March Comes In with a Bang

First off, I'm just going to go ahead and make it official: Tchaikovsky is staying for good. In the end, we grew too attached to him and his ultra-shiny coat to let him go. Julie has claimed him as her own and decked him out in green tack. We've decided we're not going to count him towards our 2017 horse count - he'll just be a bonus 2016-er since we captured him in December. 

Here it is, March already. Felicity claimed our January horse, Zenith the APH stallion, as hers. February came and went without us catching any high-stat wild horses. Our buddy who was selling that silver dun pinto Warlander mare? Yeah, she did save her for us until March 1st. And yeah, we did buy her. She shall count as our February horse. (By the end of the post you will understand why...)

So, now we have 3 pinto Warlander mares. Let me remind you of Yetta (Lily's first horse) and Hazel (Julie's):

And here is the new mare again:

Her name was "Cross My Heart," but as it doesn't conform to the 1-word-name pattern, it's going to change. We're just not sure what it's going to change to yet. Here's her avatar in comparison to Yetta's:

new mare

Yetta

Whew, yeah, the new mare is clearly a more silvery grulla than Yetta.

But the story doesn't end there. Our first flute for March was - you guessed it - a pinto Warlander mare. And she even looks a bit like Hazel.

Usko and I were hoping she'd appear in the catmint by the kittens. No such luck.

Oh, HI2, I so appreciate your random coincidences! 

The fun didn't end there, though! We spent several visits to HI2 this past week exploring the eastern mountain isles. Yesterday afternoon, we found our first wild Spanish Mustangs! 

Felicity and Lumos fluted the first one on Cavern Isle. 

Lily and Yonder found the second one trying in vain to hide on Crater Mountain Isle. 

Alas, their stats were quite sad. We were thinking of retiring the mare to our Millennium Fields - love her avatar - but then we had a buddy ask us if she could buy them both. So, we just gave them to her. Hopefully she'll enjoy them. =)

We became temporary owners of another new HI2 breed of horse this week as well. While she was auctioning some wilds, Julie spotted this guy going to the foreign bidder for something around $4,900. 

With less than a minute left in the auction and still no bids from real players, Julie bid $5k and departed on Yellowstone for the mountains. To her amazement, as she reached Prairie, the message came through that she had won! Here is his cool avatar:

While he is 6/6, his stats only add up to +51. Since we didn't catch him ourselves, we can't justify keeping him, as much as we'd like to. <3 Luckily for him, it sounds as if he may soon have a home with our buddy Gem, who loves Sugarbush Drafties.

Well, after being so good for so long, yours truly went poking around in the livery this morning. And I left with...

But come on, now, a beautiful +84 cremello mare, just waiting hopefully in the livery?! Really, how was I supposed to resist? 

She is the reason why we would rather not count the Warlander as our March horse. If we don't find any wilds with great stats by the end of the month, she'll be sticking around. Otherwise, we promise we will put her back. Really, we do. XD

Our buddy Gem is probably going to think we copied her here, since she has this horse:

At least ours is 5 inches shorter (14.1 hands). I've commented several times on how cremello Kaimanawas look pale pink on my computer screen. I still stand by that, so if ours stays, she's totally going to be wearing pink. 

Sorry, Gem. This was all a coincidence. Cross my heart. (And no, silver dun tobiano Warlander, I'm not talking about you. Carry on. XD)