Baaaaaby Cooooolt!

[dancinghorse]

This week has been lost in Baby Brain--getting us all used to the shift in routine, and teaching babymonster (who has a name but I should clear it with the other half of the ownership pool before making public--she's away for the long weekend) all about scrrrrrritchies. I had worried that he would take a long time to civilize, but after arriving on Tuesday, by Wednesday evening he was allowing me to scritch his butt through the fence. By Friday I was allowed to be in the same space while rubbing him all over. Since then he's been coming up to me and being more or less a normal in-your-face DHF babymonster.

His mom came into heat shortly after arrival. Pooka tried to do something about it Friday, mare said NO!, so Saturday they spent a lot of time interacting over the fence. Today I put them out together--watching carefully to be sure the baby would be OK. We have video here and here. Note how mom keeps a weather eye on the proceedings.

For those who haven't seen stallions in a herd situation, this can be fairly boggling. This is what a stallion is supposed to be like. Amazing, isn't it?

I grabbed some stills off the video, too (still haven't figured out how to get the higher-res version).

So much for the Fierce Aggressive Stallion Who Will Go After His Offspring And Eat It:




In case you thought the first one was a fluke:





Boy play while mom makes sure nobody gets fresh:




A very muddy Pooka swaps war stories with the kid after a good hard roll (we'd had a short downpour a few minutes before):



And as a bonus: Post-roll, Pooka throws in a little extravagance. Even covered with mud, the Platonic archetype of the My Little Pony rules.

Comments

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

The boggling part is that the mare is *in heat* and Pooka is I'm sure extremely aware of it.. and he's playing gently with a baby.

Aw... I melt. Human males would not be so nice.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Pooka is very laid back in a pasture-breeding situation. He's a kamikaze bomber for the AI phantom, and breeding in hand can be exciting, but turn him out with a mare and he's the soul of discretion.

What most fascinated me was seeing how extremely careful he was to treat the baby the way the mare wanted him to. If she angled an ear, he backed off. She was teaching the baby how to play boy games, using Pooka as a study aid--and he wasn't allowed to put a foot out of line.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that. She let baby boy know once or twice that he should play a little nicer, too. I was as impressed with her as I was with Pooka. Very careful mother, but not over-reacting.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

She's a wonderful mother. S calls her a "ditz" because she weaves when she feels trapped or wants something, but she's very intelligent and not flighty at all. A mare like this is a real partner in baby-raising--both with the stallion and the human.

Funny thing. At S's she wouldn't let him associate with the Arab babies at all. He was only allowed to play with his 2yo Arab half-sister and his Grandma Carrma. Here, he can play with everybody. She wants him to grow up Lipizzan.