A new addition

Mi suegra celebrated her 85th birthday Thursday and among all her lovely gifts was a true surprise: a brand new baby Criollo horse born to our Tobiana.

Argentine Criollo horses are famous throughout the world's horsey people. By not much more than benign neglect (the Criollo was never sufficiently cheto for the richest country in South America), the Argentine examples of this breed are considered the closest to the original horses brought by the conquistadores.

They share the same story as their shipmates the cows. After the first attempt at settling the argentine failed, the cows and horses of the original settlers escaped into the endless pampas where they found a heaven on earth... all to themselves and nary a predator anywhere. About 40 years later when the Europeans came back the place was covered with cows... and horses.

The Criollo is kind of small and powerful; their 15th century forebears were considered the best that Spain had to offer. The natural selection that took place over the centuries also produced in them tremendous disease resistance and a stamina that befits an area half again as large as their mother country. The breed finally got its propers when in 1928 an Argentine professor with no riding experience rode two of them from Buenos Aires to Washington DC and became a household name all over the New World.

Our little colt's mother is named Tobiana. The name comes from her coloring, a dark and light pattern that a cowboy might call "paint". The term "tobiano" is used by breeders all over the world and comes from Argentina.

The Brazilian General Rafael Tobías de Aguiar apparently had a preference for this coloring in his war horses. Argentine troops probably had contact with him during the War of the Triple Alliance... and came back home with a new name for the coloring: "tobiano", after General Tobías.

Oh, yeah! I mentioned that the blessed event was a surprise to Mamá and all of us. That's because we didn't know that Tobiana was pregnant! When we bought her early this year we realized she was pregnant. That was sort of bad news in that we needed her for work and wouldn't really be able to push her since she was in the family way.

The horse-trader (a man named Castellano with the most amazingly "horse-like" face I've ever seen on a human!) agreed to take her back. But she was so pretty that we decided to bust the budget and instead go back and buy her best friend, Mora (another "color" name.)

We vacillated for months but after a while, we decided that Tobiana wasn't pregnant at all! We all came to the conclusion that Tobiana was just a little fat and a little more disposed to play rather than work (it's not really easy sometimes to tell if a horse is pregnant just by looking.)

So we put her to work but not all that much because we now had her buddy to share the load. Just last month, in fact, one of our more obstreperous cows ran up and head-butted Tobiana in the ribs sending her and rider flying! Now she doesn't wanna work at all.

So when she gave birth on Mommy's birthday it was surprising and hilarious and kind of shocking that she didn't lose her colt in the "Liverpool Kiss" from the vaca whom I have now named Zidana.