Friend

After losing her previous pregnancy thanks to an EEV outbreak somewhere around the 90-100 day mark, Rene had a visit with Dakota---Wynnie's dad---again last year. She was confirmed in foal and rechecked multiple times, but we never quite got an exact cover date. Dakota is a total gentleman and the two of them were allowed to live in the field together for several months, and for some reason Rene is a super discreet mare and we never actually saw her come into heat.

Nonetheless, as we reached mid-January, it became obvious that we didn't have much longer to wait. With alarming suddenness, Rene developed an udder and a low-slung belly. I moved her in at night and started a maddening series of late-night and early-morning checks during which nothing whatsoever appeared to change. Her milk didn't quite come in, remaining mostly transparent. The foal never kicked. I watched her like a hawk and yet she seemed to be making no progress beyond simply feeling very huge and pregnant.

One morning as we breakfasted on the stoop in front of our cottage, my husband gazed across the horse fields and announced, "Rene's going to have her baby this week."

I scoffed. How would my non-horsy husband know from a distance of fifty metres when the mare was going to foal down when I, the horsewoman, had been hovering over her for days?

"Look at her," he said. "It's obvious."

Three days later, I peered in at late night check to see Rene eating hay peacefully. Still no real milk and certainly no wax.

"Nah," I told hubby. "We've got a few days."

The next morning there was a fluffy little brown creature waiting in the straw.

In my tremendous excitement, I forgot everything that I had learned in a lifetime of farming and decided that the foal was a colt. It was also dry, strong, and able to stand on its own, but it was sucking everything: me, the mare, the straw. Correction, it was sucking everything except for the actual teats. Worried that the foal was already a couple of hours old and hadn't gotten any colostrum, I tried to help it drink, but it just wasn't getting the hang of it enough to ingest a meaningful volume.

I texted the vet, who agreed with me that there was nothing wrong with it except, and I quote, "it's clumsy stupid". So I milked Rene. To her endless credit, she stood munching on her breakfast while I milked her like a dairy cow. The hungry foal blundered all around the stable, sucking the walls, sucking my hair, sucking every part of its mother except the relevant bits.

Once I had a nice, frothing litre of colostrum, I tipped it into one of the sterile bottles we use for the calves, topped it with a rubber teat and prepared myself for a fight. Calves usually take a second to learn how to drink from a bottle and cover you with colostrum in the process. As I was figuring out how to get this done, I realised that the foal was, in fact, a filly. My bad. She was solid bay with only a white coronet on her right hind.

I wrapped an arm around the filly's neck, with DH watching in adoration (of the filly, I might add), and put the tip of the rubber teat in her mouth. And she slurped up the bottle all in one go.

With that, the filly had thoroughly imprinted on me, but she was still more than happy to search her mother for more milk. I let them be now that I was certain she'd had that essential first colostrum, and within an hour or two, she'd figured out how to suck
le all on her own.

After much intense debate, DH and I finally agreed on a name: Morning Star Raya. Not only do we both love Raya and the Last Dragon, but it's also a Hebrew name meaning "friend". And if that's not already an excellent description for this precious little filly who loves everyone, I don't know what is.

Despite her inauspicious start, Raya is one of the strongest foals we've had. She was born with lovely straight legs and has had no drama at all. At a week old, with her toothies barely making an appearance, she's already eating and drinking water on her own, lets me lift all four her teensy feets, and walks to the field and back with a soft rope around her neck like a big girl.

She adores the riding school kiddos and, especially, me. Although she hasn't had any difficulty suckling from Rene ever since, she still likes to suck my arms. We spend a lot of time allogrooming. Is it adorable? Yes. It is the most adorable thing in the universe.

I only realized now, and perhaps I never actually connected the dots, but Rene is also the dam of my first purebred Nooitgedachter, a beautiful grey filly named Arop Amelia who died from tetanus ten days after I brought her home in 2016. I called her Rainbow and she took a chunk of my heart with her. Raya feels a little like getting a piece of Rainbow back.

RIP sweet Rainybow

Rene is doing fabulously well for an older girl who's about to turn eighteen. Obviously I'm feeding the living daylights out of her, but she's holding her weight and clearly enjoying being a mommy mare again. She's so experienced and relaxed that she makes everything seem easy.

We'll retain Raya for now and, Lord willing, produce her and see what she would like to be. With her temperament and breeding, she'd be useful as a schoolie or a kids' horse. If she inherited her daddy's engine, she might make an appearance in the dressage ring someday, too. For now, she's just our precious baby Raya, bringing smiles everywhere she goes.

God is very good.