She's back!

My last post was very sad, but in many ways due to us losing the old boy, this post is very much happier. Because shortly after his death, Kinna ended up on the market. Remember Kinna? The little odd coloured Appaloosa with the fluffy teddy bear ears and gangly legs. We had to leave her behind when we left France because we just couldn't afford to bring all four of them with us, let alone pay UK livery prices for four. She went to our friends John and Carole when we relocated back to the UK.

But now she was for sale, along with many of their other horses, as they were having to sell the business. and we now had a spare livery space. So with the financial backing of our friend Emma, we hatched a plan to get her back. There was a fair amount of paperwork involved, things have changed since we brought the others back, but yesterday it all finally happened and she stepped off the huge lorry (we used LOC International again, another excellent job), cool as a cucumber......

I think she was pretty happy to see Sky again, but the feeling doesn't seem to be reciprocated so for the moment we have put her in with Tari, who has chased her about a bit but basically doesn't let things like new horses arriving get in the way of important things like eating. For all her chasing, Kinna can easily outpace her and dances away with a contemptuous flick of her hindlegs.....

We're very happy to have he back, and are looking forward to having lots of fun with her again :-)

A very long ride, day 2

Saturday morning we woke up ridiculously early as you do when camping. Didn’t even get woken by the SNO, she was still snoring. First thing first, check the horses. They were mostly flat out after their exertions.......!

Lovely breakfast of barbecued bacon (well, the nearest you can get from Lidl) and Tess’s chook eggs. She knows which bird laid which egg so the SNO was able to choose which one to have.  Levered the OH out of bed to go and buy bread. He then announced he was off running for most of the day but as he had presumably imagined that I’d have known telepathically to pack his running gear, he’d need to take the car to go back home and fetch it. Suggestions that he just run home were met with a frosty glare......

As soon as the kids woke up they immediately wanted to saddle up the poor horses and go jumping. We delivered the obligatory lecture about resting them and putting their welfare first etc. To alleviate the sulking we went to check out the TREC course in the woods.

We sat around for the rest of the day occasionally creaking to our feet to go and make tea. Tess bought me this brilliant book for my birthday about 2 women who rode all the way from Canterbury to Santigo de Compostela on their Appaloosas. I immediately want to do something similar, the idea of leaving the OH and the kids behind for months is very appealing, but I suspect we’ll have to wait a few years. To qualify for membership of the Long Riders Guild you have to have done a minimum of 1000 miles in a single journey. Tess and I started idly planning it anyway....

At around tea time, a birthday cake arrived, home baked by Tess. It was too windy to light the candles (no, there weren’t 43 of them) so I pretended to blow them out. We ate it with more cups of tea.

Then the outside caterers (or Gary as he’s known) showed up with a barbecue and enough food to feed an army. This is just as well because he and Tess’s OH had disgorged an army of small boys and bicycles from their cars. We moved on to wine and beer (my OH having thoughtfully brought two crates of Belgian beer along). Gary served up kebabs with all the trimmings and the ravenous hordes made it disappear in short order. The OH finally staggered in looking somewhat the worse for wear after 15 miles. Think the mid life crisis obsession is getting a bit out of hand......

As the evening wore on, we caught up the somewhat surprised horses and saddled them ready for the night ride.

They didn’t look impressed, frankly. We set off into the dusk following our guide, Aude. We rode through the vines, having a canter as night fell, then went on into the woods in the dark. The kids made all sorts of spooky noises and we concentrated on not getting impaled on low branches. We stopped by a house and thankfully the inhabitants seemed to know Aude so presumably weren’t too surprised to see a bunch of horses arrive at 10.30 at night.

The horses didn’t seem to mind the night ride, Maverick was significantly better behaved in the dark than in the daylight, Gandalf wasn’t too happy to be at the back though and kept scurrying along to plant his nose in Seraphina’s tail.

Back to the campsite after a fun two hours, the only problem being that the moon stayed firmly hidden behind the clouds the whole way. The OHs seemed to have polished off most of the 2 crates of wine and were well into “talking bollocks” mode, but there was plenty of wine left for us.

So we drank more wine and eventually went to bed........

A fun afternoon.....

Got invited to take part in a car rally today.Not the "how fast can you drive round a course" sort, but a kind of treasure hunt in the car. We blagged a lift with Guy & Sarah, knew we'd win because Guy is outrageously competitive........and we did!!

Saw some nice Appaloosas en route, and went down lots of little roads we'd never seen before, lots of nice countryside (once we'd worked out that EtV meant "enjoy the view" on the instructions and wasn't some obscure cryptic clue *rolls eyes*). Éowyn was only sick the once.......

Apparently as the winners we now have to write the next one......

The girl's got connections......

I was looking for something to read last night and I came across a book I'd forgotten I had, The Appaloosa by Ann Hyland. So I started to read it and I found a section all about the Capitall Stud in Clwyd, where Skyfaxa's sire, Capitall Hadrian, was bred.

Sky's great granddam (and also her great great granddam) was a mare called Chanson Bleu, a tri coloured leopard foaled in 1970, by an American stallion based in Ireland. Two of her best known foals were by the Thoroughbred stallion Paper Cap who was the grandson of the Derby winner Pinza. These are Capitall Cyril, Sky's great grandsire:

and Capitall Martha, Sky's granddam:

Capital Cyril sired Capital Hefin, who won the yearling class at the 1989 National Show:

And he sired Capitall Hadrian.

So she has a show champion and a Derby winner in her ancestry!!

Capitall Cyril also sired Capitall Harold, who was given to the Sultan of Oman by Prince Charles:

So her great uncle had royal connections!

A chilly hack.....

Finally got the kids off to school/childminder this morning so went off to ride. Not sure what's happened to the weather this week but it was COLD!!! Had to go on our own because Jane had put so many layers on she could hardly get her leg across the saddle, during the subsequent tricky mounting manouevre Maverick moved at a cruicial moment and she fell flat on her arse......I'm sure she'll appreciate me sharing that with the world.



Went past a rather lovely Applaoosa mare who came up to investigate Gandalf.......

She wasn't too impressed with him though, did a lot of snorting and squealing, all he wanted to do was say hello cos he hates going out on his own but she wasn't having any of it.......

What colour is Kinna?

Have been looking at Appaloosa coat patterns to try and determine what colour Kinna is. For the record, here are the main patterns:
Leopard - white pattern exhibited to an extreme with base coloured spots of various sizes covering most of the body, like Sky's sire Capitall Hadrian:













Near leopard:



















Few Spot - base colour is nearly obscured by its Appaloosa white patterning covering up to 90% of its body. Horse may exhibit patches of colour on the heads, knees, elbows, flanks (called 'varnish marks'). Some may have as few as only one or two spots.




Snowflake - white spots, flecks, on a dark body. Typically the white spots increase in number and size as the horse ages.



Varnish - dark points (legs and head) and some spots or roaning over a light body. May occur in conjunction with another spotting style and change with age. Often starts out as a solid coloured horse that gets more white as it ages, but is not a grey.



Frost - similar to varnish but the white hairs are limited to the back, loins, and neck. May occur in conjunction with another spotting style and change with age. Often starts out as a solid coloured horse that gets more white as it ages.



Blanket - Most common and well known White blanket over hindquarters. Can have clean edges or be roaned. Most have dark spots on blanket field Spots may move and change with each shedding.



Snowcap - Similar to blanket except blanket field doesn’t have spots on it. White area can extend across most of body .Usually retain colour on head, legs, flanks and elbows.



And of course some horses can have a combination of these patterns:


So looking at all that, I think Kinna is a snowcap Appaloosa.

Kinna's turn for the vet

The vet came today to have a look at my new girl. She microchipped her (she didn't like that much!) and vaccinated and wormed her, then we had to do the "signalement" for the Haras Nationaux (French National Stud) where her markings are recorded. The vet put her base coat colour down as grey, which it isn't because her skin is pink, her white bits are caused by the Appaloosa Leopard complex gene acting on her BAY base coat colour, but when I explained that it fell on deaf ears.........ah well, never mind. So that's another 40€ screwed out of me by the Haras, because it's apparently a legal requirement that all horses are registered with them - sounds like a great way to make a load of cash to me!

I weighed her for the wormer, she's only 194 kilos! And she's about 12.2 high.........

As ever she was good as gold, after that Ali & her friend Holly groomed both the girls and let then graze on the lawn for a bit. I think Mademoiselle Skyfaxa is a bit jealous of the new arrival!!

the new filly......

I have time to write a bit more about the new girl today......

The bloke I bought her from showed me 4 Appaloosa mares in a field and said one of them was her dam but he didn't know which one. Today I have had an email from his daughter, who wants me to keep in touch.I sent her the pics I have taken of the mares and she said it's definitely one of these two but she wasn't sure which, she's going to check with their owner who's currently away in Paris.

Apparently the sire is a leopard stallion, she's going to try and get me a photo of him. So I don't know why she looks like a paint!! Apparently one of the other mares had a foal that was totally black last year but still had all the Appy characteristics. My filly has them too, mottled skin, white sclera, striped hooves.


I don't understand Appy genetics, it's all a bit of a lottery!!!

Aliénor has fallen in love with her, she took her out into the garden today and brushed her:


We have trawled through more Icelandic names and have come up with this:
Kinnskjóna, which means 'pinto mare with a white patch on her cheek' - how much more accurate could it be?!!! She looks more like a pinto than an Appy and does indeed have a white patch on her cheek:

I love Icelandic names, they are so descriptive.......we'll be calling her Kinna for short though!"

Sky's new friend

Saw an ad for an Appaloosa filly for sale on Wednesday, went to see her on Thursday, brought her home today........

Rossy's back.....

A couple of weeks ago Ross the donkey came back to live with Buffalo, the 35 year old Appaloosa in the field next door to Gandalf and Maverick.......

Buffalo won't let him out of his (somewhat limited) sight these days........!

He looks so cute in his little coat........

Playing with the babies

So I've been in the UK three whole days and have been to see Skyfaxa twice. She's lovely and curious, she comes right up to you and sniffs around, even tries to nibble.......she's in with the herd, there are several foals and they play together all the time. Yesterday it was a windy day and the babies were feeling playful, they kept crowding round and trying to nibble us so we chased them off then they came back, we walked away, they followed, we chased them off etc etc, it was a great game to them, but after a while the stallion came over as if to say, "What's all this about?" and disciplined a few of them that got too close to him and they were stretching their heads down and licking and chewing "we're sorry dad, got carried away", it was so funny, as soon as he wandered off they started playing again just like naughty children!!

A new project....

In June, I sold my second horse and decided that the next one would be a baby because I don't want to spend all my time correcting other people's mistakes (OK, so that's exactly what I'm doing with a donkey right now, but that's another story.....). I went to see several youngsters here in France, but even these yearlings and two year olds have problems, merely because they've generally never been handled, some of them we couldn't even get near, so no way could we imagine getting them in a trailer! I have always wanted an Appaloosa horse, a "Spotty Botty", but they are very expensive here, so I started looking back in the UK. And I found this:




An Appaloosa x cob filly who actually looked like she might grow up strong enough to carry me around!! Also, the price wasn't outrageous......

So I blagged the price of a flight to the UK, turned up on mum's doorstep and set off to not so sunny Herefordshire the next morning to see this baby. What a treat! A field full of beautiful coloured horses, mares and foals running with a magnificent Appaloosa stallion, it was an amazing sight......the mares were all big gentle cobs, reminding me of my current horse, the lovely Gandalf, chunky and well mannered. I decided pretty much right away I would have her and paid my deposit that morning, took a ton of photos and rushed back to the airport for my flight home.

Now all I have to do is wait for her to arrive in November after weaning.........