The Parliament Clause
A glass-walled conference room on the 37th floor of a Dubai Marina tower at 2:15 PM, where the air conditioning is losing its war against the desert sun and a gold-embossed breeding contract is sweating condensation rings onto a mahogany table.
The Dubai syndicate's €220,000 check cleared, but their lawyer has just slid a supplemental clause across the table: they want Double and Bust to personally oversee Parliament's first breeding season at their facility in Al Ain, a seven-month residency commitment starting in nine days. In exchange, they'll receive 12% of the stud fees — projected at €40,000 per cover, with eleven mares already booked — plus a furnished apartment and a Land Cruiser. The catch is that the original sale contract contains a behavioral warranty Double apparently signed on the hood of a rental car in Galway: if Parliament bites any horse, handler, or 'adjacent livestock' during the breeding season, Double and Bust owe the syndicate a €150,000 penalty. Parliament has bitten something on camera at least four times in the last month alone.
“Twelve percent of forty grand times eleven mares, Bust. That's math even I can do. And Parliament only bites things he doesn't respect — these are FANCY mares.”
“You signed a behavioral warranty on the hood of a car for a horse whose entire brand is biting. We're one mare away from owing more than we made.”
Parliament didn't bite a single mare all season — instead, he developed an inexplicable romantic gentleness around thoroughbreds, nuzzling them like a Disney prince. He did, however, bite the syndicate's lead veterinarian twice and a camel that wandered near the paddock, but the lawyer's clause specifically said 'adjacent livestock' and a camel, they successfully argued at arbitration, is 'ambient livestock.' The stud fees cleared €406,000, Double and Bust pocketed just under €49,000, and Parliament was named Al Ain's most popular sire by a regional equestrian magazine.
I TOLD you he only bites things he doesn't respect — Parliament looked at those mares and saw equals, Bust. EQUALS.
We survived on a legal technicality about the taxonomic classification of a camel, and you're acting like we had a strategy.