RIP Storm

I only really wanted to breed two foals. Along the way I got a couple more and they are a pleasure to have around, but a bonus rather than the aim of the whole enerprise.

I wanted a baby out of Brandy the mini. That appears to be a non happening event. Minis are too small to investigate too thoroughly for fertility problems so not a great deal to do except wait and hope. We've been waiting and hoping three years now.

The other foal I wanted was a riding horse to take me through to old age from Ears. Ears is a special girl - a Silent Hunter mare so she has relations that compete at high levels and is a lovely ride herself. Not a mare to win any beauty contests but she basically has a leg on each corner and is sound.

So we tried with Ears. The first year she was scanned three times, once with twins and twice with a probable single after a twin was pinched and she still ended up not in foal. The second year she held and in due course delivered exactly what I wanted - a grey filly. As she arrived in the middle of a torrential downpour of the type that reduces the ground to inches of mud in minutes she was named Storm. Ears struggled with the delivery and was a devoted mother but also struggled to keep condition on while feeding (though she certainly did her baby well) I promised her this was her last foal (and at 20 she probably figured enough anyway).

Storm looked a lot like her mother really - large ears, a leg on each corner, not likely to win any beauty contests. It really didn't matter she made up for it in personality, she was a bright and independent foal from the start, trying to follow you out the gate when you left, running up to meet you.

She figured out things fast - picking up feet took a single lesson, leading took two, when first tied up she backed to the end of the rope, walked forward a step and stood. Float training was as easy, one sniff of the ramp and she walked straight on and stood up against the bar.

I was forever secretly congratulating myself on getting exactly what I wanted in a homebred horse.

Fate has a way of coming and biting you when you think you have it all.

After almost three weeks of struggling to find out what was wrong and to save her they put Storm down this morning. It feels very very unfair.