Athleticism isn't always a good thing

The following workday came and went and I quickly found myself in the time slot allotted to go and see the horses. I managed to put it off by accomplishing other tasks, even dishes and laundry. Never before had I purposefully avoided the horses, this in and of itself was unnerving. However, the most unsettling thought of all was that the cause of my anxiety came in the form of a 12 day old cute and fuzzy colt. I mentally slapped myself for being such a scaredy cat. I wound up some resolve to pretend that my failure of the previous evening simply didn't exist.
Teri walked through the front door. "Ready to go to the barn?"
"Yeah, I guess. Lemme put on my boots." I sighed. Teri is the one who is somewhat new to horses, yet she's ready to give it another shot. She's not trying to avoid Remi. I'm the only one doing that - and I'm supposed to be the experienced one.
The stables were deserted when we arrived - I breathed a sigh of relief. All I needed today was somebody else's horse to flip out or try to attack Remi or for that person to judge me and how I handled my horse family.
Teri and I approached the stall, grabbed both halters and let ourselves in. Rose is always easy to halter, she was done in a second. Remi stood nicely while I pulled the halter onto his face and buckled the strap. As we were about to open the gate and walk to the arena, another boarder appeared out of nowhere and was just letting her horse loose in the arena. Damn.
"Well, nobody's using the other arena. I guess we could put them in there." I wasn't sure how Rose would handle this, since she'd never been in there before.
"Okay, I'll go open up the gate and then make sure Remi doesn't run towards the other arena. Wait a minute before you come out." Teri walked down the barn aisle and headed left towards the jumping arena. After a minute I saw her walk back towards us and then stop, so she could block the path to the big arena.
"Ready!" she called.
I pushed open the stall gate and led Rose to the left, instead of straight. Remi stood in the aisle, considering. Rose walked farther and farther away from him, and he chose to follow her. Thank god. We turned left again at the end of the stalls and walked towards the jumping arena gate. Remi ran right up to Teri as if to say, "What are you doing here? I want to run this way!"
Teri clapped her hands at him and shooed him towards Rose. I took Rose into the arena and Remi ran right in behind us. I closed the gate and let Rose loose.

Mare and foal ran to the other side of the arena, and proceeded to explore this new enclosure. Rose trotted all around, sniffing the jumps. Remi rocketed back and forth, encountering cavaletti poles on the ground that the trainer had been using to school her young horse. These poles were new and must have been scary or exciting, so he took a giant flying leap to clear them. The sand was flying as he skidded to a stop. He turned around to come investigate. He sniffed the poles, pawed at them with his foot, stepped on them and over them. This must have satisfied his curiosity, and he ran off to go pester Rose. Every once in awhile he would run back over to the poles and jump them, apparently it was enjoyable.
Before long, Remi grew tired. Rose stopped investigating and turned to unearthing mesquite beans from the arena sand. Remi was laying down in Rose's shadow. I took up Rose's lead rope and opened the gate. Rose trotted right over to the gate and let me clip her lead onto her halter. Remi followed Rose straight back to her stall without causing trouble.
I breathed a sigh of relief after closing the stall gate. Teri came up beside me after giving Rose her grain and commented,
"Well, that was pretty uneventful."
I smiled in agreement.
The rest of the week passed in the same fashion - uneventfully. A couple days in the big arena and a couple days in the jumping arena. On Friday I got a phone call from a friend who I hadn't seen in awhile, a vet I used to work for named Catherine.
"Hey what are you doing tomorrow?" she asked.
"Nothing much, just spending time at the barn." I answered.
"I was thinking about coming to visit the horses, would that be okay?"
"Of course! It'd be great to see you!" I exclaimed.
"Awesome, I'll probably be there in the late afternoon or early evening. I'll let you know when I get off at Ina." she offered.
"Perfect. See you tomorrow!" I hung up the phone, happy with the idea of getting to see Catherine, but a little worried about how Remi would behave. As if my friend who was once a vet at a racetrack never saw the naughty side of horses. At this idea, I laughed.
Saturday dawned hot and bright. The month of August had just began and the summer's heat was in full swing. We avoided going to the barn before 4pm, but even 4pm was still ungodly hot. We got to the barn about 4:30, and I thought I'd clean out the water barrel and change the bedding in the stall to kill some time while we waited for Catherine. After the chores were completed, Teri groomed Rose while I got Remi used to the feeling of a brush on his body. About 5:30 I got a text from Catherine that said she was at Ina and Thornydale. I estimated it would take her about 30-35 minutes to reach us from there. I wanted to have the horses already in the arena when she arrived but only just, so she could see Remi run around. If they were in the arena too early, he would tire himself out before she got there.
That very Saturday afternoon, I brought Remi's lime green halter with us to the barn. His tiny little suckling halter had been growing increasingly tight over his nose and we ran out of holes to make it larger. At two and a half weeks old, he was already wearing a weanling size halter. Admittedly, it was just a tiny bit big for him, but he would grow into it before too long.
Fifteen minutes before Catherine was going to pull in to the stables, we walked the horses to the jumping arena. Another horse was already loose in the big arena again. Remi strutted along, proudly wearing his "big boy" halter, and we shut the gate behind them. They took to running and cavorting like usual.

Catherine drove in just a few minutes later, and parked in front of the arena.
She got out of the car and we all exchanged hugs and greetings, then settled ourselves along the fence line in the shade, leaning on the top cross rail.
Remi came galloping up to the fence to meet his new admirer. Catherine stuck her hand out and petted Remi for a moment, then he took off again. We chatted for a few minutes about him and how well Rose was doing. Catherine wanted to see him a little closer, so we all ducked under the rail and slid in sideways through the fence. Remi walked up to her and stood for a minute while she petted and scratched him. Teri and I stood inside the arena with Rose, in the shade. After a few minutes of adoration, Remi had enough. He kicked up his heels and took off towards the far end. Rose lifted her head, but no longer felt the need to chase after him all over the place - after all, he was fenced in on four sides.
Having reached the back fence, Remi performed an about-face and came flying back towards us at full tilt. One of his favorite games was something we liked to call "chicken with the fence", when he stopped at the last possible second before crashing into a fence or a gate. He was getting quite good and was able to stop in a very short distance.
Today however, Remi had a different mission in mind. Little did we know that he had zero intention of stopping.
The next few seconds seemed to pass simultaneously in slow motion and in fast forward. All three of us watched him approach the fence, but not one of us thought to try and stop him before his inevitable crash.
And then the unthinkable happened.
Instead of a nasty collision with the fence, Remi lowered his head and raised his legs, and made a flying leap between the top and bottom rails of the fence. His forelegs didn't quite make it up high enough but he scraped over the bottom railing and landed on his feet, outside the arena. Teri, Catherine and I all stared at one another, then back at the little colt standing just outside the fence, our mouths agape in shock.
At first, Remi seemed pretty surprised, then pleased with himself. After a moment, Rose noticed that her baby was no longer inside the arena.
Her body posture suddenly changed from relaxed and grazing to an acute awareness that something was wrong. Her head snapped to attention, nostrils flared and ears pricked. She immediately started calling shrilly for her foal. He whinnied back to her and came back towards the fence. Rose catapulted herself in the direction of the gate and Remi followed - but he didn't stop at the gate. He galloped around the outside of the far end of the arena, still whinnying for his mother. Rose was frantic and began sprinting back and forth along the fence line closest to Remi. I stood at the gate with her lead rope, refusing to chase after her. As she made another run in my direction, I stood directly in her path and shouted,
"WHOA!!!"
She seemed so surprised by my actions that she stopped dead in her tracks. I clipped the lead onto her halter, and opened the gate. I led her outside and stood where Remi could see us, Rose continuing to nicker for him. He ran straight to us, and we turned and walked back into the arena with Remi following behind. He was only too glad to be back at Rose's side. She insistently nosed him all over while he stood stock still, apparently traumatized. The only mark from his whole adventure was a small scrape on his foreleg where he'd contacted the fence.
At this moment, I saw an opportunity to take advantage of the situation. I had Teri hold Rose while I got Remi's lead rope and clipped it to his new green halter. Then we let Rose wander off. As Remi followed her, I just walked alongside him holding the rope. I didn't pull on him, just walked with him around the arena. After he was used to be walking around with him, I began to subtly direct his nose. Each time he submitted to the pressure, I stopped pulling. Slowly but surely he got used to the idea. When Rose would stop, I would apply light pressure backwards on the rope until Remi came to a halt, then praise him for doing so well.
Teri took a hold on Rose again and started to walk back to her stall. I walked alongside Remi as he followed his mother.

After we took off their halters and fed them, Teri and Catherine and I stood outside the stall to exclaim about the day's events. I was overwhelmed with relief that we had finally gotten a lead rope on Remi and that he was ready to accept all that entailed without too much of a fuss, but I was also more than a little concerned about the fact that our two and a half week old foal had just made a prison break.
I really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to try to raise and keep the foal. Remi was rapidly turning into something much more intimidating than a cute baby should represent.

Advance and Retreat

Prior to Remi's birth, Teri and I carefully discussed a few plans regarding the foal. We weren't ready to tackle the "Are you going to keep him?!" question yet so we simply didn't dwell on it. The more addressable issue at hand was how to handle the foal until we reached a point when we could decide whether to keep him or sell him.

We discussed a few of the problems with foal handling, the pros and cons of handling a foal from newborn onwards versus allowing them to essentially be "wild" until they were old enough to train and ride. When you have a mare that's just given birth and a newborn foal, they are certainly beautiful and cute and fun to watch, but that only takes you so far. I couldn't ride any of the three horses we now owned so the idea of not training the foal from day one was simply horrifying to me.

Remi was merely ten minutes old when we first began touching and petting him. We steadied him and provided support when he learned to stand, and nurse. Teri fed him his first few meals from a bottle. He had countless visitors during his first few days, all of which wanted to pet him and cuddle him. He loved to be scratched and itched in those places he just couldn't reach by himself. Already, Remi adored being the center of attention.

By three days old, Remi was quite adept at gallivanting around his stall, jumping around and playing. It was the first day that we had to replace some straw so he'd have enough bedding. I opened the stall door and blocked him from running out while Teri heaved the straw bale into the stall. Remi strode right over to it and put his face into the prickly mass.

He started lipping pieces of straw into his mouth, even though he had no teeth. I was mucking out some of the remaining dirt and manure while he was investigating this new cube of fun. Teri stood inside the stall watching the foal as I finished throwing the last rakeful into the wheelbarrow. Remi started dashing around the stall again, being a goofball.

"OH MY GOD!" Teri exclaimed suddenly enough to startle me. I quickly looked over at her and she was doubled over, laughing. Eyes wide, mouth agape, it was all she could do to point at the foal and then at the bale of straw.

"What?! What happened?" I still didn't understand.

"He just ran up and then jumped right over the straw bale! And then he skidded to a stop and turned before plowing into the wall!"

"Holy crap." I was mentally kicking myself for not getting to see this feat. "Seriously, I can't believe it. He's only 3 days old! That's crazy!"

"I know! It was amazing." Teri wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

That was when I knew for sure that we had some trouble on our hands.

For her birthday, our good friend Kate bought Teri a lime green foal halter. However, this foal halter was still miles too large for Remi's little head. I went to the feed store and found a tiny little suckling halter that had buckles all over it to adjust the size. I cinched the buckles down as tight as they would all go and the tiny halter fit Remi's head. Getting it on his head then became the problem.

Teri stood on one side of him with her arms braced around his chest and butt while I gently rubbed the halter onto his face. He mildly objected to having it around his nose and was pretty unhappy about the buckle behind his ears. After he was all fitted and it was properly buckled, we let him go. He busted around the stall like a real rodeo bronc, flinging his head around and jumping and kicking. It took only about a minute before he tired himself out and simultaneously realized that the contraption on his face wasn't going anywhere. It seemed like he shrugged and said,
"Oh well. Guess it's time for a snack, then a nap! This thing on my head isn't killing me after all."

After he calmed down and had a nice meal, he plopped down in the straw and stretched out. I sat down behind him and rubbed his neck and shoulders and down his face, then gently unbuckled the strap behind his ears and slid the halter off his nose. Day 1 of halter training: success!

The keys to successful training are simple, yet almost nobody abides by them; repetition, consistency, and patience. To train a horse effectively, you must be patient enough to wait for them to accomplish what you're asking, then reward them for doing the right thing. Repeat the cue until they accomplish the goal again, then reward. Repeat the lesson a few times each day. Consistently use the same cues to ask for the same behavior, day after day. It honestly doesn't take long for horses to learn what you're asking when you train them in this way. Repeat lessons until the horse feels very comfortable with what you are asking, then move on to a new goal. Repeat.

This means haltering and handling the foal every single day, if not twice a day.

Now, just because the keys are simple does not ever mean they are easy. Some days they seem near impossible. On those days, small victories count for just as much as winning the whole damn war.

Each evening we went to visit the horses, and each evening we'd catch and halter Remi. That sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Each day, Remi started more and more to understand that this was going to continue to happen to him and each day, he began fighting us a little more. Restraining him to put the halter on became a wrestling match, one which Teri won every day but he also was getting bigger and stronger every day. I tried not to think about how we were going to be able to continue to fight with him as he got bigger and stronger than us.

After wearing the halter a couple days, we were ready to take the horses and turn them out in the arena to run. Remi had never known anything but that foaling stall so we were unsure what to expect out of him. Since he was so little, all the foaling books recommended leading the mare and just letting the foal follow. Due to his age and desire to be at her side, it shouldn't be a problem. "Shouldn't" is surely the operative word here. As we could've predicted, Remi was anything but easy.

I haltered Rose, then we haltered Remi. We opened the arena gate previously so we wouldn't have to stop and open it once we reached the entrance. Berto was stationed in the stall behind the horses and I took ahold of Rose's lead rope. Teri was standing by, outside the stall to help with corralling if need be. I led Rose out of the stall and started walking down towards the arena. I had chosen a moment when Remi had his nose stuck in the feeder so he wasn't watching as Rose and I started to walk out. When he lifted his head, his mother was no longer in the stall. He was watching her leave him while he was behind the bars of the stall, and he hadn't noticed the open stall door. He started whinnying frantically and running back and forth. Rose stopped and turned around and started whinnying back at him. Berto came up from behind him and ushered him towards the open gate. Remi did not know what to think, this stall was the only place he knew but his momma was walking away and staying was just too scary so out he bolted.

He ran right up to Rose's side and walked with us. He started looking around, surveying his new kingdom. Within a few steps, he gained enough confidence to trot up in front of her and wander closer to some of the other horses in their stalls. Rose strained against the lead rope and called to her foal, she did not like him so close to those strange horses. Teri and Berto kept herding him away from the other stall aisles and from the cars parked out by the hitching posts. Soon enough we had them both safely in the arena, unclipped Rose's lead and watched them both take off.

"Whew!" I wiped my face on my shirtsleeve as I tied Rose's lead rope to the arena gate.

By this time, the sky had started to darken. We had to wait to turn the horses out because people were using the arena. When the coast was finally clear, it was dusk. We chanced turning the horses out because Rose had been cooped up in that little stall for over a month and Remi was already five or six days old, and hadn't been let out yet.

"Wow, look at all the horses." Teri gazed around the property. Every single horse in the place was standing at the front of its stall, ears pricked and head held high. Some of them were snorting and whinnying, some were running in tiny circles, and others were bucking and rearing and biting their neighbors in excitement. Yet all of them were paying attention to the new baby.

Rose and Remi went flying to the other end of the arena. We heard them galloping around, but we couldn't see them well. The dust in the air was thick and there was no breeze that humid July evening. Occasionally they would run our direction, promptly to turn around and streak back into the darkness. It had been about a half hour since we turned them out and it was definitely dark. I had attempted to catch Rose a couple of times, but each time she ran away as if to say,
"Are you kidding? Do you know how long its been since I've felt good enough to run around?! I'm not comin' back in."

Finally, I resorted to a method that I feel is way beneath me and should be considered cheating in all situations. I got her bucket and I put her grain in it, and I walked over to the gate and shook the bucket. Rose heard the feed rattling around, and I heard swift hoofbeats coming my direction. She trotted right up to the gate and started sticking her head between the bars, trying to get the grain. I let her put her muzzle in the bucket and slowly took ahold of her halter. I clipped the lead rope on and took the bucket away. This made her unhappy but too bad, so sad. I had her caught and at least she understood that it was dinnertime and playtime was over. Remi was at her side and followed us out of the arena.

I was a little disappointed in myself, but mostly just glad to be putting them safely back in their stall.

As we walked back, Remi was ready to be more adventurous. He wandered over to a parked car and nosed it curiously, then loped up in front of Rose and I and stopped dead in the way, only to be ushered off and examine something on the ground in one of the stall aisles to our left. He resembled a fuzzy pinball, ricocheting off a fence line, Berto and Teri, a car and finally into the stall behind Rose.

I clipped Rose's grain bucket onto her lead rope and held it while Teri tied the rope on a high bar in the stall fencing. This way the bucket wasn't on the ground and couldn't trap baby foal hooves or anything like that in it. Rose dug in eagerly while Remi nursed. He could barely stand up to finish his dinner, then he promptly collapsed into the straw and fell asleep.

"Big day, I suppose." I murmured. Teri and Berto laughed. We were all pretty tired, worn out from dealing with the hairy ping-pong ball. I knelt in the straw and unbuckled the halter from Remi's head and slid it off. I rubbed all over his head and eyes and ears and nose. We all said goodnight to Rose and called it a day.

The next evening, we turned the horses out again but this time we did it much earlier. We did it early enough to beat all the evening barn traffic so there wouldn't be much commotion and we wouldn't be those people, turning their horses out in the arena so nobody else could use it. I hate those people. We had a similar routine to the previous night. Again, Remi was running off in every direction, making Rose and all the rest of us nervous. Remi learned where we were going though, so he took off ahead of us and ran right into the arena without waiting for Mom. I unclipped her lead at the arena entrance and she took off after baby.

This time, we got to sit on the picnic table in the shade next to the arena and really watch them run. Sometimes, Rose was running and Remi was galloping after her.

Rose quickly tired of this game and settled down to roll a few times and then was content to nose through the sand for mesquite bean pods. Remi nursed a little and trotted in small circles around her. He jumped and bit at her. He trotted around the other side and kicked at her.

He loped around her again and again, trying to get her to play with him. Finally it occurred to him that he didn't need her. If he had been a cartoon, there would have been a gigantic yellow lightbulb that clicked on over his head.

He was looking around the arena - what for, I had no idea. He glanced back at Rose, then turned tail and lit out for the other end of the arena. Rose's head popped up and she took off after him at full-speed.

Remi noticed she was following him, so he continued to run and run and run until he was just too tired. He stopped and plopped down into the sand just as abruptly as he'd taken off.

Babies his age tire quickly and easily, so all the books recommend keeping the mare on a lead rope and letting her run small circles around you while baby runs only as much as he wants. In this case, Remi was running Rose ragged. She was out of shape and had just given birth, her nostrils were flaring and her sides heaving by the time he stopped, so his little rest was a-okay by her.

Over the course of Remi's next few excursions into the arena, he became increasingly bold. He had been known to bolt from the stall almost all the way to the arena before stopping. Rose always whinnied frantically at him, I imagine she must have been saying,
"YOU ALWAYS LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE PATH THAT THE HUMAN MACHINES GO BACK AND FORTH ON! Be careful! You are going too fast! Wait for me! WAIT! WAIT FOR ME, DAMMIT!"

He would finally wait for us, but as soon as we were close he would take off again. You might think that this was okay since he knew he was going into the arena. And it would have been, if Remi always went into the arena.

But he didn't.

One evening, he decided that he would really like to know what was on the other side of the arena fence. So instead of running through the gate, he ran around the left side of it towards the round pen, trailer parking, an open wash and eventually the front gate to the property. My heart leapt into my throat and Rose lifted her head and started to try and go after him. Having two runaway horses is infinitely worse than one so I gave a firm jerk on the lead rope and held her at my side.

"What should we do??" Teri called to me from the arena gate.

"Hang on, he won't go very far and then he'll want to be back with Rose." I tried to sound braver than I felt. Truthfully, my pulse was racing and I was worried Remi would panic and run the wrong way. I confidently led Rose around the gate and headed towards the colt. She was calling to him the whole time and he started whinnying back. Once he caught sight of her coming around the corner he stopped and ran right back over to her side. They both went nicely into the arena, and after they finished their evening run they walked sedately back to their stall. It almost felt like an apology.

The next evening Teri stood beside the open arena gate with her arms wide, to dissuade Remi from going that direction again. It worked. He slid to a stop in front of Teri then turned to his right and loped into the arena. Another crisis averted. The rest of that evening went off without a hitch.

Each day, we continued to work with the halter. It wasn't that Remi was afraid of it, he just didn't like that we were able to overpower him. One day when I arrived at the stall, Remi had his little head sticking out between the bars. I petted him and loved on him and messed with him and still, his head was out. I got his little halter out and held it out to him. He sniffed it and put part of it in his mouth and gummed it. I rubbed it on his face and when he didn't seem to mind, I simply pulled it over his nose and buckled it behind his ears. Head was still sticking out. Triumph! After that day, he no longer needed to be restrained to put the halter on. Simple enough. One battle down, a million to go.

As Remi aged, he changed by the day. Every day he was bigger and stronger and had more willpower. Unfortunately for me. I was tired of worrying what tricks he was going to pull next, worried he was going to run off and hurt himself, and most importantly, worried about all the problems he could get into that I hadn't even thought of yet. It was time to try working on leading him with a lead rope.

We made our first attempt when Remi was ten or eleven days old. We haltered him and got an extra lead rope. The extra lead rope was to drape over his hindquarters and rest in the groove above his hocks, encouraging forward motion. It is very difficult for foals to understand that pulling on their faces means move forward and a lot of them will panic. They pull against the pressure and end up rearing up and even falling over backwards and hurting themselves badly. Foals don't have a great understanding of their own bodies yet and certainly not a great grasp on their own strength. Thus, the use of the butt-rope. The idea is that the rope behind them moves them forward until they understand that they are to move forward when asked by the lead rope. Then you use the butt-rope less and less until one day you remove it entirely.

I took hold of Remi's halter and Teri had the butt-rope in one hand above his back, looped around his hindquarters. I would gently pull his nose forward and Teri would tighten on the butt-rope until he moved forward, then we would release. This would be Remi's first lesson with pressure and release training. He struggled against us but was doing as we asked. We started in the stall, just moving one step at a time. Then we started doing small circles, one direction and then the other.

He was doing okay so I thought it was a good time to turn them out for their evening run. Teri haltered Rose and led her from the stall and I had Remi. The problem with Remi's tiny halter was that it didn't have a ring to clip a lead rope to, so I had to hold onto a cheekpiece. He moved a few steps forward and then leaped forward and then stopped. He wanted to run free like he was used to, and he was mad at me for hanging onto him. Rose and Teri continued to walk away and I was really counting on Remi wanting to be with her, but that didn't seem to be a concern of his. He was content to stand there, not moving. I applied pressure to the butt-rope and he leaned backwards against the rope. This was no good. I abandoned the rope and used my arm instead. I would pull on the halter and apply pressure with my arm at the same time and he wasn't thrilled about it but he walked a couple steps forward, and stopped again. I praised him for moving forward and we took a break. Rose and Teri had stopped a ways in front of us and were watching.

I asked him to move forward again but this time he leaned on my arm instead of moving forward. I didn't want him thinking he could always get out of doing what I asked by leaning on me so I quickly took pressure off his body; he lost his footing and almost fell down because he'd been leaning so hard. I tried reaching over his back and pulling from the other side but he just leaned on me again. I let go again and his feet scrabbled on the hard-packed dirt and he stumbled and fell onto his side. I was still holding onto his halter, but he just lay there on his side and looked up at me as if to say, "Fine, I will just lay here. See if you can make me do it!"

I pulled on him and nudged him and pushed him, but he was content to stay right where he was and snort at me. Finally I pulled him back up to his feet and we were just standing there, taking a breather. A truck pulled onto the property and parked. We made just enough progress to where we were right in front of the tack room and hitching posts. The man had gotten his horse out and was tying him (if you could call it that) to a hitching post. The gelding was staring intently at Remi with his ears eagerly pricked. The man went into the tack room to gather his grooming brushes.

I started to ask Remi to move forward again but he'd had it with me. He jumped straight up into the air and bucked and reared and flailed around. I was still working on forward, but then I noticed at the hitching post the gelding was going crazy. He reared up and pulled against his lead rope. He was whinnying for all he was worth and then he tried to take off. He couldn't run away since he was tied, but his owner hadn't tied him with an actual knot, he had simply looped the lead rope around the post twice. The gelding had enough slack in the rope to actually lope in circles (albeit small ones) around the hitching post. Each circle he made the rope loosened itself a little more.

I began to feel a little queasy. I could just see it now, the gelding would get loose and run right over to us and then Rose would flip out and try to eat him while Remi panicked and tried to get away. I started turning Remi back towards the stall and jerked my head at Teri to get her to bring Rose back our direction.

The man ran out of the tack room at the first sound of commotion and started screaming at his horse.
"BUG, NO! BUG WHOA! Stop! Bug STOP! NO NO NO!" and then started trying to catch him. But catching him was going to be difficult, especially since it was obvious the gentleman was petrified of his own gelding. He didn't want to get too close, but if he fell too far behind the horse would catch up to him and trample him. It was quite comical, in hindsight of course, to see the man and the horse run around and around the hitching post in some crazed game of merry-go-round but the humor escaped me at the time.

Thankfully, before the rope loosened all the way, Bug stopped. After Remi calmed down and wasn't flinging himself at me, Bug was not as excited. He stood at the hitching post, rope just dangling over the top, quivering and snorting. His nostrils had to be the size of dinner plates and his sides heaved with the effort he just made. His owner looked like he didn't want to go within a mile of his horse at the time but was able to force himself to re-tie the lead rope. He turned to us and said,
"He's never acted like that before! I've never seen him do that!"

"It's because we have the baby out. All the horses are going a little crazy when we bring them out." I tried to explain.

"But I've never known Bug to be like that! It's so weird!" It was as if he wasn't listening to me at all.

"Yes but he probably doesn't see many foals. I know there hasn't been one here in a long time so it's new and different to him. The rest of the horses are all acting like idiots. We're going to take them back to their stall now, are you okay with that?" I asked doubtfully.

"Oh yes, he will be just fine I'm sure of it." The guy was trying to sound confident but failing pretty miserably. I raised my eyebrows at him, and shrugged. I nodded at Teri to walk Rose back into the stall.

As soon as Rose was walking toward the stall and I made sure Remi was pointed in the right direction, I let him go. He trotted right up to Rose's side and stayed with her until the stall, at which point she went inside and he darted to the left, between the stall and another tack room outbuilding. Bugger. Couldn't I just cut a break?!

Teri walked Rose back outside the stall just in front of the little aisle he'd gone down and she nickered at him. The aisle was only twenty feet long, he turned around and ran back out again. We attempted getting him back into the stall once more and this time he actually went in. We took off their halters and poured Rose's evening grain into her bucket.

I sighed heavily as I hung up their halters. I was silent for the car ride home, brooding over the day's events.

Is this what my life is going to be like if we keep this damn horse?
Here he is only eleven days old and already I'm failing.

As he gets older he's going to get more opinionated, more willful and much, much larger. If things weren't difficult enough for me at the time, imagine how hard my life was going to get when he hit a thousand pounds. I was certain his mature figure would fill out at least 1200 pounds, if not more. Both his parents were large horses and he was already larger than most foals his age.

Maybe its best if we don't keep him. I don't know if I can do this.

These thoughts all churned in my head the whole way home.

For the first time, I really didn't know what to do. I was all but ready to throw in the towel and give it up. I was exhausted, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness. We only made it halfway to the arena and there was mass chaos that, admittedly, could have ended much worse. I hadn't won my battle, if anything, I had certainly lost.

I had never been so discouraged about horses in my whole horsey life.

Copyright 2009

This blog and associated works is now officially copyrighted. All rights reserved. 2009 Ashleigh Bennett.

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.

New Territory

There is a certain amount of shock to be expected with this enormous of an event and I can tell you for sure that Teri and myself experienced more than our share. In a single month we discovered our mare's pregnancy, prepared for a foal of an unknown father and then actually had the foal born. Most people who breed their horses have eleven months to prepare for baby so I felt like we'd done pretty well for ourselves.

Now suddenly there was a little colt on the ground and everything all hit home. That we now had a new life to be responsible for. Thank goodness Rose did most of the work!

After calling or texting our friends and family to notify them of our new addition, we stuck our phones in our pockets to admire the little baby Rose had just produced. I called Berto to tell him about the foal and he was on his way over. The baby was bright and alert and looking around. He was wiggling around in the straw, trying to straighten out his mile-long legs and figure out how to get them underneath himself for a few minutes when he made his first attempt at standing. He pulled himself forward with his forelegs and attempted to push with his hind legs but his back legs were crossed and didn't function very well yet. He collapsed back down into the straw in a heap. He gave the tiniest little snort I'd ever heard and shook his head as if to say,
"Wow, that was a little harder than I anticipated. Maybe I'll just take a little break."


Berto arrived a few minutes after I called him. He came in and petted the foal and stood back to watch the baby's attempts at standing.

When he looked ready to try again, I walked to him and pulled his forelegs out from underneath his body and straightened them out in front of him. He was in a better position to try this time. Again he thrust himself up into the air but it was more forceful than the first time and he surprised himself with his own strength. He catapulted himself forward and was unable to keep his legs underneath his body to support his weight. He landed nose first back into the straw, legs splayed in every which direction. Rose nickered her support and touched him with her nose. His little sides were heaving with effort, nostrils flaring. After another few minutes he curled his legs back up under himself in preparation for another try.

Right then, Catherine was texting me and asking about the baby. My phone vibrated in my pocket, signaling a new message. I glanced down and wrestled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open to read the message. I started to formulate a reply when suddenly there was a commotion in front of me - the foal had pushed himself to his feet again but didn't have his legs braced in a way to hold himself up. He was about to topple over but was trying to keep standing up. It had quickly escalated into a falling/running sideways exercise that was headed right for me. I had enough foresight to crouch down a few inches and put my arms out to catch his body, which promptly slammed into me. He spread all his legs as far apart as possible to give himself a big base and was standing up! I was gently balancing him by keeping my arms around his chest and under his butt. He switched his tail around triumphantly.

Then I remembered that my phone used to be in my hand. Where had it gone? Oh no. It must be lost somewhere in the straw, under Rose's hooves or my boots or somewhere.

"Teri, do you happen to see my phone?" I sighed.

"Yeah, it's in your hand." she cackled.

"What?! No it's not!" I looked down, "Oh. It is in my hand."

I didn't realize it was in my hand because my hands were holding the foal. So the phone was pressed into the foal's chest and neck and was now covered in the remnants of amniotic fluids left in the colt's coat. Ugh.

"Yuck." I couldn't remove my hands from the foal and so I had to leave the phone just where it was. I just hoped to myself that the moisture wouldn't kill my phone.

After the baby stood for a few moments, he wanted to take a step. He wobbled along with some assistance, and I attempted to guide him over to Rose's side. The problem with this situation is that Rose has been whickering at the baby the whole time he'd been off the ground and following him around. So when we finally did make it closer to Rose's side, she moved away to follow us.

"Berto, can you come in here and hold Rose still so I can try and let the baby nurse?" I asked.

"Sure." he let himself into the stall and clipped a lead onto her halter and held her head so she couldn't continue to follow us around in circles.

I nudged the colt up to her side again and he started poking around with his nose, looking for breakfast. After a few minutes' effort, he still hadn't located the teat. He was heavier in my arms now as I was supporting more of his weight. He gave up trying at that point and just allowed himself to fall back down into the straw. He lay on his side and stretched out and closed his eyes. He kept switching his little tail back and forth, back and forth. Rose stood protectively over her newborn miracle, nosing him all over and licking the areas she didn't get to before.

Rose let him rest for ten minutes but then started acting a little agitated. She started lifting her front hoof and pawing the ground next to the foal. Then she lifted her hoof again and placed it on his hindquarters and pushed on him. She was whinnying at him in earnest, and kept nudging at him with her hoof. He sat up and looked around, surprised. He quickly gathered all his limbs together and leapt into the air. He managed to catch himself on all four legs this time and shakily remained standing. Proud of himself, he tried to stumble forward again towards his mother. Gently, Teri caught him in front of his chest and under his butt and guided him over to Rose's side to try nursing again. I stood on Rose's other side and crouched down. I reached under her belly and tried guiding his muzzle to her teat. He spastically nosed at her belly, the insides of her back legs and around her udders. He still couldn't latch onto her teat to nurse and Rose's udders were swelling with considerable amounts of milk, now that the baby was born. Milk was starting to stream out of Rose's teats and the foal wasn't receiving any of those precious first nutrients.

The baby stood up and moved around within the hour allotted to complete that important first task but he wasn't nursing and we were long past that deadline. It was time to call the vet. I left a message, trying not to sound frantic but worrying all the same.

The vet called me back and asked if the foal seemed to be weakened or wasn't willing to try to nurse. I explained that he was really strong and didn't seem weak at all. Teri suggested milking Rose and feeding the foal from the bottle until he learned to nurse properly, then at least he wouldn't miss out on the colostrum. The vet agreed with this idea and said that if he hadn't started nursing on his own in the next few hours to call back.

Teri rushed off to WalMart, as it was the only place open at 4am that carried baby bottles. She came back about a half hour later. The foal was walking around the stall all by himself, looking quite proud. Rose stood in the center, rotating on her haunches to keep her eyes on him as he circled. The two of them were quite the sight to behold as he was exploring his new surroundings and Rose just couldn't get close enough to him so it was slightly chaotic. He was quite interested in Teri's return and what she brought with her.

Teri pulled a pack of baby bottles, a Big Book of Baby Names, a couple of cold Gatorades and a banana nut muffin out of the shopping bag. I raised my eyebrows at her.

"Well, he still needs a name and we didn't decide on any boy names ahead of time so I figured we could look through the book." she answered my unverbalized question and hit the nail on the head. I nodded in agreement.

"Thanks for the Gatorade and muffin. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through work today, actually." I smiled grimly. I had called the lab manager earlier to see if there was some way I could come in a couple hours late and she had told me that we were slammed at work, so I could be an hour late but no more.

I unwrapped the baby bottles and washed one out. I held it under Rose's udders and began milking her to relieve the pressure caused by the excessive amount of milk she was producing. Soon enough the bottle was full of fresh milk and Rose looked more comfortable already. I screwed the nipple onto the bottle and attempted to get the foal to nurse from the bottle. He didn't understand the strange plastic thing being thrust between his gums and resisted suckling. I waited another few minutes and tried again, to no avail. I put the bottle into Rose's feeder and gave up for the moment.

In the meantime, Teri had been sitting in a camping chair outside the stall thumbing through the Baby Name Book.
"How about Raiden? Means God of Thunder."

I contemplated it, and said it aloud. "Raiden. Raiden! I like it. We'll have to see how it works on the baby."

Teri continued to murmur names, going through all the 'R' names. We had decided that it would be really cute to name the baby something beginning with 'R' since we already had two 'R' horses - Rocky and Rose.

"How about Remi? Just means something like 'from Rheims, France'. But it's a cute name. And I also like Rhys!"

"Oh I like both of those! Let's try them out on the baby and that'll make it easier to decide." I replied. For reasons beyond me, we started out calling the foal Remi and haven't ever looked back.

I sipped my Gatorade and Teri got out of her chair to try her hand at nursing the foal from a bottle. She tucked Remi's head under her arm and pinned him to her side while guiding the nipple into his mouth. Teri was infinitely more successful at getting Remi to swallow milk than I was, so she became the appointed bottle-feeder. Which was extremely fortunate for us, as I had to leave to go to work.

Being away from Rose and Remi and Teri was torturesome. I wanted to spend every waking moment with the horses. Foals are only brand new for about a day and I was wasting it at work. Teri made the hours pass easier by periodically sending me texts about them. She let me know when Remi finally nursed on his own and when the vet had to come out to give Rose an oxytocin injection to help her fully pass the placenta. My eyes were glued to the clock all day until that glorious moment I took off my labcoat and burst out into the heat of the afternoon.

While I worked, Teri had spent all day outside. She had mucked the whole stall out and replaced the straw on the ground, she had been there for the vet to come treat Rose and had moved the fully passed placenta from the wheelbarrow into a bucket. She had bought more grain and administered the probiotic paste to both the mare and the foal.

My parents were on their way to come see the new baby, and he had already had visits from Katie and Teri's parents. My cousin Nathan also came along for the ride, as he was visiting from the midwest. Everyone was amazed by this little colt. He made the rounds and let everyone touch and pet him and scratch him in those oh-so-hard-to-reach places.

Already, Remi was quite the character. He was hamming it up for sure, jaunting around the stall as if he owned the joint and posing for photos. He had learned how to jump up in the air and kick (he already attempted to kick my father - at one day old - sheesh.) and how to run around and be a rodeo bronc. Rose was ever the good momma, keeping an eye on him but never getting upset at the parade of people through her stall.

As the beautiful sunset curtains drew closed over the mountains and across Remi's first day on this earth, everyone stood outside the stall and watched Rose's miracle trot around the stall and nurse from his mother. Rose stood tall and proud as she kept a careful watch over her new little one. Already, this baby had taught us that perserverance pays off, love will always take you further than obligation and most importantly: to believe that all things serve a purpose.

No one ever said that life would be easy - just that it would be worth it.

Happy Birthday Remi - July 16th 2009, 1:30am

26 Tucson Sunsets

Rose's first few days in her new stall passed in a flurry of excitement. Although I was convinced that I was ready, I kept thinking of items I needed or tasks that had to be accomplished before the birth. I continued to go to the feed store on a regular basis to pick up probiotic paste, or some grain to help Rose get the right vitamins and minerals that the baby would need, or a vaccine she needed before having the foal.

When we still had no foal after a couple of days, it became apparent to me that I was going to need to stock up on Rose's new grain and bales of straw. It was also really starting to get warm and Rose was constantly drenched in sweat. I could only imagine what it must be like to be carrying an eighty pound foal around in the middle of the summer in Tucson. Rose just looked miserable.

Every day I took to visiting Rose when it was hottest outside and hosing her whole body down with cool water. We would take leisurely walks around the property, stopping to let Rose graze on the few bright green patches of grass that grew up around trees and hosebibs. I curried and rubbed her down, brushed out her mane and tail and picked out her hooves.

I also noticed that her neck was especially hot and sweaty from the weight of her thick black mane laying on it all day. I braided her mane up to help cool her down. I kept a strict watch over her still-swelling udders, abdomen and vulva to gauge when she was going to foal but as Rose was a maiden mare (never had a baby before) there was really no knowing until the baby was coming out.

Teri rigged up a box fan in the corner of her new stall to circulate the air better and that seemed to make a difference - or at least the air wasn't stagnating any more.

I went into her stall almost every evening to dig out the muck under the straw because as much as horses urinate, pregnant horses urinate about three times as much! Teri's big joke was that not only did Rose have to pee like a racehorse (since she used to be one) but she had to pee like a pregnant racehorse! It was a funny joke to everybody, everybody except me because I got to scrape it all out of her stall.

Me, Teri and Rose quickly settled into a nice routine. We would arrive for the evening and hose her down one more time if it was especially hot, then go for a short walk as the sun started to set over the mountains. Then Rose would get her evening grain and brushing. Most evenings we had company come out to visit. Berto came out to spend time with her almost every day, as did our good friends Becca, Mya, Katie, and Julie. Additional visitors included Teri's parents, girls from both our roller derby and rugby teams, and people that both Teri and I worked with as well as some of Berto's coworkers. Becca and Mya and Berto even spent the night once to keep me company while Teri worked late.


Each night we would settle into the truck bed and say,
"Tonight's going to be the night!"

And most of the time we were wrong.

Each morning we would rise earlier than the sun and pack up the truck. I'd give Rose her breakfast grain and then drive Teri home before heading over to work.

Before too long, the heat was almost unbearable. Most nights we weren't able to fall asleep until the day's heat finally broke between 10:00pm and midnight. There were insects that would gather around the flashlights and lanterns and insects that would bite you even after the lights were all long extinguished. Even the most harmless ones were still annoying.

One day I arrived home from work to a giant pile of white netting sitting on the couch. I found Teri in the office.
"So who killed the bride and stashed her on our couch?"

Teri wasn't in the mood for joking. She had gone looking for a ready-made mosquito net to spread over the truck bed to stop our bodies from being feasted upon each night after dark. What she had found was indeed ready-made for just that purpose but was vastly overpriced. This drove her to find a fabric store from which she could purchase large quantities of mosquito netting. She bought a larger amount of fabric than was available in the expensive ready-made variety and had even managed to gather one side of it together and bind it around a clip so it could be suspended above the truck. I wouldn't know, but she told me it was quite the undertaking and the effort of it all plus the frustration put her spirits somewhat low.

However! That meant good news for us because the bugs were no longer going to be able to annoy us.

By this point, we were a good week into our "Camping Next to Rose's Stall" endeavor and the novelty had long worn off.


Nancy had started saying things like,
"Well since you don't know when she was bred, she might be another month before foaling you know."

This irritated me to no end, as Nancy was the catalyst that started us sleeping next to Rose long before I would have thought to do it on my own. Nancy also took to visiting every night before bed and admonishing us for sitting around in front of her stall.
"You don't think she's just going to pop that baby out with you all sitting right there, do you?"

"Nope, I sure don't expect that. But I also don't expect her to 'pop that baby out' this early in the evening, either. We're just sitting here until we go to bed." I tried to respond politely but I'm sure that wore off after we had this exact conversation for the third time.

Nancy had also begun mentioning that she'd been telling the other boarders about how we were going to be having a baby soon and everyone was so SO excited! She said that everyone thought it would be so cute to have the foal be the barn's mascot and that we should even name it Mascot. I thought this was less than funny.

A number of other people who kept their horses at the barn took to visiting Rose routinely, probably to check and see if there was a foal yet. At this development I decided to take some of these issues into my own hands.

I asked Teri to make a stall placard with Rose's information on it as well as our two phone numbers and Berto's number as emergency contacts. It also contained her breed, registered name, age, vet and farrier information and feeding instructions. Then I asked Teri to make a sign stating that nobody was allowed entry into the stall without owners' consent.

These two signs went up the next day and caused Nancy quite a bit of angst. She tried in vain to get me to remove the caution sign, she told me that nobody thought they could do that and didn't want anybody to be put off by such a defensive sign. I (somewhat) politely refused to take it down. It was extremely important that everybody understand that my poor pregnant mare was not a circus act, she was not a barn mascot and no matter how tolerant, she was not to be bothered at all hours of the day. Rose still received a lot of attention after that but everyone certainly settled down.

This whole time, I spent my spare moments reading foaling books and looking online for photos of mares about to foal so I could guess when she would have the baby. I was no closer to the answer than I had been two weeks before upon discovering the pregnancy.

Rose had taken to laying down at night and moaning and groaning. She would also grunt and roll and make all manner of labor-type noises. This made sleeping even more difficult, since we were convinced every single time she laid down she was going to have the foal.

After Rose made it obvious that she was going to lay down and fake us out every night, sleeping became easier again. We had now been sleeping at the barn every night for three weeks. We were tired of sleeping in the truck and having to pack everything up the next morning. Then the brilliant idea of setting up our little tent a few stalls over struck us. That way, we could keep our overnight bag inside the tent and we wouldn't have to deal with a mosquito netting, as the tent served that purpose already! We set up the tent and prepared to have a little less work each night and morning. Then the immediate problem was that we were now too far away to hear Rose very well, since there was a tack room between us and her stall. Teri's solution was simple: a baby monitor.

In the beginning of the fourth week, I noticed a pearlescent droplet of milk on the tip of each teat.
"Teri! She's got milk! THERE'S MILK!!!" I cried out.

"What does that mean?!" Teri looked at me excitedly.

"Well, I guess it could mean anytime from today til like... five or six days from now." I admitted.

"At least she's got milk now, it can't be that far off!" Teri pointed out the positive side of this discovery.

That night Rose didn't make a sound. This in and of itself was disconcerting, but when we awoke Rose was still the only horse in the stall. Disappointed, we headed out.

That evening, Nancy stopped us on our walk. She noticed that Rose had milk starting to drip.
"Honey she's got milk dripping out! You shouldn't be walking her!"

I laughed. "Yes, she's had her milk since yesterday. I don't see a reason not to take her on a walk, I'd hate to be confined to that little stall all day with no way to stretch my legs."

"Well when my mare got her milk she laid down not an hour afterward and had the baby! She could drop any minute!" Nancy blubbered.

"Since Rose has had her milk since yesterday and there's still no foal, I imagine we're safe to take her on a short walk. I really doubt she's going to lay down right here and now and push that baby out. Not all mares have their foals the same way." I smiled and we walked off.

I was sure that I had secured my position as "Barn Bitch" by this point but I really didn't care. If everyone else was too ignorant to have common sense then I would use sense enough for all of them. Nancy was easily excited and very nice, and it was obvious to me that her heart was in the right place. Unfortunately for her, she just didn't have a ton of medical experience or knowlege and if there's one thing I can't stand its people pretending they know more than they do.

That night Rose laid down again and had us convinced she was going to finally have the foal. Once more, she fooled us.

The next morning the milk was steadily dripping out every few seconds. I started to worry that she would lose too much of that precious first milk and that the baby wouldn't get the right antibodies. But she wasn't dripping SO much milk that I could collect it either so I was forced to do nothing and wait.

Rose was silent that whole night. We awoke to a very alert and still very pregnant horse. Now I was really getting worried. She'd been dripping milk for days and still no foal. What if she was having trouble delivering? What if her water had already broken and she just couldn't push the baby out and now it was stuck in the birth canal, dead? Would I know if something like that happened?!

I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. She is fine, everything is still in the normal ranges, you are just getting yourself all worked up over nothing. Rose is young and in shape, she is as healthy as could be expected and she is going to do fine. Horses have been giving birth all by themselves for centuries, this is no different.

Except that it is different. She is my horse and she hasn't had the right care for the whole pregnancy and if something happens to her, I don't know what I'll do.

A small lump formed in my throat. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked, hard. I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran over to Rose and threw my arms around her neck.

"I'm so sorry, Rose. I'm sorry you're so SO hot and miserable. I'm sorry I didn't notice sooner, I'm sorry you didn't get the right pregnancy vaccines or feed, I'm sorry your ribs are showing and I'm sorry you're stuck in this little stall!" I breathed into the firm braids laying over her clammy neck.

It was as if Rose understood how upset I was. She leaned her head on my back for a moment while I was still wrapped around her neck, then pulled herself out of my grip and whuffed my palms. She gently pushed the flat of her face into my chest and stomach and stood there while I rubbed behind her ears and under her forelock.

I kissed her forehead before exiting her stall. I had to go to work. After work I came back and hosed her down and put her back in her stall. I needed to make it home and take a quick nap before we went to dinner with Teri's parents and grandfather. Teri's birthday had been the day before and his was the day after, so we all met at P.F. Chang's for an early dinner that night. We were supposed to have Copper Queens practice afterward but it was too stormy to skate.

When I went into Rose's stall that night, she didn't come over to see me. She stood in the corner and refused to acknowledge my presence. I glanced at her feeder - her hay was less than half eaten. This was unusual for her because she adored food and was eating for two. I added her grain, which I usually have to wrestle her out of the way so I can clip the bucket up, and she didn't even move from her corner. She shifted her weight from one back leg to the other every few seconds. Every once in awhile she'd kick at her belly.

I wondered if she was okay but understood the clear message she was broadcasting:
"Just leave me the hell alone."

"Goodnight, Rose." I whispered as I pulled her gate shut behind me. I shut the lights out and climbed into our tent. I set my phone alarm and placed the phone close to my head on the floor of the tent. I took off my socks and boots and traded jeans for rugby shorts. It was so warm I took off my shirt to sleep in just a sports bra. I switched on the baby monitor and lay down next to Teri.

It felt like hours before I was able to nod off. I awoke to Teri unzipping the tent and going outside to check on Rose. I sat up on my elbows but Teri returned a moment later, shrugging her shoulders and saying that Rose was standing in the middle of the stall, looking unconcerned. I flopped back down on the damp, sweaty patch of sleeping bag I had just been occupying.

I awoke again with a start. I couldn't understand what had woken me up so thoroughly. The faint buzzing of the baby monitor was a constant and my alarm hadn't gone off yet. Teri was sleeping next to me. I looked around and lay back down.

The monitor crackled. Or was that the straw on the ground?

The monitor emitted a weird buzzing sound. Or was it more of a gurgle? Was Rose drinking? More straw crackling.

Then I heard Rose snort and sigh. She inhaled and groaned in short bursts. More straw rustling around. Rose snorted again and grunted a few times.

I glanced at my phone. It was only 1:30am. I wanted to check on Rose but Teri had just checked on her and I didn't want to go out there just to see Rose laying down in the stall trying to catch some sleep.

I waited. Rose was quiet, with the exception of rustling straw every once in awhile.

I grew tired of waiting and just wanted to make sure she was okay. I quietly unzipped the tent and stepped into Teri's flip flops. I took the MagLite with me, so I could see if anything was going on. I approached her stall and saw her dark shape standing close to the front. Her head was down and she was quietly whickering. There was something down in the straw! All I saw was a bright white blaze on a tiny little head.

I feasted on that little face with my eyes as I leaned to the baby monitor.

"Teri, if you can hear this, we have a baby!" I said it quietly but I felt like shouting! It soon became obvious that I was wearing flip flops, rugby shorts and a sports bra. I needed to change before anything else. I strode quickly back to the tent, where Teri was hurriedly pulling her boots on. I jumped into my jeans, pulled a shirt over my head and stepped into my boots without any socks on. I grabbed the digital camera and my phone.

We walked as fast as we could back to the stall, where I shone the flashlight on the foal in the straw. He was laying with his legs tangled beneath him, but with his head up and looking around. Rose stood over him, gently licking all over his body and smelling him and quietly nickering.

His coat was red, and he had a big white blaze down his face. Three of his legs had white socks. I looked quizzically at Teri and said aloud,
"We're going to have to revisit the whole 'sire' issue, because this baby ain't no Percheron."

She laughed.

I let myself into the stall and rubbed Rose's neck and shoulders.
"Rosie, look what you did! Look what you made!" my voice shook and my body was trembling, and that familiar lump took its place in my throat. I laughed at myself and sniffled, wiped my face on my sleeve and grinned over at Teri.

"Can I turn the lights on yet?" she implored.

"Yes! Let's turn the lights on and see this baby."

She flipped the light switch and bright light flooded the stall. The foal squeezed his little eyes shut and Rose raised her head to investigate what was happening but when she saw it was Teri she put her head back down and continued cleaning her baby.

I crouched down next to the foal and started stroking his neck and back. I was feeling him over to make sure everything was okay.

"Well? What is it, boy or girl?" Teri asked.

"Oh, I haven't even checked." I felt a little foolish for not thinking to check right away. I lifted the little tail and saw only a rectum, no vulva.

"Boy. It's a boy!" I announced.

And thus began the onslaught of announcement text messages and phone calls, attempted photos and the beginning of our little colt's life.

And it only took 26 sunsets.

"Unexpected Discoveries" or "Patience is a Virtue"

Early the next morning I awoke as a bolt of adrenaline raced through my veins. My eyes snapped open and I stared contemplatively at the ceiling for a few minutes. In my sleep, my brain had been mulling over the previous evening's visit with Rose.

"She didn't really look fat... she just had a belly. Her ribs were showing and her muscles all rippled under her coat as she moved around yesterday." I narrowed my eyes at the thought that a pregnancy might be possible.

"No, she just hasn't been exercised in awhile. My mind must be playing tricks on me and I'm making this into a bigger deal than it is. She's always been built a little strangely. Plus the timeline doesn't work out anyway because I got her between Halloween and Thanksgiving... right? Crap, I don't remember. How long ago was that?" I mused silently.

I couldn't go back to sleep.

"Okay so we're in the middle of June, let's say I got her in early November. November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June. See that's only eight months! But, well, what if she is pregnant and I won't admit it and she doesn't get the right care? Crap! I better email Linda and ask if she even has a stallion. She probably doesn't even have a stud on the property and I'm just being paranoid." I got out of bed quietly so as to not disturb Teri and padded into the office to shoot off an email.

I tried to word it tactfully so it came off as breezy and unconcerned, but it was early and I'm not sure how successful I really was.

"Hey there!

Just thinking about you and wondering how you're doing.

Also, I was wondering, do you happen to have any stallions on your property?

Hope you guys are great!

Yours, Ashleigh"


Then I told myself that there wasn't anything else I could do except wait for Linda to write back. I had a lot to get done that day, as it was the day of our long-awaited housewarming party.

I obsessively checked my email that morning and thankfully Linda responded quickly.

"Hi
How are you and Rose. We are doing fine.
Not much news. Things are pretty much the same as always. We would like to sell the place and move to NM but that has not happened yet.
I have a black Percheron Stallion.
Do you know of someone wanting to have babies?
I hope you guys are great!
Linda"


My heart jumped into my throat. Noooo, this couldn't be possible. Just because she has a stallion doesn't necessarily mean that Rose was pregnant... but if she was, the sire was a PERCHERON?! Seriously? Yikes. Okay. This warrants more sleuthing.

"New Mexico definitely has some gorgeous land, that would be really nice to have some property out there.

Rose and I are doing well, I haven't been able to ride much lately because I had surgery but I'm hoping I can start again next week.

The reason I asked about a stallion is, and well this is embarrassing so try to bear with me, because since I haven't been riding, Rose has gained some weight but it's all in her belly so I wanted to ask if she was exposed to the stallion and I haven't had her long enough to rule out a pregnancy. I figured that I should at least ask, just in case it's a possibility that she's pregnant so I can take the right care of her.

I know it's a little off the wall but I thought I'd be safe. Other than the fat belly she's just wonderful. My parents finally got to meet her and I think it's a good thing my mother doesn't have horse property or else she'd probably horse-nap her.

Any new horses or anything out there?

Thanks!
Ash"


More waiting. I should probably mention that at this point, I still haven't said anything to Teri about the possibility of a foal in our future. I purchased Rose in a very underhanded way and only managed to mention her to Teri the day before she was delivered to the stables, after the damage had been done. Teri was less than thrilled with me. In fact she's probably still less than thrilled with me. I'm shocked she's still married to me, most days. The last thing I wanted to do was bring it up and cause problems if there wasn't an actual problem to be had.

"WOW! I hope she is not with child, but I can not guarantee she is not. You know how things go. We had a lady take care of the place and she did have some of the horses get loose Rose was one of them and she could have been exposed to the stallion. I would say not if you had asked me from the start , but since I was not there when the horses got out I can not tell you she did not get covered.
I also had a paint /perch cross baby that could have been old enough to breed her, unlikely but maybe.
Maybe you should think about having her checked.
I am glad your mom liked Rose.
Sorry
Linda"


Well. There's the answer. My heart squirmed a little ways further up my throat. I tried to gulp it down but I was choking on the lumpy fact that I was going to have to try and explain to poor Teri that we might be having a baby. Which would bring our number of horses to 3, two of which were not approved. Teri had been out all morning running errands while I attempted to finish painting the bathroom doorframe. She had text messaged me not too long before I received that last email saying that she was bringing Chipotle home for lunch. My mouth was running dry with a slight panic over how she was going to take it and that we might have yet another mouth to feed on a single income.

Before I had too much time to completely destroy my courage, Teri walked through the door. I smiled at her and we sat down on the couch to eat. I downed some of the soda and opened my burrito wrapper but just couldn't bring myself to eat.

"Hey, so... I kinda have something I want to tell you but I want you to know that I did not know about this, I didn't try to have it happen and I'm already really sorry..." I trailed off.

Teri spiked an eyebrow at me. "What, you didn't have somebody give you another horse or something, did you?" She laughed at what she thought was a joke. My eyes betrayed me, they flashed surprise and then guilt as her jaw dropped.

"You must be kidding me. Ashleigh-" her tone was warning and a little angry.

"Well not exactly but kind of yes-in-the-way-that-a-young-horse-grows-in-a-mother-horse's-belly-it-turns-out-that-Linda-accidentally-sold-me-two-horses! Maybe." I finished in a rush.

I honestly have no idea what was running through Teri's mind as I said what I had to say. Slowly her face changed from anger to surprise to reluctant acceptance and finally her sense of irony kicked in. She threw her hands up in the air and laughed hopelessly.

This was not what I expected but I took it.

"What... how... WHAT?" Teri had reached the point that I hit in bed, early that morning. I explained everything to her and recounted my correspondence with Linda as well as my opinions and observations and what questions I still had.

"Okay, yeah, it sounds like we might be having a baby I guess. Shit." Teri looked down at her lunch, half uneaten. We had come so far in the previous five minutes that it was hard to believe that we were still sitting on that damn couch, trying to finish our food.

We sat in silence as we choked down what was left on our plates and finished off the soda.

"So how do we tell if she actually is pregnant?" Teri asked.

"I'm not really sure, I'm going to call Catherine." I pulled out my phone and started dialing my good friend Catherine, who was a horse vet that I used to work for and now lives in Casa Grande.

"Hey Catherine, so I have a weird question. How do you tell if a mare is pregnant late into her gestation?"

"Uh, you could always just try poking her belly - sometimes it'll poke you back! That'd be an easy way to tell." she laughed. I explained our predicament again and once more recounted what Linda had told me and what I had noticed the night before. Catherine agreed that I needed to go back out to the barn and do a little more detective work around Rose, check for signs of pregnancy that I wasn't looking for the night before.

Naturally, that night was our housewarming party so I wasn't going anywhere til Saturday. We told our friends about our potentially pregnant horse and pointed out the irony of the two of us having an unexpected pregnancy.

Saturday morning I got up and we had a lot of cleaning to do around the house. By afternoon it was just too hot to convince myself to go outside and I was still less than a week out of my surgery and I was pretty beat.

Saturday evening we drove out to the barn to visit Rose. I walked up to her stall and greeted her. Teri walked up behind me.

"Holy crap she's big!"

"Yeah... now you see what I mean." I replied grimly.

I opened the gate to her stall and closed it behind Teri. I walked to Rose's side and crouched down to look at her udders. Sure enough, they were swollen up. I groaned and sighed.

"Udders are swollen up."

I glanced under her tail and her vulva was slightly swollen and looked larger than normal. I stood close at Rose's side and placed the palms of my hands flat on the underside of her large belly.

It only took a few seconds to feel that very first, earthshattering movement across the floor of her abdomen. Teri stood on her other side and mimicked my hand placement.

"Oh my god I feel it moving!" she exclaimed to me over Rose's back. I grinned back at her.

"I know, I feel it too!"

For a few minutes we simply stood with Rose in silence, letting the waves of truth crash over our unsuspecting heads. What did this mean for us? Could we even hope to afford taking care of yet another horse? We would need to move her into a different stall and get it all ready. How far along was she? Was she going to pop that night or would it be another month or two? Was the baby going to be okay since we hadn't been doing any prenatal care? My head was filled with questions to which I had no answers.

I found the barn manager (Nancy, for future reference) and explained our situation to her. She was very sympathetic and helped us decide on a stall to turn into a foaling stall for Rose. She looked at her udders and her vulva and exclaimed that she thought Rose was going to give birth very, very soon. Immediately, that put me into a panic. She can't give birth yet, there's not a safe place for the baby to be born! We put Rose into the stall that would become the foaling stall and immediately sped off to Lowe's to purchase plywood planks to line the stall with. We had to buy plywood, zip ties, get the tools we'd need to prepare the stall, figure out something for bedding, buy supplies for a foaling emergency kit and countless other things I felt I didn't have time for.

The awesome people at Lowe's let us race in there 1 minute before closing and buy sheets of plywood and then even cut them for us. Then we went home and explained the whole thing to Berto and he agreed to come out and help Teri with the stall while I ran to Walgreen's to build my foaling kit.

A couple of hours later, we had plywood planks installed (to prevent baby legs from getting stuck in railings and breaking, and to stop baby from laying on its side and scooting outside of the stall), a bale of grass hay spread on the ground since we couldn't find straw at 9 pm on a Saturday night and a Tupperware container full of iodine, bandages, gloves, vetwrap and athletic tape, ready for the foal to come.

This photo was the first photo taken of Rose in her new foaling stall. Obviously it's a poor quality picture but you can see her big pregnant belly.

Petrified that the foal was going to be born that night, Teri and I had brought our camping mats and sleeping bags and supplies to stay the night at the barn in the bed of my truck. Finally by 11 pm we were ready to go to sleep. We shut the lights off and settled into our makeshift bed in the truck.

Every movement from Rose was amplified not only by our heightened senses unable to sleep, but also by the dry and scratchy hay covering the ground. I'm almost positive that neither of us slept more than two hours that night.

Dawn arrived early the next morning and brought with it flies, birds, and the sounds of the horses around us awakening and calling for their breakfasts. I sat bolt upright in the bed of the truck and looked toward the stall, expecting to see eight legs instead of Rose's four.

No such luck. Rose walked over to her water barrel and gulped down a few mouthfuls of cool water and then looked straight over at us and whinnied.

"Good morning to you too, Rose." Teri mumbled from under a sleeping bag.

Night number 1 had passed us by.