After a week plus of unusually warm November weather, the bottom fell out yesterday, and we are now trapped in a downward spiral into winter. :^( I'm trying not to think too much about that and have instead been distracting myself with HI3, horsey videos, and - to change things up - HG TV, ha ha.
As you've likely guessed from the title, this has been quite an exciting weekend on HI3: 3 handsome stallions lassoed within 24 hours.
We wandered across the the first handsome dude while setting out on a mail run.
Ooh, perlino and white socks!
Alas, too small to ride, but look at that genetic stat total!
If he'd been braver, we might have been tempted to keep him, but there's no overcoming 3% - skittish.
Sorry, buddy!
When not on mail runs, we've gotten back into to riding (and paddling, when necessary) south from our ranch. Unfortunately, our path seems to already have been taken by others, but it's still all new to us, and we'll occasionally still run across an epic not already discovered.
Our latest travels have brought us to a couple of desert islands.
We don't ride through deserts much. They aren't quite as bad as snowy mountains, but tromping through sand dunes is still slow going. None of the previous desert wilds we've happened upon have been keepers, as much as we like dished faces and high-flying tails. We are really tempted by one we found this weekend, though. Can you guess which one of these desert wilds it is?
If we'd gone only by looks, "Shoelace" would've won, but the HI3 stat prize went firmly to "Dandy Suitor."
Despite the too-short back and common coat color, he is still pretty handsome: dished face, great hair, dramatic markings, and cute little splayed-out ears. :^)
Nothing amazing here, but nothing cringe-y either.
He sure looks at home in the desert. I'm rooting for this one to stay! For the time being, we've shortened his name to just "Dandy."
A mail run brought us across handsome dude #3, who was happily grazing away where tundra met taiga. I was playing at the time, and Pepsi was riding Chuckles. Because tundra wilds are often on the small side and I was distracted by the little guy's awesome coloring, I totally did not expect the "Lucky Find!" messages. But come they did!
An American Shetland! Our first ever American-breed lucky find!
He's the coolest little pony ever, and he has a great genetic stat total and a decent personality to boot. Sadly, he's only 10.1 hands tall! I wish we could feed him a magical growing potion! (It figures Pepsi would be riding a horse named "Chuckles" when this happened, doesn't it?)
I tried to steel myself to auction him. We already have Toby the donkey to give us our little equine fix. We didn't keep Culver or many other past too-small-to-ride ponies. He's so small and lightly-built that when he pulls Pepsi in the pony cart, he has to sprint to break into a canter.
But, as already stated, he is the coolest little pony ever, and we might not ever lasso another American-breed lucky find. Plus Toby would probably really like having somebody even smaller than him to hang out with... Maybe we could add two of the little pasture pads to our ranch and just let the two of them hang out there most of the time. It would be fun to have them standing around to greet us each time we visit the ranch...
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