When I was looking for a suitable spermdonor, just over a year ago, (don't look so shocked, it wasn't for me, it was for Naloma, tssss), there were hundreds of good looking stallions willing to do the job. At least, that was what all the stud farms told us by means of advertisements and luxury brochures. Finally I narrowed it down to two possible options. Both from the same stud farm. More or less coincidentally we sort of knew the owner of the stud farm, so I called him to ask him if he wanted to meet Naloma and help me to decide which of the gorgeous guys would be the best one to 'father Naloma's child'.
Since he would be in the neighbourhood anyway, he was more than willing to pay us a visit.
Let me explain how things work when you want to get a horse pregnant. There are lots of options. If your mare is in season, which is about every three or four weeks and it lasts for about 3 - 7 days, the last two days she will be at her most fertile.
Then you either take your mare to a stallion, which is the most exciting thing to do for all parties concerned, but full of all sorts of risks, including STD's. Yep, even horses get them.
You can bring your mare to the stud farm for a period of time and they will check her every day to see if she is at her most fertile and then inseminate her.
You can also call the stud farm and they will send you some sperm with which you, if you know how, or your vet can inseminate your mare.
Or one of the employees of the stud farm visits you and brings a syringe filled with the sperm of 'the chosen one', with a long straw attached to it, and a very long plastic glove, and then his or her arm with syringe and straw and glove disappears into the rear end of your mare, where the arm impersonates a stallion's penis and voilá, your mare is pregnant. Or not. Apparently instant pregnancy seldom occurs and whatever method you've chosen for your mare will have to be repeated when she is in season again until she is finally pregnant. Or not, as the case may be. It doesn't always work.
(This last option was the one we chose and miraculously we only needed one visit to do the job.)
So....why was the owner of the stud farm in our neighbourhood anyway? In spring and early summer he is almost permanently 'en route' with his suitcase full of sperm (imagine when he gets pulled over by the police and they open the trunk and find a suitcase full of...syringes and straws and.... hehehe) to visit the breeders who have chosen one of his stallions and the 'housecall method'.
He looked at Naloma, agreed with both of the choices I had made, but since Whitesnake was the stallion who was most likely to give a larger foal and had the easiest temperament, he was the one we finally opted for.
Now...I firmly believe that Naloma has a good sense of humour. No really. For instance: I like to wear a cap when I'm grooming the horses, and she likes to pluck it off my head. I find that funny and so does she. I hear her snickering when she does it.
And once I was talking to a friend of us, who I'd just handed a big mug of tea, and we were standing next to the paddock. Naloma likes people and loves to join in a good conversation, so she was standing right next to us, dipped her nose into the mug and drank half of the tea without my friend even noticing it, hehehe.
So I asked the owner of the stud farm: "Does Whitesnake have a sense of humour?", which he thought was a very strange question.
I mean, a sense of humour is an important quality to have, is it not?
Well, I can officially say that Evie has it. You saw the
pictures of Evie pulling faces and doing strange poses, so we already knew she is a funny foal. But yesterday evening she proved there is no doubt about it. She's hilarious.
The field where they are now, is surrounded by shallow ditches they can drink from and in case they stumble into a ditch, they can easily climb out again. But because two of the ditches are quite overgrown with irises and grass, our friend and the farmer who owns the fields decided to put up something to prevent the horses from walking into that. The farmer promised to clear out the ditches as soon as possible. The 'fence' they put up until that clearing out happens, consists of small metal poles, about 70 centimeters high and read/white caution line. Thinking the horses would be sufficiently scared of that to keep away from the overgrown ditches.
Not Evie though.
We had already noticed that the line stretched out, because every day we had to move the poles to pull it tight again. We blamed the stiff breeze, playing havoc with the line.
Now we know there is another culprit.
The horses have acres of field with kneehigh grass, but, as we all know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Yesterday evening we saw Evie leaning into the line to graze on the other side. Thén she lifted the line with her head and walked to the other side of it. Now standing on the small strip of the formerly so delicious grass, suddenly the grass on the óther side, the side she had just come from, appeared to be greener and far tastier, so she leaned over again to eat from that, hehehe. Silly foal.
Now...Evie likes her musculi glutaei to be rubbed. We have touched and rubbed her all over her body al
most from birth to let her get used to that, and we've noticed that she really enjoys it if we firmly rub her behind. She likes that so much that she will turn her backside towards you indicating that she likes you to rub it. Which is quite sweet while she still is small, but if she is a big horse and she turns her backside towards people it can easily be misunderstood. Normally, if a horse turns it's backside towards you, it means: 'touch my buttocks and you're dead!'
So we have to break that habit and stop rubbing. One day.
Yesterday Evie pushed her buttocks against the line, slowly moved backwards until the line was tightly pressed around her backside and slowly wiggled her hips from left to right, her eyes half shut, a smile on her lips, totally happy with the buttrubcontraption the farmer and our friend have provided her with.
Then she moved slowly sideways, her butt still firmly pressed against the line (stretching it more and more) until she reached the small metal pole at the end. She slowly turned around the pole and......did sort of a poledance. It was an embarassing sight. She was wiggling her hips, pressing against the pole, clearly enjoying it. If we put some funky music to her poledancing act, we can make some good money!
It cracked me up! (no pun intended)
Whitesnake must have a sense of humour too!
Have you ever seen a poledancing greyhound? Pop over to
Life With Dogs to see the 'evidence'.
April 10, two days old.
First time out and staying very close to mommy.
May 12, growing up fast.
Meeting Holle, one of our labradors, for the first time.
No, this is not one of the other labradors. This is Nufnuf, one of our pigs.
