Welcome to the World Faith!

A friend I hadn’t seen in quite a while came to visit the other day.  She  greeted me perfunctorily and zipped out the back door to the horse pasture, stopping dead in her tracks when my old horses, Murphy and Dezi came up to beg.

              

“Well?  Where is she?” 

               

“Who? They’re both there.” 

               

 “Where’s the baby?”  

                

“Um. In Moorpark. Where she lives.”

My friend’s disappointment was palpable. For a minute I thought she was going to leave. She had come all the way from the Westside and she wanted to see a a baby horse, damn it!

I sort of understand.  Lucy’s foal Faith, (registered name:Way Out West) is five months old, cute as can be, and just naughty enough to be charming.  

Together with her BFF, a colt who is three weeks younger, they are the dynamic duo. Or the terrible twins.  It doesn’t matter; they are always entertaining. And the word is out.

Since Faith hit the ground, people from hip zip codes all over California have been making their way to Lucy’s field to oooh and ahhh.  Even folks who usually argue that they can’t possible travel all the way to the Valley because they haven’t had their shots,  or their passport has expired, have been happily meeting me in Ventura County.

I get it. Faith is that adorable. There simply isn’t a better way to waste time than by playing with foals or watching them run around.  If Faith and Lucy were home I’d get nothing done.

As it is, I barely accomplish anything.  When Faith was tiny I trekked out to see her daily. Now, I’ve cut back to three times a week. Okay, four days a week. The thing is, foals change really quickly. Every day something about her is different.

In the beginning Faith was all legs.  She was also incredibly shy.  As one of my friends noted, she was a wild animal. She hated being touched and was skittish. She kept hiding behind Lucy.

I was in a dither about getting her halter broke. I had visions of working with a full-grown horse with no ground manners and a nasty attitude.

I shouldn’t have worried. By four weeks she’d come up to me to get her throat rubbed if I sat on the ground.  At two and a half months the farm owner/foal whisperer Annaliese had Faith marching along in a halter like the show horse she is destined to be.

Now Faith and her BFF are such pests I never get to spend quality time with Lucy. That will come. Much too soon in fact. To Lucy’s relief, in about a month, Faith will be weaned.

She’s been eating hay, carrots and of course , peppermints for a while, but still tops that off with a slug from Lucy’s milk bar. I already miss the days when Faith was covered with milk from head to toe because she couldn’t quite figure out how those confusing teats worked.

Astonishingly, Lucy put up with it all.  Some of you remember Lucy from her show horse days. To say that she had strong opinions was to put it mildly. Lucy was the mare-iest mare I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot of mares.  She bit me more than once, and wouldn’t hesitate before kicking a horse in the arena.

But she took to motherhood.  After the initial shock wore off.  At first Lucy stared at Faith in shock as if thinking, “What the hell is that? And what am I supposed to do about it?’

Lucy figured it out soon enough and from then on it was smooth sailing. She became such a helicopter mom, and snarled at so many stable mates, that she and Faith were moved from the barn to pasture within a week just to keep the peace.

Originally Lucy wasn’t happy about having anyone near Faith. She tolerated me primarily because I came carrying carrots and peppermints.  Bribes if you will.

Now Lucy is grateful to anyone who distracts Faith for a minute. The babies are constantly all over their mothers – nipping and biting them and trying to get them to play. Playing is something that does not interest the mares. At all.

These days when I visit, if the babies aren’t passed out sleeping,

they're huddled together somewhere away from their moms.  Plotting. I actually had time to give Lucy an entire carrot before they swooped down from parts unknown to demand their carrot chunks and grab a gulp of milk from their tired moms.

I’m told that when the foals are yearlings they’ll go through a ugly, gawky stage. It is true that a lot of the resident yearlings and two-year-olds don’t have model good looks, but it’s hard to believe that my perfect little Faith will ever be ugly. 

Just in case, you might want to call me to get your visit in now, while they are still picture perfect.  Don’t worry. I know who you’re really coming to see.