Irish Cobs!

Irish Cobs have been introduced to HI2 for real! They were well worth the wait if you ask me - I love the artwork! My sisters and I looked through the Irish Cob coat colors together in the BBB. Each of us chose our two favorite coat colors, one for a mare and one for a stallion. We've posted them for your viewing pleasure.

Bethany went with rich, dark chestnuts with lighter manes. She thought these two would make an especially classy pair, and I totally agree!

dappled chocolate sorrel

liver sorrel

Felicity chose a pinto for one of hers, of course. (I'm surprised the rest of us didn't choose pintos. I, for one, steered clear because their avatars have white manes and tails. While lovely, we already have lots of white-haired pinto avatars in our herd.) Her stallion choice was a fiery red chestnut. Excellent choices, Felicity.

dapple gray tobiano
(Note: this color is no longer flashing!
I find it slightly disappointing that the dapples aren't more dramatic.)

red chestnut

Julie was especially charmed by the dark dappled horses. I find it interesting that within each of these and the other dappled colors, different degrees of dappling can occur. Naturally, Julie (and I) gravitate towards the more noticeable dappling. ;^) Well chosen, Julie.

dappled liver chestnut

dappled dark bay

And finally, my (Lily's) favorites. I am most taken with the grays! It was hard to choose, even within the shades of gray - all look great on these horses! For a mare, my favorite is this silvery dapple gray (even though it's not very "dark.") For a stallion, I really like the color they're calling "rusty gray," which I think is a technically a dark rose gray? So cool!

dark dapple gray

rusty gray

Strangely, HI2 has decided to alter the eyes on a different Irish breed, the long-standing Irish Draught. Palladium, one of our two ID's, has volunteered to illustrate.

New eye. Eh, not a big fan.

Old eye. I think it has a gentler, less nervous look.

From the looks of the HI2 forums, we are not the only ones who aren't thrilled with this unnecessary, unprecedented artwork change. In fact, apparently with this change, all formerly blue-eyed ID's became brown-eyed. (I'm glad Pal and Galena were at least brown-eyed to begin with!) Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like we'll be getting the old eyes back, but there's at least hope that those who had blue eyes will be getting them back (in new, wonky form, but at least getting the right color back).

And now to a tangent of non-game-related news. Our aunt, Nala's owner, has returned from a vacation to Mexico! We're just a little jealous of all the cool animals she got to see. In addition to swimming with dolphins and feeding manatees, she also saw lots of iguanas, geckos, and these two creatures I'd never even heard of before:

The agouti

These adorable rodents look kind of like mini capybaras or big, long-legged guinea pigs. As you can see, they can hold up food with their front paws like squirrels. :^) Our aunt saw one toting a coconut in its mouth once.

The coati

These guys sort of look like raccoons, and they like to raid garbage cans like them too.

They had pictorial signs up about not feeding both of these animals - with captions both in Spanish and English.

Our aunt was thoughtful, at least. She brought back souvenirs for the rest of the family. Mom's gift was this little stone sea turtle:

He has the Mayan calendar on his shell. =)

He joins two other turtles who already hang out on Mom's dresser: a painted stone turtle from a town on Lake Michigan and a carved wooden turtle from Northern California. I think these three will be good friends! <3