Don't Leap Into Cacti

Happy leap day! It's been anticlimactic on HI3, mainly because our internet is having trouble today. While we were briefly on this morning, both wild horses we encountered were super sensitive to the lasso. We gave up on the first one, since we were on hilly rainforest terrain. We got booted off as we were trying to lasso the second one, another rainforest wild. *Sighs*

We did get back on for about an hour this afternoon and successfully caught 2 wilds, delivered a few letters, and completed a quest, so at least it wasn't a total wash.

Also, since the last game update, there is a glitch where a horse's name doesn't disappear when mounted. Oops!

 

Last Saturday was really fun, though. The brindle wild horses were out in force. We found 4 of them on our travels! 

Our clear favorite was the 4th:

He has quite the extreme personality, but contrary to his name, he is far from bold. He is yet another pacer! (This probably explains why he's not especially fast despite being from the savanna.) Take a look!

He holds his head awkwardly high, but it's cute how much his tail billows out.

Because of his only-in-the-700's stat total and his extreme laziness and skittishness, I don't think he'll be joining the herd. We felt we'd better keep him around for a little while though, because we (okay, I) accidentally rode him into a cactus. Sorry, buddy! Note to self: do not use the rotate camera feature while riding anywhere near cacti! We had to take him to the vet to get the spines removed. I guess he has good reason to be skittish.

Here's another interesting wild horse we found last Saturday:

It's a heart!

It's a shame we didn't find her on Valentine's Day... though if we had, Bethany and/or Julie would likely have wanted to keep her. As cute as she was, she was extremely ornery and didn't have great stats, so it's probably for the best that the timing was off.

I much prefer "Hogan," who has now been re-named Ginkgo after Ginkgo biloba trees, which originated in China. (Even though we found her in the rainbow eucalyptus forest, in appearance, she reminds us of the Datong, a Chinese breed.) Ginkgo trees have really cool, unique-looking leaves, so we think it's a fitting name for such a unique looking horse.

We have also finally decided on names for the other newest horses and pony. We're not "officially" keeping any of them yet, but as you know, it's a lot harder for us to say goodbye once we've named a horse, so I think they all like their prospects.

"Teatime" will remain Teatime. Now that we have that image in our heads of Pepsi sipping tea while riding an enthusiastically pacing Teatime, there's no changing it. XD

"Blitzen" will also remain Blitzen because her coloring and huge hooves remind us of a reindeer. 

"Dipsy" and "MicroMini" have shed their somewhat embarrassing, non-manly names, to their great relief.

"Dipsy" is now "Topi" because his speediness and short, angled neck remind us of an antelope, plus he is from the savanna biome. The topi, a subspecies of the tsessebe from sub-Saharan Africa, is also brown and black like him, so it seemed like a fitting name. We may need to get him some golden polos though.

"MicroMini" is now Ossagon. It's the name of a creek and a trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Since we found him in the sequoia rainforest, and since Mom has been to this park with giant trees in Northern California, we thought it was perfect. 

Whew, glad to have that done! You wouldn't believe how much time my sisters spend deliberating on names.

I will leave you with these two fun screenshots of our horses posing with other players' purebreds.

Here is Windfall next to a Thoroughbred:

I love the expression on her face in this shot. =) She's not a great match, though there is some resemblance. And, as we already knew, she has a short neck and tiny head, which makes grazing awkward for her. XD

Here is Teatime saying hi to Hot Cocoa, a Tennessee Walker:

Mmm, I could really go for a hot beverage right now. 

Our Valentine's Day Gift Has Horns

Another week, another round of interesting HI3 horses to talk about. 

We found our third wild horse that paces instead of canters, a palomino named Rio! Rio had such long legs that his pace looked especially ground-covering:

While handsome, his stat total and ornery personality were strong counts against him. Teatime could breathe a sigh of relief. She's still by far our favorite of the 3 pacers.

Dipsy continues to charm us too. We were tasked with delivering a letter to a ranch that took quite a while to get to, thanks to having to circle around some steep mountainous terrain. When MicroMini and I finally got there, we discovered that the ranch house, which we needed to get close to in order to deliver the letter, was totally enclosed inside an extra tall fence. The gate was shut and locked, so there was no way in but over. I asked MicroMini to try jumping it several times, but the little guy couldn't make it. So, I tacked up Dipsy, thinking, hey, he's tall and has the highest jump power of any of our horses. Maybe he can do it. I backed him way up, sprinted him towards the fence, and asked for maximum jump power.

Mission accomplished! Well done, Dipsy! 

On a different mail delivery mission, Bethany visited the destination ranch's horses out on display. One of them was a young, 15-hand brindle purebred Andalusian, so just for fun, Bethany compared Starfleet to her. 

Wow, I think we know which breed of Baroque horse Starfleet most resembles! (And also, 17 hands is big!)

This happened sometime during that visit too. Whoops. XD

This wild horse probably made Blitzen sweat. 

Moonwind is an inch taller than Blitzen, making her our new tallest wild ever, and she is a really cool color: pearl grulla pintaloosa.

Her stats and personality were not so great. Since it was Lily who caught her, she quickly sold her before Felicity, our biggest appaloosa fan, could see her. Sorry, Felicity! Lily assures us she was not gaited and did not seem significantly bigger than Blitzen.

We also found a few small ponies, including this really cute one named Mid Century Modern:

Talk about a low rider. :^)

Last night, Bethany and Lily suggested we watch a romantic movie of some sort, since it was Valentine's Day. Felicity wasn't feeling it, so we ended up watching vet shows on Nat Geo Wild and taking turns delivering letters on HI3 instead. We found quite a few wilds in the rainbow eucalyptus forest, a sub-biome of the bamboo forest. Here's what the BBB has to say about them:

This pony is a great example: she ticks all the boxes except for frame overo. She even has frontal bosses, or "horns." (They made HI2's Datongs extra cute.) 

Hers are right on the edges of her big star. 

She also carries her ears splayed out to the sides, which I think is adorable. 

Her genetic stat total is well over 900, and her personality is quite nice. But of course, there's still the under-saddle test to pass. 

Despite being only 14 hands tall and being very narrow-barreled, Pepsi does not look funny on her. Yay! 

She has a totally different look than any of our other equines, and while it's not elegant or feminine, we like it. We had her breed determined, and the result was, puzzlingly, Grade Hot-blooded Horse. She doesn't really look like any of the randomly-generated Grade Hot-Bloods we brought up in the BBB, nor does she seem to fit the description. 

Oh well!

So now, assuming we can get everybody to accept that Talvi was a bonus and that Teatime is our January horse, we are left with Dipsy, MicroMini, Blitzen, and now Hogan as possible February horses, and the month is only half over. Why did you all have to come to us so close together? :^/ I sure wish we could keep them all!

Christmas in February

Hi again! 

After a relatively mild January here in the mitten, we've been getting lots of Christmasy snow-globe looking snow the past few days. Mere hours after Bethany's last post, we found 3 wild horses hanging out in wonderland terrain. #1 and #2 were positioned on lower, flatter terrain, while #3 was dramatically posing on top of a steep hill. #3's name, following the Christmasy theme, is Blitzen, like the last on the list of Santa's reindeer. It was hard to tell because of the weird angle involved in approaching and lassoing her, but Blitzen is a massive 20 hands tall, even taller than Mountain! Her tail doesn't even fit in the frame on her profile! XD

Wow, those are some stats! She's by far the most intelligent horse we've ever caught.

Her personality is quite nice too: no left side extremes.

Time to go in for a closer look!

She's huge, alright!

It's like the game knew we were having doubts about MicroMini and was like, fine, you want a big gray and black horse? I'll give you a big gray and black horse!

Unlike Gabriella and MicroMini, she is not a grulla/grullo (dun on a black base). Instead, she is a classic cream champagne. This means she has both the cream and champagne genes on a black base. Champagne has a diluting effect on pigment a bit like dun, but it also comes along with freckled pink skin and hazel eyes. Add in a cream gene, and a champagne horse will typically have paler, more faintly freckled skin and lighter eyes.

Blitzen's eyes appear to be green. <3 Like Starfleet, she also has a luxurious mane, an eel stripe, and a tiny star, though her star is even tinier.

Any guesses as to what type of grade she is? She's clearly large enough to be a draft and has enormous hooves, but she's not exactly built like a typical draft. Fancy tail, oddly slanted rear end, hind legs set way back... She had the expert scratching his/her head too. Like with Teatime, the pacing sausage, her result was the generic "Grade Horse" designation.

Pepsi looks about as awkward on Blitzen as she does on MicroMini, but for the opposite reason. At times, her legs partially sink through the saddle.

Talk about going from one extreme to the other!

My sisters are even more torn now about what to do with all these great equines we're collecting. Blitzen got an infinitum amulet quite quickly, since she was already over 9 years old when we caught her. Dipsy and MicroMini are still hanging out, but without any precious amulets, as they are both younger. I'm still trying to convince my sisters to let them go, since Blitzen has by far the highest stats. No luck so far.

It didn't stop there either. On Monday, we found our second pacing horse!

He's faster and has higher genetic stats than Teatime, but he lacks Teatime's unique physique and cool sabino markings. Hence, we did not allow ourselves to get attached and sold him pretty quickly.

His rapid pacing action was every bit as entertaining as Teatime's, though. XD In case you were wondering, he was classified as a Grade Baroque Horse.

Then, on Friday night, we found this gorgeous mare:

She's a grulla silver like Gabriella, but she's so much more our style. Her breed designation came back as Grade Warm-Blooded Horse too, a first for us. If she wasn't so skittish and stubborn, it would've been really hard to part with her. 

We've started the slow process of crafting and dying our own saddle blankets and polo wraps so that each horse will have its own in a unique color. Talvi was the first to get hers since she didn't need any dye: we're keeping her in snow white. 

We haven't found any specific dye guides online, so we've been doing some experimenting on our own. So far we've made "Indian Red" from 10 cranberries, "Lemon Slice" from 7 dandelions, "Cajun Spice" from 5 cranberries, and "Zurich Blue" from 5 blueberries. Our first saddle blanket just happens to be Zurich Blue, and we really like the color, so it's a keeper. Not sure about the others yet.

In case you were wondering, we're sticking with Western pads for now because crafting them requires less wool than English pads. (Wool is something you can only get from importers and costs $$$.) And really, while we prefer English-style tack, for all the long-distance open country riding Pepsi does, Western gear makes sense. We'll probably eventually craft each horse an English pad in its color too. It would also be fun to craft Pepsi a shirt in each color so that she can match. She's got to be weary of her white adventure shirt by now.