Stones and Shadowfax

Yoshi and I explored a few of the Desert Isles one day this week. We were lucky enough to find 2 mother horse stones along with a couple of wild horses!

This is the first one Yoshi had ever seen, hence he had to fully investigate. :)

Stone #2

One of the wild horses we found roaming the scorching sands was this pale Andalusian. 

5/6 and +74. Not bad at all! And he reminded me of Shadowfax, the horse Gandalf rides in The Lord of the Rings.

See what I mean?

Even so, we decided one dictator in our herd is enough.

Love ya, Xana

So we surrendered the Shadowfax look-alike to the humane society. Somebody was probably quite pleased to find him! It's too bad you can't find out who - if anybody - adopts a horse you surrender. Wouldn't it be cool if a message popped up that said "so and so adopted horse so and so" the instant it happens? It works that way with the auctions... =^)

Before I go, in case you were wondering from last week, Julie and I worked it out: she will be Phoenix's owner, and I will be the owner of the new Chincoteague Pony. She will henceforth be known as Halley after Halley's Comet. We have opted to pronounce it like it rhymes with "valley" rather than "Bailey" since we have a cousin named Haylee. According to what we've read online, either pronunciation is legit. ;^)

Phoenix and his entourage 

Halley's Comet

Halley <3

Goodbye Grullo, Hello Pinto

Well, our flute has given us a third noteworthy Lusitano stallion now. The first horse our flute lured us was a brown Lusitano stallion. He occupies a prime spot on our ranch isle next to the treehouse and a giraffe hedge:

Hi, August.

On Mom's birthday this year, our flute summoned us a 0/6 black Lusitano stallion.

And here is Lusitano stallion #3, a 5/6 grullo that Quickstep and I fluted near some lemon trees on Birch. 

Aw, golden toes.

Drat, just 3 measly stat points short of being our Murphy and ending our 6/6 stallion drought. I was really tempted by this guy anyway, what with his awesome grullo coat without a single white marking and his great (albeit antisocial) personality. If his stats had been higher and if his avatar wasn't so similar to Teddy's (Julie's red roan AQH), I don't think I'd have been able to let him go. But, this morning, I sucked it up, wished him well, and put him in the Humane Society. He wasn't adopted immediately, but when Julie logged in about two hours later, she told me he was gone. Hopefully he found a good home!

Part of the reason why I decided for sure not to keep Mr. Almost 6/6 is because of this special Chincoteague:

Fittingly, it was a buddy nicknamed Pinto who caught her on Monday this week. Not sure which isle - we'll have to ask her. 

To our delight, Pinto gave her to Pepsi last night! We are thrilled. We absolutely love her one white coronet, her bi-colored mane, her smiling rosy muzzle, and the big black patch over her eye.  She also happens to be our first overo-patterned equine, our first equine with a piebald avatar, and our first Chincoteague. Like I said, she's special! Bethany and Julie are stilling working out between them who will own Phoenix and who will own this Chincoteague. 

We're also still deciding on a name. "Twisted Comet" is a fine name, but it doesn't conform to our one-word naming pattern. Just "Comet" could have theoretically worked, but it makes me think of the golden retriever on the show Full House. I sort-of shot that idea down. So, we've been brainstorming a bit, trying to keep our ideas space-related. Here they are so far in alphabetical order:

• Elara (one of Jupiter's moons. Sounds pretty.)
• Halley (after Halley's Comet. We checked and it does get through the filter.)
• Nebula (per Wikipedia, this is "an interstellar cloud" of dust or ionized gas)
• Nova (per Wikipedia, this is "a cataclysmic nuclear explosion on a white dwarf, which causes a sudden brightening of the star")
• Orbit 

Hmm, this isn't going to be easy... 

They're On the Board!

Horse Isle 2: Eternal keeps lots of "Top 100" lists. Since we aren't really into the competition thing, none of our horses have much of a shot at being in the top 100 for their breeds in experience points. A few of our talented equines have made their breeds' top 100 lists for their stat points, however. We check the lists every so often. Today was one of those days, and like proud parents, we decided to share what we found!

Julie just has one horse that makes the lists right now, but that will no doubt change as we stat train more and more of our horses!

• Buckskin beauty Whinny is currently holding spot #69 for the Morgan breed. 

I have 3 horses that make the top 50 for their breeds! =)

• Quasar, my purple-tinged stallion, comes it at #82 for Missouri Fox Trotters. 
• Lazy Mistral holds place #44 for Camargues.
• Cute little December holds place #44 for Fell Ponies. Interesting coincidence!

Lily has 6! horses that made the lists today. Wow, she sure knows how to pick them!

• Solitaire just squeaks into the Jutland top 100 at #98.
• Balderdash is sitting pretty at #96 for New Forest Ponies... and she hasn't even had any stat point trainings yet!
• Icing comes in at a respectable #86 for Shires. No surprise here - this mare has known all along that she is something special.
• Cider makes the top 75 for Finnhorses at #71. And to think we let him slip through our fingers once!
• Wintergreen makes the top 75 for Highland Ponies at #64. Yay, Wintergreen!
• Jessamine just makes it into the New Forest Pony's top 25 at position #24. Well done!

And finally, Felicity currently has 3 equines that make the lists:

• Flashy little Xenon makes the list for the Pony of the Americas at #91.
• Felicity's newest stallion, Vivaldi, is in the top 50 for Maremmanos right now! Whoo for #39!
• Vinca surpasses all our other horses, the queen of spot #18 for Newfoundland Ponies. Way to go, Vinca!

Let me also introduce our newest horse, Phoenix. We haven't decided which of us will be his owner yet. His previous owner, our HI2 buddy, was trying hard to sell him with no luck. So... yeah. We bought him to be a friend for our Paso Fino mare, Quickstep. It was without a doubt the most we've ever paid for a horse on HI2, in fact, but it was only right after all the gorgeous horses she's sent our way. 

So, here he is with his assorted companions:

And here is his avatar:

<3

For the first time in... well, who knows how long, our stallion count exceeds our mare count. Maybe this is what it will take for a 6/6 wild stallion to wander into our midst at long last. If it does, the horse will be named Murphy. 

But anyway, we checked, and for now Phoenix is in the top 100 by stats for Paso Finos.

=)

Congratulations, American Pharoah!

He's done it! American Pharoah has won the Triple Crown! The 37-year drought is over!!! Well done, American Pharoah!

We watched the historic Belmont Stakes from the basement. I had my fingers crossed the whole race, and all 4 of us were cheering American Pharoah on. Mom, who was wearing her golden horseshoe necklace and holding her Breyer horse Seabiscuit for luck, was watching upstairs with Summer (the family dog). There was a whole lot of teary-eyed celebrating going on at our house after that horse crossed the finish line, let me tell you! Once we'd calmed down a bit, we logged on HI2 - it only seemed right. What a huge day for horse lovers!

Dream On

Nothing very exciting has happened to us on HI2 lately. We haven't had much time to play, so it's not a huge surprise.

Part of what makes playing HI2 so fun is the randomness of the wild horses - you never know what you're going to catch next. Our herd is way more diverse than it would be if we didn't do so much lassoing.

That being said, it is also fun to look in HI2's BBB of horse breeds and be blown away by all of the breed and color possibilities. We each decided to pick out one dream horse - you know, the horse we'd likely choose to create if we each had a horse token to use. 

I'll go first. My dream HI2 horse would be a light-colored Florida Cracker mare named Coquina. My mom and her family went to visit St. Augustine, Florida, where there is a whole fort made out of coquina. Coquina is a cool kind of sedimentary rock make up of shell fragments, and I think the name has a very pleasing ring to it.

I can't decide for sure if I'd want the mare to be light gray like this:

...or perlino like this:

Either would make an excellent Coquina. 

We'll keep this alphabetical and go to Felicity next. Not a huge surprise here - her dream horse would have spots. She would choose a red dun snowflake Nez Perce stallion something like this:

She would want him to have a star and lots of white feet, probably 3 or 4. He'd probably have blue eyes, but brown would be fine with her too. 

Moving along, Julie's pick would be an amber ivory champagne sabino Mangalarga Marchador. Wow, Julie, who knew you had such fancy taste?! Julie says she'd be equally happy with either gender, but pictured here is a mare.

Finally, here is Lily's pick. She loves the Hanoverians of HI2. Even though they have been around since we started playing the game, we have never come across one that meets our standards. Lily's favorite of all the Hanoverian coat colors is by far this one, sooty palomino. She would want a mare so that the maximum amount of that lovely golden mane could be seen. She loves this star-stripe-snip combo and would want the mare to have one or more white feet.

Fine choices, all, if I do say so myself! Maybe someday we'll turn these dreams into HI2 reality...