And then there were three

I believe there is a (not so) secret fantasy of every horse loving child who does not have a horse of their own, that one day, quite unexpectedly, a horse will be given to them. I'm quite sure I am not the only to have harbored such fantasies, otherwise what would fuel the children's fiction horse genre of just that scenario played out over and over and over?

I am too old to have that particular fantasy come true, but it is what played into my decision to surprise my younger children with a horse. Oh, they knew that Bristol was coming and were very excited. What they didn't know was that a couple of days after we visited the Midwest Horse Welfare Foundation, that we decided that we really needed to bring home another horse that we had seen there. Meet Java who arrived along with Bristol this afternoon.

Java is an appaloosa mare and is as sweet as they come. She is a terrific trail horse, but is also super calm and will be perfect for children such as R. to use to ride. We are so excited to have her join us.

This afternoon, both Bristol and Java arrived. They had an uneventful trip and the couple we hired to haul them were terrific. Both mares seems to have bonded during their four hour trailer trip and have been hanging close together ever since. Emmy is interested from afar. When they get too close, she softly screams and stamps a foot. Bristol felt compelled to pin her ears back in return, but Java, just went and stood behind Bristol. At one point, Emmy was so incensed that she arched her neck and looked very stallion like. We could really see her championship halter breeding coming out at that moment. But for the most part she has ignored the other mares. We never expected she would be particularly friendly, and it's why we designed the barn and pastures as we did.

Some pictures...

Fresh off the trailer

Emmy in one pasture and Bristol and Java in the other.

We we got Emmy, she came with this nice little name badge for her stall. So, M. created some for the new horses.

After dinner, Bristol looking out the Dutch door,

and Java.

Everyone is smitten and spent a good amount of time after dinner spending time with the horses.

Bristol

Java... who likes to hang out in Bristol's stall with her.

It's hard to wait most of the day when you know you have two new horses arriving. So, I spent a lot of time doing some much needed cleaning up of the back yard and porch. I was moaning about a lack of a decent table for between the back porch swings, so M. rummaged through the scrap lumber that was so scrap it was in the burn pile, and built this for me. Pretty nice, huh?

We are all pretty smitten with our new horses, and I will try not to overwhelm the blog with them. But maybe not the first couple of days...