Toddlers and Tiaras – Lionsandtigersandbearsetc

When I left off, my four-year-old filly Layla had just given birth, as a surrogate, to a foal belonging to Taylor Swift. (She’s not Taylor Swift.) It was striking how much the foal looked like Layla since they were definitely not related.

Until then I always thought the idea that boys were slow was just a joke designed to trigger incels, but apparently in horses, it’s a fact. This foal took twice as long to figure out its feet and learn how to eat then either of my girls did.

The good news is that eventually he did learn where the milk bar was, and became adept at using it. I left the clinic that night around 3AM content, knowing that both Layla and the colt were fine.

I got back to the clinic the next morning and they were both well. The colt was zooming around Layla like he’d never not known how to use his legs and Layla was tired, but trying to be patient with the pesky little guy.

I knew that at some point Taylor was going to want to meet her colt, or there would have been no point to having it. But I was extremely concerned. Layla was a maiden mare we didn’t know how she would react to having strangers near her foal. Some mares are positively vicious. Think mama bears and their cubs.

Since I really didn’t want either Taylor, or, more important to me, the foal, to get hurt, I texted Taylor’s trainer and asked with her to let me know when Taylor was coming out. The trainer insisted that Taylor wanted private time to ‘bond’ with the foal.

If that’s what she wanted…. I saved the texts, just in case something bad happened and I needed proof that they’d been warned.

Thankfully it went okay; I found out because there were photos on Instagram. They were pretty, but definitely unsafe poses.

Sigh.

A few days later when I was making my daily visit to the clinic, I noticed a several black SUVs with tinted windows in the parking lot. These were not typical horse people cars. For one thing, they were sparklingly clean. They looked more like protection for the mob. Or something.

I called out to Layla as I entered the mare motel. She whinnied back and I noticed a bunch of people crowding in front of her stall.

It was Taylor, her assistant and the trainer, who was not pleased to see me. The guys in the cars were bodyguards. Protection.
K.

Layla whinnied again, louder so I gave her a carrot, and introduced myself. Taylor was very pleasant.

Inside the stall a vet tech was giving the colt a plasma infusion; this is standard with foals just in case they don’t receive enough colostrum after birth. At one day old, the colt was only about 60 pounds, but 60 pounds of confused, anxious and annoyed horse is still quite a handful. But this was not the tech’s first rodeo. She got the colt infused with a speed that was impressive.

While the foal was otherwise engaged Taylor asked a number of appropriate questions and carefully listened to the answers. Mostly we all admired the colt and I praised Layla for her good job.

After a while they needed to move on. I was giving Layla the rest of her snacks ,the caravan of SUVs peeled rubber out of clinic, spooking a horse a vet was treating.

After a week at the clinic Layla and the still-unnamed colt moved back to the field and joined the four other mamas and foals. Layla was thrilled to be out of a stall and back with her friends.

The other equines were not nearly as delighted to see Layla and the colt. The other babies were all a month or so older than the colt, and bullied him a bit. After the second time they chased him through the electric fence. Layla became a protective tiger mom.

The saying “don’t f*** with a boss mare” is based in fact, and Layla is nothing if not a wanna-be boss mare, happy to show off her skills. A few kicks and bites were all it took. After that, the baby-without- name stayed glued to Layla’s side and the other foals backed off until he approached them.

At three weeks old the colt still didn’t have a name. For reasons I don’t remember but I think has something to do with his breeding, we took to calling him Cooper. He learned it pretty quickly and figured out that he got head and butt scratches while Layla got her carrots and snuggles. When he saw me or heard me calling Layla, he’d come running.

All of the mares were used to me coming out, and didn’t care when I played their babies. Of course, they usually got a carrot or some peppermints and had been for months. Bribery works when broodmares know and trust you.

When the mares and foals know you are a human Pez despenser, they come running.

If they don’t, you can get double-barrel kicked if you get close to their babies.

Which was why it was just luck that no one got hurt when Taylor and her boyfriend, plus a huge entourage came out to the field. The bf, who I will call Travis Kelce, (It’s not Travis Kelce,) is a huge music star. I’m a fan, but it I was much more impressed that he made time to see his girl’s baby horse than anything else he has done. That guy is a keeper.

Unfortunately, no one was informed before their visit, and these are mostly people with absolutely no horse sense. None. We had visions of people being chased, kicked and trampled by a herd of pissed off mares.

Truthfully we were worried that the foals would be hurt in the melee.

Real question: are body guards required to throw themselves between their clients and a furious mare?

I was oblivious to all this when I came out a few hours later, but I did wonder why the mares were so unsettled. Thankfully, no one – human or equine – was injured during the visit.

Phew.

After that, there were no more celebrity visits to the field for a long, long time.

Most of the time when I visited I was the only one there, which was the best. The babies were all curious and friendly, if a little bit pesty. Being mobbed by foals three or four days a week is my idea of heaven.

When Cooper – Taylor eventually named him Columbia but Cooper stuck as his barn name – was four months old he and the others went to Oldenburg breed inspections and ratings. Judging is based on looks, conformation and way of going, ostensibly to maintain the standards of the Oldenburg breed.

I call it toddlers and tiaras for horses.

All the mares and foals were braided, bathed and impeccably turned out. They looked super cute and the the braids were all a bit wonky on the babies which it makes it hard for me to take it seriously, but it is.

The judges are very stern and surround the mares and their babies with a checklist and clipboards rating them on a number of different categories. The judges confer with each other, and then announce their results.

Toddlers and Tiaras, aka foal inspections.

Cooper’s bio mom, who is very cute, was recorded in the breed registry as a Premium Dressage Mare. (Huh? She is a jumper.) Cooper was named Best Dressage Foal (Also huh? His daddy is a fancy FEI horse.), and deemed Elite. He got a nice blue ribbon which he tried to nibble on.

Totally darling.

They all returned to the field as soon as judging was complete. The other mares are all older retired show horses, so travel, new environments and judging is old hat. Layla is a good traveler, and went through the judging herself as a foal (Premium), but she is only four and found the whole experience exhausting. She and Cooper napped most of the next day.

For the next two months things were pretty peaceful. But foals are weaned between four and six months old and the other foals were all a month or two older than Cooper. That meant that gradually the other mares left the field. Their babies were frantic for about a day, and then… just as quickly they got over it.

For more than a month, Layla was the last mare in the field. She looked like the Pied Piper of foals. The other babies were mostly independent by that time but they would check in with Layla regularly. Cooper split his time between playing with his friends and sticking with mama when he was hungry. At that point he was also eating some hay but still liked a regular drink.

Now when I visited I’d get even more surrounded by babies since they weren’t with their moms. They were looking for attention, scratches and the fly repellent that I’d slather them with. It was like wading through five 150 pound Golden Retriever puppies.

It was getting hard for me to get to Layla because, well, foals. When they got to be too much she’d chase a few of them off. Which left Cooper, and he was the biggest puppy of them all.

I’m not sure if it was all the babies glued to her like Velcro, or just Cooper being a pest, or just time, but Layla was mostly over being a mommy. I can only imagine.

On October 1, it was Cooper’s turn to be weaned. I was also time for Layla, now a solid four years old, to go to work for a living.

It took a village to maneuver Layla out of the field and keep all five babies inside, but we managed. The foals were curious but calm when she was on the other side of the fence and they could see her, but all hell broke out when she stepped into the trailer. When we drove away, they all began charging around the field bellowing.

Cooper and company were fine when Layla left the pasture. It wasn’t until she got in the trailer that they got upset.

Even though I knew that by the next day they’d all be fine, it was kind of heartbreaking.

Layla had no qualms about leaving. By the time we to her new home, all of eight minutes away, she had moved on. She unloaded like a dream and marched into the next phase of her life.

Cooper remained in the field with his friends before he was moved to another farm. I visited him one more time right before he left.

All the babies were glad to see me. They all looked fantastic, and it was very gratifying when he pushed his way through his buddies to give me a push and a nuzzle.

I am very grateful to Taylor for letting me play with him for five months. I know he will have a good life. I hope I see him again when he’s grown and working, but that’s a long time from now.

As I was leaving, he followed me to the fence. I admit I cried when I got to my car.

It’s that weird time of year in the horse breeding world: Foal Inspections. Or, as those of us with no sense of decorum call it, Toddlers and Tiaras season.

I get that there, are and should be, standards for purebred animals. Otherwise some idiot might mix a Great Dane with a Poodle and call it Greatdoodle and charge $5000 for it. Just kidding, no one would want that.

Unless it’s already been done. Then it’s still a stupid idea.

Everything from Lionhead bunnies to Bactrian Camels has very strict breed regulations. So it’s no surprise that different types of horses do too. Arabians have certain requirements, Quarter Horses have others, and Paso Finos have their own specifications.

To be registered in the Jockey Club and therefore eligible to race, Thoroughbreds must be live covered which means that the mare and stallion actually do the deed. With witnesses.

(Almost every other breed, including all Warmbloods relies on artificial insemination. It’s so much fun waiting at airport cargo terminals late at night to pick up semen straws packed and shipped as carefully as transplant organs. The cargo handlers always eye me suspiciously when they hand over containers marked “FRESH SEMEN.”)

I don’t understand breed standards other than some for Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods, specifically Oldenburgs. Even so, I only comprehend bits of the Oldenburg Horse Society (aka GOV) rules, because they are written in German. (Google translator was hilarious and not helpful in this regard.)I wouldn’t even know that much, but I’ve had two homebreds. Three if you count Cooper, who is only mine emotionally.

Each foal going through Inspections gets judged and rated on conformation and movement. In theory they are also evaluated on how well they are built for the job they were bred to do: jumpers, eventing or dressage. (They are supposed to also consider hunters, but the Germans don’t show hunters and are pretty clueless about them.) Most judges are specialists in a single division. So if you have a foal bred to be a jumper being evaluated by a dressage judge it might not go well.

Dressage is not my thing. See where I’m going here? Story of my life.

This year the GOV approval season in the US and Canada runs between August 4 and September 22. In other words, right now.

The horse version of Toddlers and Tiaras came to my little portion of the world on Monday.

The foals are between four and six months old and still with their mothers. Imagine Mama June on stage with Honey Boo Boo. That helps make it a full-on spectacle. Occasionally it’s also a shit show.

Before the presentation, it all starts with the horses. Foals are naturally more gorgeous than any four-year old child wearing more make-up than Tammy Faye, but a little zushing up never hurts.

So they all get spa treatments. There are pedicures, baths, and manes braided all to impress the judges with clipboards and German accents. (This year there was a, gasp, American judge.)

Monday’s inspection featured ten pairs of mares and foals. It was loud. It’s always loud. The foals scream because are away from home and separated from each other. The mares may be agitated by strangers coming up and fussing with their babies. (Or not. Some of the mares are sick of their foals and are grateful for anyone, or anything that keeps the little monsters busy.)

Full disclosure: Layla was out of sight of the other mares and screamed constantly from the moment she got off the trailer until when she went back in the field. She settled when I hung out with her. But I couldn’t stay all day, so who knows what she did when I left. But I can imagine.

It takes a lot of work to get the foals in pageant- ready shape. Many have been living in fields, so they look scruffy. Hopefully the foals have shed their baby fuzz, but sometimes they look a bit moth- eaten. They also have the nicks and cuts that inevitably come from living in a group of horses.

At Three Wishes Farm, foals where my babies grow up a baby whisperer starts work when the foals are barely a week old. They are handled, haltered, brushed and learn to pick up their feet politely. My job is spoiling the little buggers and playing with them constantly. Sometimes I overdo it. Sorry, not sorry!

That isn’t the case for a lot of the foals. A lot of them are practically feral. Some have never been brushed, bathed or worn a halter. They don’t know how to lead. That works out as well as can be expected.

At our place, the day before the Inspections looks like backstage at Little Miss America. All the horses get a bubble bath and their manes braided. The broodmares are usually retired show ring superstars, so for them, this is just another day. They practically sleep through the whole thing.

The foals, not so much. Not only are all their manes more like mohawks than manes, but they aren’t used being braided. Cue more screaming, wiggling and temper tantrums.

Eventually everyone is for their close-up. The arena has a tent in the center where the judges hang out. Banners line the ring walls, and the ground is freshly dragged. Outside the ring is a viewing area with risers where the breeders, owners, future trainers and interested outsiders can sit and watch. I usually hang out by the portable rail that separates the judging area from the staging section of the ring.

The Inspectors are (usually) German men sporting crisp, clean, white uniforms. One or two stand safely in the center with clipboards and pens barking orders. On cue, the handler holding the mare starts to run. If all goes well – and it sometimes does- the mare trots off and the foal, who is loose, trots along with them both, showing off its way of going. That’s mostly a fantasy.

More often the foals zig and zag around the ring, kicking or mowing over the mare’s handler. Sometimes they stop, and then race after its mom in a full gallop. Then they notice the crowd. Some are terrified.

Mine had a habit of running around the ring or crashing through the portable railings to visit with me. This was frowned upon but I thought it was funny.

The foal has to trot long enough to be evaluated. Ideally that is the length of the arena. In reality the Inspectors take what they can get: sometimes only a couple of strides.

This is not an exact science.

Next, the foals have to stand so the clipboard guys can walk around them to appraise their conformation. Remaining still around strangers is not always a thing for foals. Moving around and leaping in the air happens. A lot.

Eventually, the Inspectors leave the ring to confer with one another. Eventually the judges pick up a ribbon. They then address the crowd and announce whether the foal is Elite, Premium or, gasp, unrated.

Cooper became an Elite foal. His bio mother was a Premium, and the judges strongly urged that she be used as dressage broodmare. (Huh? She was a 1.30 jumper back in Germany.) Layla was a Premium foal. They told me they liked her confirmation, loved her trot and didn’t like her walk. Which is fine. As a hunter, she shouldn’t be walking much in the ring.

Then it is over. Braids are pulled and the horses all go back to their field. The babies pass out. It is a big two days for them.

Tag: Toddlers and Tiaras

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