Carrots the Singular Pony

Oh, shoot. I forgot to update the blog, which means that the — maybe two of you? —that I’m not Facebook friends with were left hanging.

The results of the ultrasound were:

It appears that some labs that process bloodwork aren’t as trustworth as others. It’s possible they counted her total estrogen, instead of the specific estradiol they tested for? I have to be honest, I didn’t really pay attention to the entire explanation, because in my head I was doing this:

And yes, that’s the same clip twice in a row, but seriously. This is exactly how I feel.

I do feel a little sorry for my older boys. They were really, really REALLY excited about having a little bitty baby pony in their own backyard. I told them to keep it to themselves until we found out for certain on Saturday, which (in typical kid fashion) they interpreted it to mean “TELL EVERYONE, AS LOUD AND AS FAST AS YOU CAN.”

They might have even cried a little bit when I told them she wasn’t going to have a foal. I found myself murmuring all sorts of “Well, that’s something to think about” type lies when they started asking if we could ever breed Carrots and have a baby in our own backyard.

I guess I wasn’t entirely lying. It would be something to think about.

Man, wouldn’t that be horrible and hard and impossible and expensive and totally pointless, to breed a baby pony out of the mediocrely-built pony my kids will outgrow in less than a decade?

There. I thought about it.

Okay, I take that back. Carrots isn’t mediocre – she’s actually built pretty cute, and will be quite attractive once we finish worming her and getting more muscle on her, and some shine in her coat. Also, she’s just so stinking good natured.

When I found out that she was “pregnant” one of the first thoughts I had was, “Well, DRAT! I thought I had the nicest mare in America, with the quietest heat cycle ever. It turns out she’s just pregnant. I wonder how witchy she will be once the “real” Carrots emerges post pregnancy?”

As it turns out, this is the real Carrots. Hooray!

Saturday morning dawned bright and early. I had taken some updated photos of Carrots’ belly on Friday night, and to my mind’s eye she was so wide that I thought the ultrasound was almost pointless.

Still – if I was going to have to rearrange my entire life (possibly lease out Caspian, drop a bunch of money on bedding for the stall, invest in a ton of non-fescue hay, keep the horses separate, etc.) then I needed some very real conformation.

I told the boys to stay out of Carrots stall in case she was moody and close to delivering and to leave her be…..which apparently translated into “let’s braid a flower crown into her mane to make her look pretty for the vet.”

Sigh. Cute…. But SIGH.

The last time Carrots loaded up on a trailer was when she showed up here, plus it was the day of the Seattle to Portland bike ride, so my farrier and her trailer arrived early. We walked Carrots out to the trailer, with her trailing along behind DragonMonkey on a loose lead.

That’s a far cry from the pony that arrived back in February, who seemed to delight in dragging people in her wake as she lunged from patch of grass to patch of grass.

I still remember the expression on her face the first time I really corrected her. Popping her with the leadrope did absolutely nothing – she would toss her head in the air for a moment, all fake indignation, and then drop her head and lunge at the next bit of grass. She was very good at lowering her body mass and pulling you forward. If I wasn’t at juuuuust the right angle, she could even drag me. And the kids? Forget it. They sailed along behind her in the wind, like spindly little kites.

I didn’t know her, and since she was so thin I didn’t want to punish her unnecessarily hard for her desperation to eat, so the first week or two I did my best to correct her gently. Eventually I began working my way up to popping her pretty seriously with the leadrope, but it made absolutely no difference, even with a knotted rope halter.

Eventually, enough was enough.

I was standing beside Carrots as she calmly grazed, when all of a sudden she took it in her mind to go to a different patch of grass. She lowered her head and deliberately jerked her jaw forward, trying to rip the lead rope out of my hands.

I windmilled my arm and smacked her belly with a giant open-handed SLAP!

Carrots. Was. Horrified.

She reminded me of one of those “I’m a customer, and the customer is always right!” If you’ve ever dealt with the public, you know the exact time I’m talking about. Carrots doesn’t have fingers, and so she didn’t have a manicure, but if she had hands her little laquered nails would have been trembling in shock and dismay as she covered her mouth with stiff fingers.

How DARE I? How DAAARE I strike her? Why…. Why… why… why, she NEVER! My manager was going to HEAR about this. She was going to have MY JOB!

I let her digest the indignity and horror that had just been inflicted on her, standing calmly to the side. I think that’s the important part of having to discipline a horse, or at least what works for me – giving them a chance to think it over, and letting them decide what they’re going to do next.

Carrots decided to be good. She eyed me out of the corner of her eye, but when I asked her to leave the next patch of grass, she did just fine.

A couple of weeks later, Aarene was over to visit, and was teaching my kids to teach the horses “Look Away”.

Caspian got in one or two tries.

Carrots got a light smack on the side of her face after she became too pushy.

She. Was. HORRIFIED.

A couple of weeks later, she tried to crawl over the top of me when I was carrying some feed, and I cowkicked her. It sounds so much worse than it actually is, but it’s actually one of the best things I’ve found for dealing with a horse that won’t respect your space. You just pick up your leg and kick out behind you.

Either they’re too close and your foot connects with their chest (unless you’re secretly Jackie Chan or all muscly, it doesn’t hurt them in the slightest), or you find your foot dangling in middair because if there’s one thing that is universal in horsey language, it’s the lead horse kicking out when an underling is following too closely. Horses immediately know that you’re telling them to baaaack offfff.

Anyways, when my foot connected with her chest she was slightly horrified, but beneath her eye rolling, I saw her looking at me and thinking.

And that was it. That was the last time I had to correct her.

Oh, I’ve had to grab the leadrope from the boys once or twice, when she has started to amp up her desire to pull them around when they’re grazing her, but all it takes is a tiny little jiggle of the leadrope, maybe a slight pop to remind her, and she’s back in business. She leads everywhere now, slowly, and respectfully, and she’s not nearly as traumatized as she thought she was a couple of months ago.

I actually really like her. We are pretty lucky to have found her.

Anyways, Carrots sniffed the ledge of the trailer twice, then loaded like a dream despite not having seen a trailer for the past five months, and off we went to Newberg.

I really liked the vets I met, and I do wish they were closer. They had a clean facility, relaxed horses onsite, and were very reasonably priced. It was a husband/wife team – she specialized in the sportshorse/lameness side, and he specialized in the equine reproduction. Because Carrots is so small, the wife was the one that did the actual ultrasound, and he directed her movements and read the results.

So, the bad news is that I got everyone’s hopes up for nothing and totally destroyed my children’s dreams and made them cry.

The good news?

Carrots behaved like an absolute dream. I have to admit, I was a little on the fence if I was going to keep her, back in late spring. She has wide, nervous looking eyes sometimes, and she seems ultra alert to things.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I’d never seen her actually freak out with a spook, but there was a wariness, an over-alertness that I just didn’t quite trust. If I’m going to keep a pony that’s too small for me to ride, I want it to be one that I trust with the kids, not one that’s spooky and overreactive.

The thing is, she has never actually really spooked. Oh, sure she’s been startled, but she hasn’t really spooked, and the way she handles herself in new situations is amazing. She walked right off the trailer at the vet’s, glancing around her alertly, and then stood beside me patiently while we discussed her history. She didn’t paw, she didn’t jig in place, she didn’t freak out – she just stood there, patient and wide-eyed and very still, and waited for us to tell her what to do next.

Good pony.

VERY good pony.

The vet said, “Well, she’s definitely got a belly,” when she came off the trailer, but was quick to amend, “Of course, I’ve had really wide mares walk off the trailer here for the purpose of giving birth here, only to palpate them and discover that they were open, so belly doesn’t mean that much.”

We led her into their exam barn and they gave her a smooth muscle relaxer to make the ultrasound less uncomfortable as well as a fast-acting sedative, and the ultrasound began.

It was pretty obvious to me that there was no pregnancy after the first minute or so of the ultrasound, but still – I waited until they were done and heard the words “We can’t for-sure rule out a pregnancy that’s less than two weeks, but she’s other than that, she’s not pregnant.”

For a brief moment I felt almost disappointed – I had been looking forward to seeing a pony foal on the ultrasound machine, and to having my suspicions proved correct, and to getting a foaling date….

But maaaan, that moment was very, VERY brief indeed, because immediately afterwards I felt my entire body relax with a warm, drippy, almost honey glow of relief.

I hadn’t even realized how truly upset I was until I felt my body sag in relief, and I threw my arms up in the universal TOUCHDOWN victory sign.

“Not pregnant! She’s not pregnant!” And then I started tearing up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know it’s silly to cry, it’s just… I didn’t know how I was going to be able to handle it. I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to do wrong by my kids and get rid of their pony, and I didn’t want to have to get rid of my horse, and I have that filly coming in October, and I just… I just.. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just so happy. I’m so happy!”

They stared at me, and I continued apologizing and babbling, until eventually they said, “Well, actually, we have had people cry when their mare’s not pregnant, but we’ve never had anybody cry from happiness before. This is a new reaction to us. I’m glad you’re happy, though.”

Time for a power pack wormer to get rid of the belly!

I know the boys are so sad about it all, but I am just so happy, and so relieved. I feel so rich right now. Do I want to go build a grazing paddock? Well, I should go build a grazing paddock! Do I want to go get a coffee? Well, I can grab me a coffee on the way to work! I don’t have any (planned) vet bills in the future!

Also, do you want to know what the very, very best thing about Carrots not being pregnant is?

In the back of my mind, I was a little worried about the work load of three horses. Oh, sure I managed just fine with Jupiter, but Reverie is a lot more horse than Jupiter. Also, last winter was hard. I know most of it was the depression, but it was HARD…. And now I’ve added a full time job on top of everything.

Anyways, with the Carrots pregnancy scare, I spent so long trying to wrap my brain around how I was going to afford and care for four horses that three seems almost easy by comparison.

Three horses? Four kids? Forty hours of work?

Pffft, no problem! What a piece of cake!

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