After a relatively mild January here in the mitten, we've been getting lots of Christmasy snow-globe looking snow the past few days. Mere hours after Bethany's last post, we found 3 wild horses hanging out in wonderland terrain. #1 and #2 were positioned on lower, flatter terrain, while #3 was dramatically posing on top of a steep hill. #3's name, following the Christmasy theme, is Blitzen, like the last on the list of Santa's reindeer. It was hard to tell because of the weird angle involved in approaching and lassoing her, but Blitzen is a massive 20 hands tall, even taller than Mountain! Her tail doesn't even fit in the frame on her profile! XD
Wow, those are some stats! She's by far the most intelligent horse we've ever caught.
Time to go in for a closer look!
It's like the game knew we were having doubts about MicroMini and was like, fine, you want a big gray and black horse? I'll give you a big gray and black horse!
Unlike Gabriella and MicroMini, she is not a grulla/grullo (dun on a black base). Instead, she is a classic cream champagne. This means she has both the cream and champagne genes on a black base. Champagne has a diluting effect on pigment a bit like dun, but it also comes along with freckled pink skin and hazel eyes. Add in a cream gene, and a champagne horse will typically have paler, more faintly freckled skin and lighter eyes.
Blitzen's eyes appear to be green. <3 Like Starfleet, she also has a luxurious mane, an eel stripe, and a tiny star, though her star is even tinier.
Any guesses as to what type of grade she is? She's clearly large enough to be a draft and has enormous hooves, but she's not exactly built like a typical draft. Fancy tail, oddly slanted rear end, hind legs set way back... She had the expert scratching his/her head too. Like with Teatime, the pacing sausage, her result was the generic "Grade Horse" designation.
Pepsi looks about as awkward on Blitzen as she does on MicroMini, but for the opposite reason. At times, her legs partially sink through the saddle.
Talk about going from one extreme to the other!
My sisters are even more torn now about what to do with all these great equines we're collecting. Blitzen got an infinitum amulet quite quickly, since she was already over 9 years old when we caught her. Dipsy and MicroMini are still hanging out, but without any precious amulets, as they are both younger. I'm still trying to convince my sisters to let them go, since Blitzen has by far the highest stats. No luck so far.
It didn't stop there either. On Monday, we found our second pacing horse!
He's faster and has higher genetic stats than Teatime, but he lacks Teatime's unique physique and cool sabino markings. Hence, we did not allow ourselves to get attached and sold him pretty quickly.
Then, on Friday night, we found this gorgeous mare:
We've started the slow process of crafting and dying our own saddle blankets and polo wraps so that each horse will have its own in a unique color. Talvi was the first to get hers since she didn't need any dye: we're keeping her in snow white.
We haven't found any specific dye guides online, so we've been doing some experimenting on our own. So far we've made "Indian Red" from 10 cranberries, "Lemon Slice" from 7 dandelions, "Cajun Spice" from 5 cranberries, and "Zurich Blue" from 5 blueberries. Our first saddle blanket just happens to be Zurich Blue, and we really like the color, so it's a keeper. Not sure about the others yet.
In case you were wondering, we're sticking with Western pads for now because crafting them requires less wool than English pads. (Wool is something you can only get from importers and costs $$$.) And really, while we prefer English-style tack, for all the long-distance open country riding Pepsi does, Western gear makes sense. We'll probably eventually craft each horse an English pad in its color too. It would also be fun to craft Pepsi a shirt in each color so that she can match. She's got to be weary of her white adventure shirt by now.
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