New EARS continued
| January 11, 2014 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
I know that everyone here is drooling for pictures. You don’t care what I have to say UNTIL YOU GET A PICTURE. Fine. Here’s a picture.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I’ll help you out. The pair of ears that is to be mine is on the far left.
Her name is TKR Merry Go Far and I’ll admit, her name was probably what pushed me over the edge to taking her seriously. Her mom is TKR Merry Go Fastr and there’s another horse in the same line that is “Merry Go Fast”. (If I breed can I name the baby Merry Go ‘Round? hahahaahaaha I crack myself up. I don’t breed, but I just couldn’t resist).
Now that I’ve gotten the first picture out of the way will you let me tell the story? And if you are the ADHD type that needs a distraction until the next picture you can be thinking of an everyday moniker for the ‘lil tyke. “Gopher” is out – we had a cat with that name. “Go Far” is an obvious one. But you’all know my rule about naming horses within the black stallion series……
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After tracking down Farley’s breeder a couple of years ago (we will call her K*) we have kept in touch periodically over email. I’ve come to really appreciate the TKR breeding and a couple of years ago I told her I would be interested in another young horse from her program at some point. I also know that K* would be interested in a breed lease on Farley.
So, it wasn’t unusual to have an email from K* checking in to see how Farley was doing and to let me know that a TKR horse was available and if I wasn’t interested, if I could pass the information along.
As I read through the email I realized I might be looking at “the one”.
She was the right age – 2 years old this up coming February. Raised on hilly pasture most of her life.
The words in the ad all said the right thing: friendly, easy going, sweet, lots of substance. There was a scary word….TALL. But at this early stage TALL isn’t enough for me to run screaming in the other direction. But, I consider it a little strike against the “ideal” horse in my mind.
Next up was breeding. She’s a half sister to Farley, out of the same sire.
I’m told that Farley takes after her sire’s temperament and I feel like it’s a very solid performance line that can do a lot of different things (driving, racing, endurance, halter). I have a post coming up on Epigenetics…but the short story is I believe it absolutely matters in horse breeding. So, it matters to me that he actually did something as a career (Calbred Reserve Champion of the Year), not just that he comes from a long line of horses that did something. Knowing that Finito-Finisz (Farley’s sire) died last year (2013) at 21 years of age, meant that time was running out to get another one of his filly’s.
For comparison, here is Farley
Farley is completely polish, Merry Go Far is mostly polish as well, except for Fast PTracker who is her great grandfather on her Mother’s side who could be considered Russian. There’s a Darby winner on the Dam’s side, and some other notables. So far so good!
But there’s a small strike here too….color. There’s a really good chance that Merry Go Far is a grey. Her baby pics (2 weeks) look like this:
Which doesn’t mean crap.
There’s a LOT of grey on that Russian side. A lot of greys mated to greys. Farley was bred to this line and had a grey son. As I counted out the potential grey genes, I realized there was the smallest chance that Merry Go Far could end up bay.
But a much more substantial chance she was grey by now. (I’m not a fan of grey).
Are you ready for the 3 year old part?
Turns out that part of the deal to get this filly involves an exchange.
3 months of riding another TKR horse named Tig 3x a week to leg her up for the track this summer.
I did some quick calculations. Three months takes me to the beginning of clinics. There’s a couple benefits to this arrangement beyond just financial.
1. I get to ride a baby for 3 months and prep myself for where Merry Go Far is going to be next year. I’ve ridden babies in the past, but it’s been a while. It would be nice to have a refresher without the emotional investment of it being “mine”.
2. I won’t have any intensive riding obligations during clinics – Tig will be back to K*, and Merry Go Far will be mostly ground handling.
Wanna see more pics?
These are recent (1/8/14)
Do you see what I see?
Yes, I see a bay horse. A bay horse that just *might* stay bay. K* says there’s no guarantees at this point, but usually if they look like this now, they do stay bay. YES.
Off to practice those pistol squats and brush up on my tall horse mounting skills…..
YAY! Love it and hope she stays bay and YAY!
She is a good looking little thing!!
What a fun adventure in the months ahead! Hope the little unnamed one stays bay, she sure is dark and cute. Any name ideas yet?
And as the owner of a tall horse, yeah, it’s a long way up (and down). I found teaching standing nicely next to rocks, stumps or in ditches is a great tool.
I’d bet she stays bay. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about horse color genetics the last few years. 🙂 Everything I’ve read says that typically horses that are grey are either born with very, very dark legs (like adult coat color) or have grey “goggles” when they shed out their foal coat – and I don’t see either of those in these pictures.
I actually like the name Merry, but it doesn’t appear in any Farley books. Merrylegs the pony is from Black Beauty, is that close enough?
I like the name Merry Go Far, actually. I don’t suppose she’ll turn into “Gopher” (go-fer)?
I like her registered name too!!!!! But too much of a mouthful for every day, and Gopher won’t work: We had a child hood cat named gopher that stuck around 20+ years so I feel like I can’t reuse the name. AND there was a mare I knew for a number of years named gopher that was a difficult mare. I could use “GoFar” with the accent on the “Far” – but eventually it would sound too much like it.
I think Merry is good – I like that it is “positive”. And honestly, I think that Merrylegs is an awesome name for me to consider – My first reaction when I saw her close up recent pic was “look at those legs!!!!!!”.
I tend to use 2 part names when I talk to my horses – Farley is “Farley girl”. Tess turned into Tess-y or Tesslet. So Merry-Legs totally works. Merry-Go would work too. I like the “far” part, but with no “hard” sound to it, it’s hard for my mouth to feel comfortable with it.
So MerryLegs or MerryGo? Go literary or closer to registered? Leaning towards MerryLegs.
Every one is going to think “Mary” when I say “merry”. (I don’t care for Mary as a name for a horse). Oh well. Sorta like everyone thinks Farley is a boy.
My gelding, G Ima Starr FA, is a Fast Ptrack grandson out of his daughter, G Im fast. I call him Speedy G. He’s a gray BTW. :0)
Cool! I know that Fast Ptrack was a popular sire and he sure threw a lot of greys…..what a small world.
I think she’ll stay bay! And she is CUTE!
so exciting! She is very cute!
So cute! I vote for “MerryLegs”, that’s the first thing I thought of when I saw her registered name. And seriously look at those legs! 🙂