I had planned on writing a bit every day but this past week flew by! We had two more foals born (one stillborn) both sired by Miramax out of two half sisters. Twila’s was a gorgeous blue roan filly – just perfect in every way, unfortunately stillborn. The only good thing, her being a maiden she didn’t go into the awful mourning experienced mares do. So my son buried her angel filly under our fig tree. Next up a couple days later Valentina presented us with a perfect bay filly – all legs and very refined. Being such a bundle of legs she quickly earned the name Spider!
Other news, I’ll shortly be annoucing a new addition to our breeding program once the contract is signed – a rather unexpected purchase - but cant’ pass on those golden opportunities! This new ‘guy’ will require a road trip to get him, but we’re excited as he’ll be a great addition here.
While this was going on, and being up all night on mare-stare, sick again with another cold (barely was over the last flu/cold), I received a call from a Korean TV station asking if they could come and film our minis. It seemed like a great idea to get Miniature Horses out in another International market so agreed. The lovely ladies showed up on Friday night to discuss the next days shoot and arrived bright and early on Saturday morning. (I had 2 1/2 hours sleep thank you faker mares!) We went and walked the property and they took lots of footage of the boys acting like the wild stallions of Winters; all the mares; and the new foals. A friend that owns one of our girls and the sire of a few of my favorite mares was willing to come and ‘re-enact’ her purchase for the film crew (thank you Nicolette) so they could interview her and have something to show other than me in Korea! I did ask them if they would like to go to the local schooling show in Vacaville, so we ran down there for a few hours and they had the opportunity to film halter, showmanship, liberty as well as interview a number of Area VII Club members about owning minis, etc.
When we returned the producer really wanted to focus some time on Spider as she was the newest mini, so we took photo of her being measured, getting a blanket change, we were going to show how to milk and feed from a bottle but uncooperative mom and thirsty baby kept her bag fairly empty while we were shooting. The crew did fall in love with Spider though (hard not to she’s sooooo cute!), and finally had to leave to catch their flight back to L.A. after a very long day of filming. It was lots of fun and we hope the DVD they’ll send us is useful and accurately portrays Minis as the wonderful horses they are!
That was about it – back on mare-stare as the mares love to tease me all night and are just waiting for fatigue to kick in so they can have their foals in peace.
Oh well!
Tired in Winters : )
