Brandi Thiessen and Trisha Willsher have been recruited to campaign the stallions in hand and driving this summer. We have a full show season planned. Marshhaven Farm welcomes Trisha’s 5 year old daughter Kaylee to our show team, as she will be showing Kristull Jehani Texas Lady in both junior showmanship and lead line classes.

It’s not often you find a five year old mare and a five year old child that click, but so far these two seem to get along, especially under the watchful eye of mom. It’s quite entertaining watching Trisha “tuning the pony in” on a 14″ saddle.

The attention span of 5 year olds, horses or humans is not quite a full day of showing.

The dynamic duo had their debut in the ring this past Sunday at the Hasting Lake Riding Club show. Adorable would be an understatement.

As the pony’s owner I dont’ know if I enjoyed watching Kaylee in the ring, or mom’s reaction to the showmanship class. Trisha was so focussed on Kaylee, she didn’t see how much the judge liked Texas. As the placings were called in reverse order the look on Trisha’s face was a study in how am I going to tell her “you don’t win everytime”. But Kaylee came out of the ring with a red ribbon, the first time in!

It didn’t take her long to get the hang of showing. At the end of the lead line class, all the entrants were declared winners and told to collect their first place ribbons at the outgate. Kaylee was almost in tears, as they didn’t call her number.

In any case the unpredictable weather we have been experiencing held off and it was a great day for showing horses.

Here are the pictures. Have a look and decide for yourself if “too cute” does not apply.

If anyone had told me I could have this much fun after teaching and a whole month would elapse before I wrote a blog, I would have looked at them in disbelief.

Anyway, between foaling, breeding, trade shows, foolishly taking 2 mares to the coast, weather, etc., life on the farm has been on the dead run, flat out.

We had our last foal! Sunny”s (M3 Soleil’s) filly arrived at 3:38 a.m. Monday, June 2. This is her first filly in her 5 foal history. We got to be there! It was our first attendance at a birth! Some of you experienced breeders will be raising your eyebrows, but we’ve crossed our fingers and made the decision to let the mares work with nature with minimal interference from us.

Sunday night, I was pretty sure she was going to foal, so I stayed up until 2:00 am to check her. She has been a daytime foaler, so at 2am, I spread straw, thinking daybreak was going to see her in labor. By the time I had that done, she had separated herself from the other girls, so I parked myself far enough away so I could put an indirect flashlight beam on her without disturbing her. By this time she was up and down, her water broke and she was in the early stages of labor. By 3:30 her labor wasn’t progressing despite hooves and muzzle showing.  I went back to the house for a knife to cut the amniotic sack and wake Glen to see if he wanted to join me.

Things moved pretty quick after that.  I think what was more revealing than witnessing the miracle of birth was watching the interaction of the other mares.  They made sure their foals stayed outside a 20m perimeter and they took turns nuzzling the laboring mare and then checking on the foal before Sunny got up; each one of them one at time.  What a lovely support group.

It’s really hard not to interfere with the baby’s struggles to get up.  Glen held me back and said only if she got too near the fence.  I don’t know why, but we were already fairly certain it was a filly.  Because of the attention of the other mares, she had a few uncertain minutes of “Are you my mother?” until Sunny stepped in and gently herded her away.  At that point we decided it was 2 hours until real morning and we’d check again then.  If she seemed strong and vital we would be fairly certain she had nursed and we’d be on the look out for meconium in the field and staining on her bum.

I had my “D” names ready, even though the horses are ineligible for NA KWPN registry, the stallion is NA KWPN.  The front runners for a colt were D’Artagnan, D’Accord, Delacouer and Desperado; a filly Debutante, Demoiselle or Desdemona.  But I always second guess myself and at 5 am wondered what I was doing reading the dictionary.  The last word I saw before I said “enough” was Dharma.  I recalled the sit-com of “Dharma & Greg” while I read the definition.  In Buddhism, “Dharma” is “the Law”, other Eastern Asian meanings are “generous virtue” and “truth”.  Since daddy is Pheasant Ridge’s “Justice” (Cocktail x Wolfgang) my last thoughts were “perfect”.  So meet Dharma MH.

Pretty nice filly, eh?

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Brenda Harder at Coyote Run Welsh; she knows of my interest in Caspians and sent me a url with 2 Caspian mares for sale. I like to keep in touch with other Caspian afficionados, so I emailed the contact number, even though I’m not in a position to buy any more horses.

Well, guess what? She is the owner of the one Talib foal we knew to be on the ground. She sent me photos. So with Denise’ from www.marugiahorse.com permission, here is a taste of something we can expect in the future.

Her name is Talib’s Query, because of the perfect question mark on her face.  She is a purebred Caspian, 2007 model.

We now have 3 of our 4 2008 models on the ground.  In the wee hours of Friday, May 2, KVS Amore delivered her filly by Khamain’s Curious Kiwi.  Amy was one of our first breeding prospect acquisitions as a yearling.  She is the first young horse we have owned, so she’s “special”.  Besides being spoiled to death in our inexperience, she is also an orphan foal and has a double cowlick on her forehead; all contributing to her unique view of the world.We were hoping for a filly, as we are unable to take Amy’s baby to American Sport Pony Inspections this summer.  A filly will be able to make it into their stud book on her own merit.  Amy was a little uncertain about motherhood at first, but a lesson from “Auntie Sunny” has turned her into an excellent mom.  We’ve since renamed “Rainmaker” to the name I had picked out for a colt by Curious Kiwi; Rainmaker is now Curious George.  Sticking with the childrens’ literature theme, we named Amy’s filly “Amelia Bedelia”.  They are George and Betty for short.   I now know why “Sinbad” stuck for our Caspian colt.  It sounds a lot like “So Bad”.  And he is.  He thinks he wants to be a race horse, quite to his mother’s exasturbation.   He puts new meaning to “on the run”.For those of you who are new to our website, please bear with us.  I have given Sylvia an enormous task of updating content and I still have to supply pictures and a short story I wrote about Friendly and Greg.  So keep checking back.  I will update the baby pictures shortly with some candid shots.  But for now here are Betty’s birthday pics.   She too is going to be a red roan like her daddy.  She does have some non distinct star and chrome ankle bracelets on 3 legs. 

Well, we had another one last night. Wynona graced us with a lovely colt sired by 3/4 Caspian, Khamain’s Curious Kiwi, from Fresh Start Farm in Missouri. He’s the the beginning of my love for Caspian Horses. The last 1/4 is a combination of TB and New Zealand Station Horse.

There’s nothing like slogging through 8 inches of mud to do chores. After our record snowfall 2 weeks ago, we got hit with another storm; over 3 inches of rain last night. Glen named our new arrival Rainmaker, as it seemed to fit. The wind gusts were so high when the two storm fronts hit, that they flipped 4 sheds and 5 windbreaks.  But we sure needed the moisture.  I brought Texas (Caspian mare) home from training yesterday and when I turned her out, the horses were kicking up dust.

We just can’t seem to get going forward for cleaning up after storms.

As you can see, Rainmaker is a nice big colt; we just hope he will stay pony size. We were able to get Wynona because she had a tendency to throw small fillies. The pictures aren’t great, but he is very correct and already an awesome mover. Although a mousy chestnut right now, a few grey hairs in his tail suggest he will go roan, like his daddy.  Pam Bishop tells me Kiwi was also a mousy chestnut at birth.  So without further delay, here are Rainmaker’s birthday pictures.