Hello, Herbie

As you may or may not know, we have been intentionally naming each of our stallions and each of our mares with a different letter of the alphabet. Here was the list as of August 1, when we added Judo to the herd:

Arion

Aspen

Brio

Balderdash

Cider

Cascade

December

Dasani

Equinox

Esker

Fortunado

Flora

Galileo

Groovy

Hazel

Infrared

Icing

Judo

Jessamine

Kestrel

Kaleidoscope

Landslide

Lysithea

Mistral

Melancholy

Napoleon

Nightshade

Onyx

Ophelia

Palladium

Petra

Quasar

Quickstep

Ravine

Rosetta

Solitaire

Skyrocket

Teddy

Toasty

Uno

Umber

Vaquero

Vinca

Wintergreen

Whinny

Xenon

Xanadu

Yoshi

Yetta

Zephyr

Zesty

7Up

As you can see from that obvious gap between Groovy and Hazel, we only had one more horse to go to complete the pattern. We needed a stallion to be named something starting with the letter H. That mission fell to me, and I was technically supposed to wait until September to begin it.

So much for that. On Sunday morning when it was nearly time for me to log off, I went to surrender a wild I'd found to the livery. As long as I was there, of course I looked at some of the other horses. I couldn't help myself. And there he was:

A 5/6 cremello leopard Nez Perce stallion. It's hard to tell from these small pictures, but he indeed has faint cremello spots all over. Click on one of the pictures to see it larger if you so desire. I'd never seen one like him before outside of the BBB. I was smitten.

But, Lily was in the room and saw what I was up to. She insisted I go to the BBB in the library and look at his avatar to make sure I really liked him as much as I thought I did. The horse's avatar was white with pale dapples and legs. Lily wasn't impressed. She said that he looked a lot like my cremello Morab, Brio, and her light gray NFP's, Balderdash and Jessamine. 
"But he has dapples," I protested.
"You already have a Nez, you already have a leopard appaloosa, and you already have a cremello," replied Lily.
"Yeah, but not a cremello leopard appaloosa Nez."
Lily just shook her head and walked away. She knew a lost cause when she saw one.

That conversation did make me second-guess myself, though. I went back to the livery to look at him again. His personality wasn't so great, and his stats only added up to +58, after all. What to do?

In the end, I made myself log out. Wait. There will be other Nez Perce stallions, I told myself firmly. Prove Lily wrong. 

I only held out for about 5 minutes before logging back on to adopt him. He was still there, thank goodness. 

So, now I am the proud owner of Herbie. It turns out he actually has the highest sum of total stat points of any of our horses: 2508! Because he's pale, speedy, and the 53rd horse to join our herd, Herbie seemed like the perfect name.

Herbie the famous Volkswagen Beetle

No worries about avatar confusion here. Herbie's dapples and dark hooves set him apart. =)

Herbie

Brio

Jessamine (same avatar as Balderdash)

Interestingly enough, just last night PintoMustang and Lily noticed this ad pop up:

My goodness! I wonder if the player had seen Herbie somehow, or if it was all an odd coincidence? At any rate, I'm not the only one who thinks cremello leopard is cool! =)