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Pony? Horse? Who really cares. There is a lot of snobbishness in the
world, to be sure, but I would never suggest anyone let their
behavior be governed by snobs. Fjordhorses are plenty of horse
for us (in addition to being beautiful and possessing that
wonderful temperament we all know so well). I personally don't need
to own a 2000+lb. Percheron to feel like a real anything.
I found interesting Brian Jacobsen's comments about the possible
role Laila played in producing somewhat smaller fjords such as Ring.
It is interesting to note that every offspring Ring has produced in
our herd have been substantially taller than he. The two brood mares
that he mates with regularly are taller than he, so could it be that
the mare's genes for adult height dominate?
Height notwithstanding, we wouldn't trade Ring's tendency to
consistently pass along excellent breed characteristics and a very
agreeable temperament for anything. So I would never agree with a
paraphrase of Randy Newmann's lyric that "short (horses) got no
reason to live."
On another matter, have others noted a tendency for their fjords to
be reluctant about going into water? Our 8 year old gelding Vidar,
(off horse in our team hitch) always does either a little sidestep,
or sometimes a vault over water, even small puddles. We have worked
with the team to help them overcome this reluctance, and they are
getting better. Recently we may have stumbled upon a way to get new
animals used to water.
We had a bulldozer here a few weeks back, pushing back the sides of
a wet spot in one of the pastures where the run off from a spring and
an upper pond settled. By doing this, we now have a small shallow
pond (about 30 feet in diamter and about 1.5 to 2 feet deep. Almost
the day it was done, we heard this load splashing sound, which upon
investigation turned out to be Ring up to his knees in the pond,
splashing himself with his front hoof.
Within about a day, Rings' 10 month old stud colt (Bjorn) from last
year ended up following dad into the water and also learned to play
the splash game. A few days later, the other colt Olav (7 months old)
overcame his fear, and got "into the swim" as well. Now, it seems
like everybody's favorite game. As this morning EVERYBODY was
splashing up a storm: Ring, Bjorn. Olav, Mirabelle, all at the same
time. Only the other brood mare Gitane was standing on the shore.
Of course, the splashing is then followed by some good hearty
rolling in the closest available patch of soil, so now we have a
bunch of very dirty fjords.
