All the Creatures

The horse that I sold about 7 years ago has returned to me. If you remember I wrote about him last month in this post. His trip was more than just the 14 hours it took him to physically get here, it took years.

I can only assume the treatment he received while he was with his other owner. From what I had heard from her and a good friend of mine, she had a love/hate relationship with the horse. One minute she was having him trained by the best in the area and next he was living out his years in a round pen with no shelter from the heat or sun. That has all changed now………

This morning I had it all set up that he would be in a separate pasture from the rest of our little herd. I put the other horses out in one pasture and when I went back into the barn to put Buuba out he gave out this tiny foal whinny. I then remembered why we called him Bubba. He never seemed to grow up. As I put Bubba into the other pasture, he had other plans and jumped the fence to see the rest of the herd. He soon found out that he in turn got chased for his efforts. The herd dynamics that I knew were being tested. The top and only mare was the first to put him in his place. Several minor skirmishes took place and I was worried that my little mini would get hurt in the ruckus. Riddler, our gelding QH was the first to really test the new comer out. They faced off like 2 stallions ready to have at it. There was a lot of stomping and squealing.

Most of the major pecking order had been established by mid afternoon with a few chases thrown in for good measure. Pictured above is Bubba running in pasture and his legs are muddy from running through the creek several times. Below is Riddler and Bubba after they have decided to become friends or at least tolerate each other.

Then my mouth dropped open as I watched the mini strolling up to Bubba. All I thought about is dealing with a horse that was kicked in the head by another horse. To my great relief, Bubba and the mini hit it off great.

So much for day one. Now I have to figure out the order to bring them into the barn at night and the order for letting them out to pasture each day.

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Here is a lesson in words. I was recently asked by a child, what do you call a male cat? The answer was “tom” like in “a tom cat.” The child then asked me what do you call a female cat? My mind came up blank. Just like in chickens, the male is a rooster and the female a hen, cats also have that male and female name………so what DO you call a female cat?

My mind went racing. For almost every animal there is a female and male title as well as young and mature. For example a young, newborn horse is a foal. When they are just a few days old they take on the gender names of either a filly (female) or colt (male). Those titles stay until their sexual maturity changes. The colt might become a gelding (a neutered male) or a stallion. The filly will take on the name of mare at 3 years old unless she becomes a mother earlier at which time she becomes a mare when pregnant.

The gender titles really get mixed up when you get into the bovine family. Almost everyone wants to call them “cows” when in reality a cow is the female. A young cow is a heifer (female), a young bull (male) can be a steer (castrated male) or remain a bull. If you have a different breed of cattle used as draft animals, they are known as Ox then a steer is an Ox less than four years old. Ox, or Oxen are cattle that a trained to pull wagons. Almost all of them are castrated but bulls and cows are sometimes used.

So back to cats, what is a female cat called? The answer is a “molly” unless she has become a mother and then she has become a “queen.”

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It is interesting how my mind wanders sometimes. Tonight I was thinking about the horse that will be coming back to me next month and wondered how he has changed in the past 7 years. He was the colt of my mare that past away last October (you can see a picture of her and her son here) and I sold him when he was 4 years old. The sale was not something I had planned but money was tight and I needed to sell a horse prior to our move out of state. He was the one that was worth the most on the horse market at the time and I sold him to a neighbor. I was thinking about him and his mother and his sire tonight.

I then began my search online to see what had happened to his sire. The stallion was gelded shortly after my colt’s birth (yr 2000). The owner of the stallion had died suddenly about a few weeks before my mare gave birth. Her stallion was gelded and sold by her husband and I think he also sold many of their horses. The now gelding went on to become a titled dressage horse with his new owner. He was still competing in 2008.

That took me on another search to see if my mare’s own father (sire) was still alive. His name is Winter Sultan. On the Summertime Farm’s stallion page, I found out he passed away in 2008. Curious about my other horses, I entered their registered names into Google and found out that many of their family tree members have now passed on. I never did find out what happened to CA Shahara Zam, my Arabian gelding’s dam (mother). No doubt she has now died too since my gelding is now 25 years old.

Many of the old Arabian breeding farms of the 1990’s are now gone. Ryding Hy Arabians that used to be located in Woodside, CA is no longer in business. It was there that I first saw my mare, as a young weanling. She was offered for sale during their “Hot August Nights” yearly open house. her price at that time was $7,500 which was a bit too much for our bank account. The next year we went back and there she was again, as a yearling, still not sold but now her price was $750.00 a far cry from her first asking price. We bought her.

She was a very easy horse to train. I went trail riding with her, showed her at halter and English and she even taught my daughter how to ride. Her son is coming home to stay with us and I can’t wait until he arrives. He is now 11 years old.

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