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

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Communication--touching noses is a major conversational gambit in Horse. Social interaction. Baby stallion games--figuring out who's top horse. Dad's letting kid win. Mom's making sure dad doesn't get too strong with kid. The leg stuff is classic stallion posturing: they bite at one another's forearms to signify dominance. Kid chasing dad's butt is a dominance game, which mares also play.

Kid is learning how to be a herd citizen. One thing he's trying to do is get dad to do mutual neck grooming, but dad isn't cooperating--so kid has to go to mom for that.

There's a lot of complexity and nuance in what's going on. And the one in control is the mare. She's modulating what both of them do, to a quite sophisticated degree.

In the one where Pooka yawns and walks off, what he then does is come up to me and start licking my hand. He's had enough of the kid, so he goes off to take a rest with his human.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I noticed a few flicks of eyes your way, but otherwise they seemed to be fairly uselfconscious--either that or I'm just not catching the signals.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

I'm part of their herd--they were doing their thing with me in the mix. Sometimes they'd come up to me and interact, then they'd go off and hang with each other again. After the yawn, Pook came up for a snuggle. In a little while, so did baby.

You've been in the herd--you know what it's like. :)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes! One of my most cherished memories of this year is being surrounded by horse faces wanting scritchies and rubs.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

:) The family group is just like that.