 Bowling owned Arabian horses , and was a co @-@ founder of the New Albion Stud along with her husband Michael and her parents , Bill and Claire Trommershausen . Ann and her parents had owned half @-@ Arabians when they lived in Colorado ; Michael Bowling had owned Arabians since 1962 . They started the farm in September 1980 , about the same time that Ann and Michael married , and placed an emphasis on bloodlines descended from the Crabbet Arabian Stud . The farm continued to be operated by her husband and daughter after Bowling 's death . Bowling 's study of mitochondrial DNA in Arabians found that pedigree records kept by the American registry for Arabian horses were generally reliable from the time of importation forward . But her work also brought into question a belief commonly held by Arabian breeders that horses imported from the desert identified by specific historic dam lines or " strains " in their pedigrees actually traced to specific matrilineal groups . Bowling also found that some mare lines claimed to originate from the same desert @-@ bred " strain " were not related at all , and some mares whose pedigrees claimed they were of different strains turned out to be distantly related . 
