The farrier was out yesterday. No one needed much trimmed off their hooves (and this after a nine week interval!), but there was some shaping & filing to be done. Everyone now has nice, tidy little hooves again.
Most of them were quite good. I actually had to bribe Zahr to leave the aisle. He was ready to just plant himself there for attention. A nice change from how terribly suspicious he used to be (not that he isn't still wary, in general, but he's much, much more relaxed & happy than when I got him).
Morgana, on the other hand, was a complete terror. She did not want to sit still. It was wiggle, wriggle, poke, poke, hop the whole time. Considering that during her first time standing for the farrier all by herself she was the best behaved of any of them, I'm considerably less than pleased with her behaviour of last night.
Probably, she just needs a chance to run and work off her excess energy (this is where an indoor arena would be nice -- give her a chance to go on a tear without hitting ice and hurting herself), but that's not really an option right now. She was so naughty I found myself wishing for the lead with the stud chain to slip over her nose to get her attention. I don't even use it that way on Merry, but she was just so fidgety and distracted. I didn't have it to hand, though, so I spent the time she was getting her feet done trying to brace against her and keep my face out of the way of her head tossing. I really didn't fancy ending up with a broken nose for my trouble. Needless to say, she did not get any treats for that performance.
In other news, the Welsh Pony & Cob Society of America has opened a Part-bred Welsh registry. This will allow breeders to register their ponies with the WPCSA when at least one parent is registered Half Welsh. It certainly opens up some possibilities for breeding programs that are, like warmbloods, more focused on producing a particular pony-type than in purity of bloodlines. Granted, there is the Sport Pony section of the American Warmblood Society for that to some extent. For really tracking the breeding of a pony (or horse), being able to tie him or her to a specific breed registry (or registries, plural) is really nice.
Whether or not it truly makes a horse or pony more saleable in the grand scheme of things, I myself certainly like having registered stock, whether or not they're breeding prospects. Zahr, for example, is a gelding. Totally useless for my breeding programme, on hold though it may be, but I'm proud of the fact that I can say that he is a registered, purebred Arabian. I can look at his pedigree and see horses in it that I like (and yes, some I don't care for as much). Maybe that makes me snob that I personally value him a little bit more because of a piece of paper, I don't know. It didn't really factor into my decision to buy him. He needed a good home, looked to fit in with my circumstances at the time better, and was just plain a better horse than the (unregistered) mare up for sale with him. Him being registered was incidental, but it's still something I appreciate, now that I have him.
So I'm excited about the new registry and look forward to seeing how it pans out in the long run. It's definitely nice to know that, once things pick up and I can start breeding again, if I breed Merry to Morgana, for example, that their get will be able to produce registrable ponies in his/her own right, not just if s/he is bred back to one of the parent breeds to be half- arab/welsh.
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