The Disappointing Human Condition

At approximately ten months pregnant, we discovered that Rose was carrying a foal. Admittedly, this is a little later in the game than most people prefer to find out but alas Teri and I didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

Linda, the woman I purchased Rose from, was full of apologies from the moment I first felt that baby kick my hand when I pressed it into Rose's full abdomen. She told me originally that Rose had not been bred while she was present but that it was possible Rose was covered by Bismarck (the black Percheron stallion Linda owned) while Linda and her husband were on vacation in New Mexico. The inattentiveness of a friend watching the horses led to a gate being left open and several horses escaping, Rose included in that number. Once we'd heard that story, there was no question that Bismarck was the baby's daddy.

Bismarck's registered name is Avatar's Bismarck, so naturally we began conceiving names we could bestow upon the baby. Rose's registered name is Welcome Queen, out of She is Welcome by Makula King. We came up with all manners of possible names for baby. For a filly we chose She is a Queen, simply because our roller derby team is the Copper Queens and it was just too perfect to pass up. We didn't decide on a name for a colt but had tossed a few around. The idea of having all 'R' names was a cute one so we discussed Rivet (then we'd have our Rosie and her little Rivet). Unfortunately, Rivet sounded too much like ribbit when you said it aloud so I had to veto that idea, didn't want anyone confusing our horse for a frog.

We researched what would be necessary to register a baby born to a Thoroughbred and a Percheron and it turns out that we could register that horse as an American Warmblood. Apparently they're somewhat sought after, especially in the Midwest and the East coast. Not too shabby for an accident, eh?

As it turns out, we didn't have a foal born from a Percheron.

Our colt came out the wrong color, the wrong size, with the wrong conformation of limb and joint, and with all the wrong markings. I anticipated a black or bay baby with minimal amounts of white; coming from the expected parentage, that is a reasonable guess.

When I saw Remi on the ground with his big white blaze, I knew we were going to have to do some detective work. Percherons aren't chestnut in color. Rose's lineage was full of mares and stallions with minimal white markings on their bodies and while its possible for her to produce more white than she herself has, the odds of that happening in concurrence with a black Percheron sire are slim. Then take into account the tall white stockings on three of the baby's four legs and the unusual way the white on the left side of his muzzle came up past his nostril. This was no Percheron.

Remi was born two days after Teri's birthday - incidentally, on her grandfather's birthday - July 16th. For Teri's birthday, we planned a short camping trip up Mount Lemmon with some of our close friends. This was scheduled to happen when Remi was still very young so it was a quick trip but already paid for and planned out. On our way up the mountain, I got a phone call from Linda. She got my message that the baby was born and that I had some questions for her. She asked how he and Rose were doing and I replied that they were doing very well, and other such niceties.

Then I told her what he looked like. I asked my mom to email Linda some photos so she could see for herself. Linda said she would get back into contact with a ranch that had "tried out" Rose before I bought her. Turns out they weren't interested, so when Linda went back to pick her up and noticed that they had stallions, it intrigued her. She had questioned them about the possibility of one of their stallions siring the foal when I first asked Linda about an unexpected pregnancy and the ranch had vehemently denied any such thing. She told me that she would get back to me the next day when we came back into Tucson.

Sure enough, the next day Linda called and said she'd found photos of the stallions on the ranch's website. She gave me their web address and told me to look for myself. I couldn't wait to get home and look at the pictures.

What I found couldn't have been more perfect or answer my question any better. There were two Paint stallions standing at Ram's Head Ranch. One is almost all white with a few dark patches. The other is almost solid chestnut with three white socks and a big blaze down his face. Guilty! Other photos on the page depicted some of the chestnut stallion's foals, all bearing a resemblance to Remi. The deadbeat dad's name is Sony Dee Bars Delight.

Linda emailed some photos of Remi to the owner of the ranch, who responded that he was a nice looking foal and that she would require DNA testing to prove that he was her stallion's foal before providing a breeder's certificate, which we needed to register the colt. Oh yes, and we would have to pay a sixty dollar late fee because the certificate wasn't applied for until after the foal's birth. As if we would have been able to apply for the certificate beforehand, not knowing our foal was going to be a Paint instead of a Percheron! Linda had mentioned to me that the owner of the ranch was very talented at dodging questions and it was really difficult to get a straight answer out of her. Already, I feared trying to deal with this stallion owner would be similar to arguing politics with a politician.

I was less than pleased with this woman's dishonesty and careless method of operating a breeding ranch. She wanted to test drive a horse for a possible purchase, not knowing the horse or the owner, and had allowed that horse to be bred on her property by one of her breeding stallions! Maybe this would be permissible if she wasn't a breeder by trade, but somebody who earns their living from breeding stallions should know how to restrain and correctly keep a stud. Then, after allowing the breeding to happen (by accident or not, I don't care) she lied to the horse's owner, preventing her and myself, the subsequent buyer, from caring for the mare properly during gestation.

Linda and I conjectured that maybe she was afraid of being forced into purchasing the horse, since it had been bred by her stud. Perhaps she feared lawsuits. At some point, we acknowledged that maybe it was truly an accident, but at some point she had to suspect what happened. She must have found Rose and the stallion somewhere together. The stallion had left bite marks and wounds all over Rose's back - obvious signs that she was covered - and the woman fabricated the story that Rose had jumped out of a washrack after being scared by something. She lied again to Linda. I can't blame Linda for not pressing the issue, this woman obviously wasn't going to answer questions straightforwardly and wasn't interested in buying the mare so she loaded Rose into the trailer and drove her back home.

Well, the good news is that the siring stallion is double-registered: as an American Paint Horse and as an American Quarter Horse. Couple that with a Jockey's Club registered Thoroughbred and potentially you have another American Paint Horse and an American Quarter-Appendix. Problem becomes the $60 late fee on a breeder's certificate, plus $40 for the DNA test, plus another $60 for the DNA test kit, plus $100 for each registry. Additionally, if the foal is not registered before the first of next year, all the registration fees go up.

As Remi is nowhere near the first of next year, we're able to put off paying for the fees for the time being. We're simply attempting to recover from our incredibly eventful summer of an extra horse and a lack of half our normal income.

All these worries usually melt away when I go see Rose and Remi. At first, it's because Remi is so adorable and cuddly that it's hard to worry about registering him. As he gets a little older, all my thoughts tumble out of my head because it's all I can do to keep up with the terror he's becoming, and wonder if just maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew.