Pinto Love

Well, it looks like I've already picked out our July horse a few days early. Sorry, guys. It's like there's a magnet that inexorably draws me back towards that livery and its rare 6/6 beauties.

As I was happily clicking through the stallions of breeds I like, I eventually spotted him, a 6/6 dun roan tobiano Racking Horse. 

Despite his lack of interesting facial markings, his minimum height and weight, and his not-so-popular breed, he still looked hopeful. When I read his history, I couldn't say no. He's been around since this past November. In the 7 months since then, he's gained a whopping 2 experience points. He has changed hands several times but was never even given a real name. The closest he came: "Christmas Present." Not a well-received present, apparently.

I have named him "Yoshi" after the lime green Nintendo dino. It just seemed to fit him. In my mind, anyway. Something about those big, expressive eyes. Bonus: we have a horse who can use a green dinosaur décor. I'm really excited for that. XD

As you can see, Yoshi's avatar is quite unique as well. His mismatched mane and tail make me smile. =)

And I'm responsible for what I'm hoping to call our "bonus" June horse if I can get my sisters on board. We belong to a club on Horse Isle 2, and on Saturday morning our club leader was looking to get rid of an APH mare asap. She asked if I wanted her.

How could I refuse, especially after telling her that the APH is one of our favorite breeds? (It's Mom's real-life favorite. ;)) Our club leader generously gave the mare to us at the price of a livery horse. Here she is:

Here is her avatar. She reminds me a bit of Julie's Hazel, but she's different enough that I won't have any trouble telling them apart.

The APH. Her dark areas are sepia-toned with reddish dapples.

Hazel. I'd call her dark areas chocolate brown with orangey dapples.

What a pushover we are for pintos of American breeds! First the twinning Tennessee Walkers, and now these two. Oh well, it is almost the 4th of July, after all. Let's hope we do better at resisting new horses over the rest of the summer.

In other news, it was also PintoMustang's birthday yesterday (June 28). She celebrated by buying herself a cute little grassy ranch isle. She let me and my other buddy, MauveGuava, tag along while she fluted her birthday wild on one of the tiny islands in the middle of Islands Lake Isle. One instant no horse, the next, voila! It was a white gray Orlov Trotter, I think. Pinto blipped away before I could check its details. I had a screenshot of us all admiring the horse, but I was on a different computer than usual (Windows rather than Mac). I forgot to paste the screenshot into a Paint document before taking my next one. Arg. :(

Julie and I also found a total of 7 wilds between the two of us on Twin Rivers Isle this morning. That's a new record for us. Nobody had been wild hunting there in a while! One of them was a Nez Perce the same color as my real-life horse Talia (seal brown spotted blanket), but it was a low-stat stallion. We think we'll retire him to our Millennium Fields.

The other notable horse was this one, a Palladium look-alike. She's the third dark dapple gray Irish Draught we've found now. 2 of those 3 were on Twin Rivers, too.

We're not keeping her, Pal. Sorry. XD

Hello, Summer

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, today is the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. Whoo hoo! 

In order not to get too overwhelmed by all the daylight, Kestrel and I went mining for gems in the tunnel systems of the eastern mountains. I found two pairs of wild horses while I was at it. 

The first two were hanging out together in the middle of Triangle Isle: a seal brown Groningen and a flaxen chestnut sabino Shagya Arabian. 

I went for the Shagya Arabian first. She turned out to be 4/6 with the Unique personality. While I was busy with the first horse, the Groningen ran away and did this:

"Ha! Try to lasso me here, human!"

I caught her anyway. She was 3/6 with the Trailblazer personality. I guess nobody told her that blazing trails through rock doesn't work so well. XD

The other two wilds were Highland Ponies that just happened to be in my path on my way to Rocky Isle. Both were on the same section of ledge, but I found them one at a time.

A light brown stallion just asking to be caught

A chestnut mare.
Try as I might, I couldn't make Kestrel go as close to the edge as she was.

What good luck to start out my summer! I don't think I've ever found so many wilds on a single mining expedition before. The gem mining itself wasn't bad either, especially considering that I crossed paths with several other players. One randomly PMed me asking if I was "The PepsiSummer." Not sure what that meant... but I said yes? I was too busy mining like crazy to ask any questions. =) Maybe somebody else has stumbled upon this blog...

Sentimental Salmon and a Stallion

Say hello to our second 6/6 wild capture this June. 

Read on if you care how it happened; skip ahead if you don't. ;) I started out the morning on Twin Rivers Isle, since that's where Bethany last logged us out from. Shady and I weren't finding any wild horses in the usual spots, so when two other players arrived on the isle, we bailed out to Prairie. Prairie was devoid of other players at the time, so we happily searched the eastern expanse. We caught an average brown Warlander stallion and observed a few red dots pop out of the dock house and the northeast rowboat.  No matter - it's a big island, and no one went galloping through our search area. As you can see from the screenshot, just south of one of the salmon runs on Sentimental Pond (I think it's a pond... the map just labels it "Sentimental"), we found a dark bay American Quarter Horse.

Shady is doing her best Arabian impression.

Despite its run-of-the-mill coat color and odd golden hooves, I was hopeful. Since my real-life horse is a bay AQH and since I love the breed, I couldn't help but dream...

It was my lucky day! He ended up being about as nice of a AQH as I could ever hope to catch, and I am thrilled. Not only is he 6/6 and +79, but he also has picture-perfect markings and an interesting persona. <3 No doubt in my mind that this guy is staying. 

Don't worry about Teddy, my less impressive AQH stallion. I am quite fond of him and don't mind a bit having two horses of the same breed. 

The stallion count is only 2 horses behind the mare count now. Unless Bethany keeps the Exmoor... We shall see.

Our Little Exmoor

A long quest for some Fin on Twin Rivers isle sent Uno and me to Leaf Isle the other day. As long as we were there, we went harvesting leaf piles for silk cocoons on Leaf itself as well as a few of the other leaf isles. I didn't see any wild ponies until I arrived on Petal Isle. The Exmoor Pony wasn't far from the dock, so I spotted her quite early on. Someone popped onto Petal just after I had discovered the wild - she rode up to us and area chatted something like "Ooh, a wild!"So, rather than risk losing the pony while I fumbled around to take a screenshot, I clicked "capture" immediately. Hence, there will never be a screenshot of her in the wild. Sorry, pony. 

As fate would have it, the Exmoor is another 6/6 mare. At least this time she isn't the same breed and color as an equine we already have...

Tiny ears poking out from a thick, shaggy mane, alert expression, mealy muzzle and belly... aw. She's a cutie, alright.

Under saddle. Where'd the "mealy" go?

So, do we keep her or not? We're still not sure, so we'll keep her around for the rest of June to see if any fabulous stallion comes along to make the decision easier. To be clear, it's the skewed gender ratio that's holding us back from committing, not her size. We googled Exmoor ponies and read that they aren't just for kids - they are sturdy enough to be ridden by many teens and adults as well. (The weight limit we've seen on British Exmoor Pony trekking websites is somewhere around 12 stone, which converts to186 pounds. Mom is nowhere near the cap.) We found many photos of adults on Exmoors, and here is one with a rider who looks similar in size to Mom:

This pair looks just fine to me

Exmoor Ponies are pretty cool! I may have to write a post all about the breed sometime... *the metaphorical light bulb goes on over my head.* Stay tuned!

Twin Day

It was Twin Day today at "school." 

As you know, we're dolls and therefore don't actually go to a real school. However, we have an ongoing game with our cousins (Mom's sister's dolls) in which we go to a fancy boarding school in upstate New York. My sisters and I are all on said school's equestrian team, while our cousins are into acting. What brought us together as one big friend group is music - we all enjoy singing and/or playing musical instruments. 

We snapped some photos of the occasion and decided to post them here. Oh, and just so you know, our cousins Amber and Zoë are real twins. They both felt like twinning with somebody else for a change.

Autumn and Bethany 

They were going for the mirror image look with their hair.

Julie and Haylee 

Julie's feet were swimming in those shoes. :)

Lily and Amber

Amber insisted on wearing her cowgirl boots, so Lily played along. 

Zoë and Felicity

Rock those attitude glasses, Felicity!

Group Shot!

Lily was standing on a bump...

In real life as well as in the boarding school game, we each share a bedroom with another girl. As long as we had the flash drive handy, we thought we'd also share the roommate photos we took.

Autumn and Amber 

Bethany and Lily

Haylee and Zoë

Felicity and Julie