who was by Velten Sohn, who was on the Swedish Dressage Team for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

So you can see why the McLeod family in WA were keen to import Q, that was very much in his father’s image as a dressage breeding stallion. Once in WA, Q was ridden by talented dressage and eventing rider Deon Stokes. During his time in the West, Q was gelded and was shown as a show hunter with success in WA. He was ridden by Sara McLeod and Jayde Litster and represented WA at the 2015 Nationals.

“I first saw Q at the Nationals and really liked him,” begins former owner Dree Merry. “I sold my show hunter, Powerplay, and at the Grand Nationals in 2016, I won a County saddle in a raffle and was thrilled, but I said to my husband that it was an expensive win, as I needed a horse to put it on. I thought of Q, who had moved to Tasmania with the McLeods. I tracked him down; he was out in a hundred-acre paddock and bought him, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“He was a real pain in the neck to deal with on the ground and was very pushy, but he was always beautiful to ride. I became his person, and I had him for almost six years. He became easy for me to handle but rather a nightmare for anyone else. I know that Ari became his person, too, and he behaved for her. I really had no intention of selling him, but COVID changed that. Ari and Q became a super team, and we have become long-time friends because of him.”

“We purchased Q in November 2020,” explains equine veterinarian Emma Stella-Hall (Arielle’s mother). “I had seen him a lot and had always loved him, and we were looking for Ari’s first big horse. I contacted Dree, and she said he was not for sale. But I just kept in contact, and we built up a friendship. Dree finally agreed to sell him right in the middle of COVID. We had a lot of x-rays done and took the punt to buy him without Ari riding him because I just knew he was the one for us. Dree told us he could be very annoying on the ground and would test us, but the moment Ari got on him, he would be as safe as a horse could be and give her a great introduction to the adult-showing world. And that’s exactly what he did.

“When he arrived, and for the first six months, he tried all his party tricks on the ground. If you wanted to go left, he wanted to go right, and so you always went right! The safest place was on him. However, Ari and Q just clicked, and she could do anything with him, and he just loved her.”

“He would just follow me around,” says Ari. “I rarely needed a lead, and he never did his running off trick with me, and I would not let anyone else lead him at competitions because of that. When I first got him and started riding him at shows, no one would talk to me; I was just a 15-year-old kid, which was quite intimidating, but when he started winning, everyone started encouraging and supporting me.”

“It was really interesting,” continues Emma, “that he would not behave badly for Ari, and their relationship had just developed. After having him for four months, we took him to the Grand Nationals, and he won the Child’s Show Hunter there. At the Grand Nationals, he would always go beautifully for the guest judges, but when they got on him, he would just turn back and look at them as if to say; who are you? You are not my person.”

“At the Grand Nationals in 2022,” adds Ari, “I won the Champion Rider 15-17 years, and that was really my breakthrough rider win. The weather conditions were shocking, and Q was not impressed as we tried to warm up in the rain, but when we entered the arena, Q was like, ‘just let me do it’, and did the most amazing workout. He knew his job and would never let you down in the ring; it was as if he watched and learned the workout. He was always so lazy in the warm-up. I remember we lent him to Abby Heffer to ride him in her rider at Grand Nationals, and we had to reassure and advise her that as soon as he entered the ring, hang on. I think Abby was caught a little by surprise, but she went on to win her riding, too.

“Q loved carrots, bottom scratches, trying to sit on you when you were braiding his tail and loved to gallop around the hills here at home (Ceres). He loved his best mate Jimmy and his big rubber stress ball that he used to flatten. He hated standing still for photographs, a cold wash and a change in his routine.”

“What happened with Q has really taken a toll on me,” says Emma. “I am an equine vet, and it is my job to save horses, but I could not save my own. It was completely unforeseen and unexpected.

We were preparing for the Nationals in 2022 and were confident that Q and Ari would give it a good crack. We drove up to Sydney, stopping off at Tarcutta as we usually do. He arrived at SIEC and was perfectly fine. Ari and Q went for a trail ride, and all was good. The following day, Ari rode him and felt that he was not quite right. Later in the day, she rode him again, and he was lame. Nothing was apparent; the leg was normal and flexed up. That night, we iced it, and he was good the next morning. We planned not to work him and just go in the class, but he was clearly lame, nothing great, but obvious to me. We scratched him, and we were very upset and worried about him. Still, I could not find anything that would cause lameness. We trotted him up the next day, and he was worse. I was not prepared to truck him home until I knew what was going on, so we took him to the Randwick Equine Centre across the road from SIEC. They did a nerve block, x-rays and a CT scan and found nothing grossly abnormal. It was OK to travel him home.

“We took him home, and he was his usual bright self but still slightly lame and over the next month, it became worse. We took him to the Ballarat Veterinary Practice to have an MRI done, and that showed a bone bruise of the cannon bone just above the fetlock. I have no idea how he got that, as there was no sign of any external trauma whatsoever. Three months was the timeline for the bruise to recover, but I knew something was not right as he was getting worse, not better. I have a relationship with Specialist Lameness vet at Bendigo, and I took him there. More x-rays, but nothing conclusive. I then contacted an International Veterinary Consultancy Group with vets from around the world. They suggested a bone scan, and we did another set of x-rays, three months after the initial lameness, and all we could see was a slight change to the inside of his near-fetlock joint. By this time, he was non-weight bearing on that leg.

“We decided to send him to Ballarat and put him on the surgical table and get the camera into his fetlock joint and have a look. We all went to Ballarat with him, and he still looked as if he could go to a royal show; he looked so good. They rang and told us that the fetlock joint had collapsed and that it was bone on bone; the bone was dying, and they could not fix it. I had said before the surgical procedure that if they found something that was not recoverable, I wanted him euthanised on the table. They gave me options of fusing and plating the joint, but the risks of it failing with a horse of Q’s size were too great. No one had seen anything like it. Perhaps it was the result of a blood clot, but nobody knows. He was euthanised on the 23rd March 2023. We were heartbroken.

“Dree had said when we got him that he could be a real pain but that he would get under your skin, and you would love him more than anything in the world. That was literally true, as I have a tattoo with his name and a love heart. We had him cremated, and Ari has a beautiful urn with some of his ashes beside her bed and we have a little bag with his ashes on the dash of the truck so that he still comes with us to all the shows.

“We were lucky to have a once-in-a-lifetime horse like Q. He did so much for us and changed our lives; he is just missed so much”.

Major Results With Dree Merry.
- 2018 Grand National Runner Up Small Hunter Hack
- 2017/2018 Ego Sunsense National Runner Up Small Hunter Hack.
- 2019 Ego Sunsense National Runner Up Childs and Open Small Hunter Hack.
- 2018/2019/2020 South Australian EA Horse Of The Year Winner.
- 2018/2019/2020 Royal Show Winner (Adelaide and Melbourne).

Major Results With Arielle Stella
- Predominately unbeaten in Victoria in his child’s and open classes with SHCV
- 2021 – Champion Child’s Hunter Hack Grand Nationals
- 2022 – Took Arielle to win Champion Rider 15-17yrs Grand Nationals, also 3rd Child’s and 3rd Open
- 2022 – Barastoc State Titles unanimous Child’s and Open Hunter Hack
- 2022 – Melbourne Royal Champion Childs Hunter Hack, Champion Rider and Champion Intermediate Turnout.

Article: Anna Sharpley.

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