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.

Dipsy and MicroMini

Star and Gryff's slow but steady training continues, as have our many letter deliveries. We haven't had to cross any vast bodies of water to deliver any lately, which is fortunate. (Swimming is mind-numbingly slow and boring, and we have not invested in a kayak yet.)

We have stumbled upon quite a few more wild horses too, and two of them are definitely worth mentioning.

First, here is "Dipsy," a Grade Pleasure Horse stallion we found in the savanna:

Don't let the dorky name throw you. He is huge, and he easily surpasses Windfall and Mountain as the fastest horse we have ever caught.

His back legs may be set back a bit farther back than normal, but this guy sure can gallop! 

As much as we like him, the rest of his stats aren't so great (especially intelligence - yikes!), and his personality is just ok. So, we tried to resign ourselves to resisting his charms.

Horse #2 is "MicroMini," a Grade European Hotblood stallion from the rainforest:

Predictably, he is nowhere near as big and fast as a savanna horse. He's not exactly micro-mini, but he is mini in comparison: only 13.2 hands and less than half Dipsy's weight.

His genetic stats are 900 exactly, and he's a grulla (I'd call him grullo since he's a he, but whatever, HI3) with a two-tone mane and tail. Sound familiar?

Gabriella may have been bigger and fancier, but MicroMini has a more likable personality and is way smarter. XD

As you can see, he isn't so tiny compared to Pepsi that riding him is out of the question.

Whew, he doesn't have a weird head carriage like Gabriella. However, Pepsi is a bit big for him. If you view them from the front or back, there's an awkward space between his sides and Pepsi's legs too, which is disappointing.

So, now you see our dilemma. We all love duns, and this particular one is very cute with a solid personality. It would seem ungrateful not to keep him after HI3 gave us a second shot at a fairly high-statted grulla, one of the rarer types of dun, just because he's small. However, if you compare his metrics to Dipsy's, Dipsy is superior in most categories despite his lower genetic stats, plus Pepsi doesn't look awkward riding him. But then again, maybe MicroMini would be a great pony cart puller... if we ever get one. 

You know what Lily's saying already, right? That we shouldn't even be entertaining thoughts of keeping either one, since we already are keeping Talvi as our January horse and tentatively have Teatime on deck for February. She's all for only adding one horse a month unless we'd happen to find multiple amazing ones. I know that's smart, though I personally think lucky finds should be bonuses and not necessarily count as a horse of the month. It's just hard being patient, since it's becoming more and more clear that Talvi is going to be Lily's and Fireside is going to be Felicity's. I am fond of Teatime, but if we do keep her, she would probably go to Julie, since I already have an awesome brown buckskin. *Goes to pet Starfleet.*

I will leave you with a few fun screenshots from our travels over the last few weeks.

In honor of Valentine's Day coming up, here is Cloudburst chilling in a pink stream.

Very punny.

It's a long way down! We did manage to navigate our way both to the pony down below and the pot of gold in the upper right.

Whenever we come across ranches that have horses out on display, it's fun to go in for a closer look. So far no ranch owners have showed up while we're trespassing. XD This particular pony was quite cute... and made Fireside look like he's all legs.

Aw, a mountain lion cub! You can also see the unfortunate leg-side gap between Pepsi and MicroMini pretty well here.

We've finally seen a panda! They don't seem to be nearly as common as some of the other non-equine wildlife.