Samoa

About a year ago, Bethany posted about our HI2 dream horses. Felicity has had the good fortune to find a horse that comes close to her own dream horse, her Nez Perce stallion Orion. The rest of us have not been so lucky, though Lily did have a chance at a sooty palomino Hano stallion for sale in a ranch store once... too bad he was male and so expensive!

As fate would have it, our buddy Gem happened upon a wild Mangalarga Marchador. Not just any Manga, but a Manga quite similar to my dream Manga, a pinto champagne!






So handsome and such a wonderful personality! <3 <3 <3

Make him a shade lighter and swap out the tobiano pattern for sabino, and you'd have my dream horse! Drat, if only his stats were better!

My dream horse, an amber ivory champagne sabino Manga of either gender

Gem couldn't justify adding a 2/6 horse to her herd either, no matter how good looking, so she kindly offered him to me to retire to my Millennium Fields. I took my sweet time about taking him off her hands, however. By the time we finally overlapped online and I took him home, Gem had named him. Her choice: Samoa. I thought to myself, Hey self, isn't Samoa some tropical island in the Pacific somewhere? That's a great name for a sand-colored horse found in summer. 

I googled it, and sure enough, I was right on the location. They are the Samoa Islands, though, and they look like an awesome place to visit from photos.



Gem's inspiration for the Manga's name didn't come from the islands, however. It actually came from the real-life foal in this photo:

 The real-life Samoa was a mustang born in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota on May 31st, 2016. Pictured from left to right in the photo is his sire Thundercloud, Samoa himself, his dam Pale Lady, and his 2-year-old sister Kat. Sadly, little Samoa passed away on June 14th, 2016 due to an infected umbilicus (umbilical stump). What an awful way to go! Gem chose to name the Manga in his honor because she found him in the wild on the same day the real-life Samoa died. It only seems right for Samoa's name to live on in the virtual HI2 world!

Samoa the Manga is now happily enjoying a leisurely life as a retiree on my ranch isle. <3