My Little Pony, Part 4: Love is in the Water?




WARNING: This post contains "adult" subject matter and should only be read by mature people and horses, not naughty youngsters like those being discussed herein. If this post offends any viewers, I apologize, but I am supposed to be talking about the joys and tribulations of having a new pony in our lives, and well, this is what happened.

Let me start off this post by saying that I know for a fact that Obie, my big APHA, is gelded. I was there, documenting the procedure for a magazine article, and I have photographs of his testes outside of his body.

However, you would never have believed this if you had seen the blush-inducing hoopla that went on in my paddock when Twister went into heat a few days after her arrival. Gryphon still wanted nothing to do with her and made that unmistakably clear, so she concentrated her feminine wiles on Obie, the one who had been admiring her with such endearing innocence since day one. I now know that Obie's innocent little boy routine was all an act, as he turned into a major LUUUUUUV MACHINE when the occasion, ah, presented itself.

In fact, much to my chagrin, Twister presented herself over and over again, and Obie was only too happy to oblige! She'd push her round little rump in his face, demanding his participation, and each time, he was up and at 'em with all the grace of a drunken elephant. And that's pretty much what he looked like, with all 1100 pounds of him propped up there on top of little 700 pound Twister.

Now, I've seen a gelding mount a mare before -- Gryphon did that once when a mare he was housed with went into heat. But Gryphon kind of got up there, looked around him and said, "What the heck am I doing up here?" and promptly got back down. He then rebuffed the mare's further advances, as he had realized that this kind of hanky panky was not something a self-respecting gelding gets involved with.

Obie, on the other hand, "got involved" at least a dozen times within the few hours that I was keeping an eye on the situation, and I mean FULLY involved, not just sightseeing as Gryphon had done. I was shocked, to say the least, and began to wonder if the wee Welsh lassy was going to get injured with that hulking behemoth lover of hers being so obliging. On the advice of my dear friend Mary Jane (who was also watching the shenanigans with disbelief), I called my vet and spoke to her assistant, who advised that we "get the mare out of there quick", as she felt Obie might indeed injure her.

Trouble was, we had absolutely no place to put her. As you may have read in part one of this series, Obie had already broken through a four-stranded electric tape fence to visit his lady love -- and that was before she went into heat. What he might do if we tried to separate them after all this nooky, I could only imagine.

I started to freak out, wondering if this whole keeping-a-mare-with-the-boys thing was going to be a disaster. Fortunately, Obie's studly stamina seemed to wane in the afternoon. I think he must have tired himself right out and maybe even gotten a little sore (in more than one area I can think of...), as he started turning away every time the Frisky Filly came back for more. You could tell she found this frustrating, and she didn't seem the least bit sore or uncomfortable from the repeated attentions of her outsized amoroso.

As the day wore on, Obie kept refusing to participate any further, and I never saw them in flagrante delicto again. Twister's heat only lasted a few days, during which time she seemed to give up on Obie and try her luck with Gryphon, who rebuffed her even more vigorously than usual, as if to say, "You shameless hussy -- you think I'm going to get with his sloppy seconds? I think NOT!"

When I emailed a report on all this to my friend, Dr. Herman Geertsema, who was our vet up in B.C. and the man who gelded Obie, he said, "What the heck's in the water down there?" He was also more than a little surprised that Obie was so readily and repeatedly "up for the job", as this is not typical gelding behavior. "I'm pretty sure I got everything," he added, in what I HOPE was a joking manner!

Are we going to be dealing with this exhausting scenario every time this little gal is "in the mood"? Is it possible that somehow, Obie still has something up his sleeve, so to speak, despite what I know I saw and the vet is pretty sure he did? They'd certainly have a beautiful baby, but that is not what we had in mind! I'll keep you posted...

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