And that's that question answered!

I don't have the final paperwork, but I do know what Justice's test results are now!

Everybody's LPlp!

Yup, somehow he missed out on getting LP from both sides of the family; he's just got one copy.  And to no one's surprise, he's patn/patn - just a plain old varnish roan.

Bath day for real!

Look who actually got a bath:

And he was very well-behaved for it - a little wiggly, and I could have done without the, "I don't want to circle right, so I'm going to step sideways into you over and over again," game, but for just shy of 2 years old and his first bath, I'll take it.  He even got his head wet, via spraying up in the air and letting it 'rain' on him, and was exceptionally good even when I accidentally managed to spray him full in the face.  (Oops!)

With his half-sisters.

His shoulders are whitening out now.  And hilariously, so is his butt!

Not gonna lie - I thought really hard about whether to share this picture. But honestly - the 'ribs' are actually drying winter hair curling; he looked like a Curly when I bathed him!  And he's at least trying to look a little less... Franken-baby.

I also bit the bullet and cut probably a foot and a bit off his tail.  I generally don't like cutting hair off of horses, but... uh... the 1980s called and wanted the rat-tail look back.  So when my BOs suggested taking the scissors to hair that was probably going to break off soon anyway... well.  Two snips at the bottom of the white that's grown in, and then I banded it up and brought it home, because it amused me.

They say you start to look like your animals after a while...

In other news, the BOs have a new baby!

She was right around 24 hours old in these pictures, so she's a little contracted and folded up still.  Hair's been sent off for genetic testing on her; both parents have LP and while mom there is a chestnut, dad is black, so it's... it's really anyone's guess what the hell color she is.

Wet / moving day

While this morning wasn't rainy, it got eaten up with yard work (ugh) and a baby shower for a friend.

And the rest of the weekend looks like this:

Yup.  And with no indoor arena, small barn, not much out of the weather.... Thaaaat'd be a, "No thanks," on all of our parts right there. 

The one thing that did get accomplished is the kids moving back over to the main property.  I'm told that Justice wasn't too sure about whether he could fit in the trailer, but they did get him in without any problems.  They "annoyed him enough to get attitude" - apparently the one whole dirty look was fairly spectacular. lol

On the other beastie front, I think I have an opinion on my horse's pecking order in the herd.  Cessa is one of those horses that wants to be in charge, but she's... well, let's be frank here: she's an absolute bitch when she is.  One of her previous owners was so spineless about enforcing the rules that she got charged in the round pen a few times, something I have yet to see because I don't take that kind of shit.

Since the Great Blanket Incident, she's been doing things like coming to me when I call and being super lovey when she does.  Contrast this to this time last year, when I spent an hour chasing her up and down the fenceline while she flirted with the boys and flipped me the bird.  The year before that, she was lovey, but also pregnant and much lower in the herd pecking order.

So what's the difference?  Herd pecking order.  Last year, she was best buddies with the top mare in the herd.  This year, since I made her wear the blanket, she seems to be somewhere in the middle to bottom of the herd.  The year she was pregnant, middle of the herd somewhere.

Hmmmmm.

Little white hairs...

The last couple of weeks, I've been squinting at Justice's coat, trying to determine if what I'm seeing is dirt or white hair.

Well, apparently it depends on what bit I'm staring at.  Like this shoulder:

It's not mange, I swear.  lol It's white hair slowly growing in underneath the sun-bleached coat.

The current expectation of the barn owner is that he's headed for the bay version of this:

Borrowed from Drafts with Dots

I was thinking not - and then I found that white on his shoulder... lol

The babies are supposed to head back to the main barn this week, assuming the weather quits being quite so much spring in Texas.  (This weekend featured 80 degree temperatures and a hailstorm with hail up to almost 5 inches in diameter in places.  Ahahaha... hahaha... haha... ha... I hate spring.)  That means bigger pastures for them, and a better setup to see if maybe Justice just needs some dietary assistance to get out of the ugly duckling stage.  We had him on some grain that did a great job fattening him up over the winter - but as soon as we took him off of it, he shot up a couple of inches and started growing his spring coat, so we've lost ground on the Battle of Baby Franken-Horse again.

Horses: so noble... so majestic...

So... something, anyway.  lol

Spring is firmly here, and all the horses are itchy.  So I have a whole series of photos of Cessa getting ear scratches that are just hilarious.  That one's my favorite, though.

Justice got... half a bath, let's call it.  He's not the most reluctant of the babies to get hosed off loose in the pasture, but he's not thrilled about it either.  (One of his half-siblings is a hose hog, though, which was cracking us all up.  "Hose meeeeeee!")

He wasn't bad.  He just asked nicely if he could opt out by trying to walk away, and sighed quietly at me when I made him go back into the water.  And hey, there's something resembling a real horse under all that fur!

He really, really needs an actual bath, though.  I'm pretty sure the dirt in his coat is gathering dirt.

*sigh* And farewell, tail.  Yes, that's actually his tail hanging off the back there, and no, it's not that thin because it's wet.  It's just that thin.  It'll grow back - and undoubtedly when it does so, it will be all or mostly white, since it almost is already.  But in the meantime, hello appaloosa rat tail...

Legs

This is just hilarious to me.

Yes, those are long, white guard hairs on Justice's front legs.  The leg itself is brown.  He just... he just has these hairs sticking out like four inches longer than all the rest of his hair.

WTH, baby boy?  WTH.

This, on the other hand, is what looks like when someone has a scar because someone refuses to wear bandages on her foot and thus had a triangular cut heal stupid.

Normally all you can see is the bump there, but the vet trimmed the hair back so he could see what was going on.  She doesn't have a limp or anything; it's just funky cosmetic crap.  Ah well - not worth a few hundred dollars to make it look pretty, that's for sure!

Hi, kids!

Justice says hi!

Those white patches on his muzzle and around his eye are going to meet sooner rather than later, I suspect.  And let's not talk about the big long white guard hairs that have suddenly appeared on the backs of his forelegs.

Cessa also says hello.  Or at least, "yes, scratch me there, minion."

And yes, those were both taken today!  Cold front + rain is blowing in.  I had checked for the rain forecast but not the temperature forecast (oops), so I figured I should probably go home when I started shivering...