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Albert's dam
is Standardbred and his sire
is Canadien Horse.
Standardbreds are famous
for having great personalities, as are Canadi
en Horses.
I had never heard of the Canadian Horse, but
after a little research I
realized that this hidden gem of the horse world would be a lot of fun to
work with. I have been told that mares impart personality, if so, his mom must
be a sweety. Here is a photo of him and his mom at the farm.
I saw the earnest look on both of their faces and thought,
"I have got to do something!"
Who knows where he got his
good nature, but he sure has a sense of humor
and such a genuine way of thinking about things, I mean, why lead if there is
no rope around the butt? Ah well, he leads great now, but he "got" the difference
immediately. I am sure there is a pony brain lurking under all that horse
sense! Besides his good nature, he's pretty darn cute!
When I
found FoalQuest,
I saw dedication to finding foals homes, I saw that rather than bias, the focus was on adopting foals.
I subscribed to the email list, read all
about the work that Jan and many other dedicated volunteers do, and knew I
found the right place.
Albert lived his formative
months as any foal could possibly dream:
Acres and acres of rolling pasture with his mom and a lot of other mares and
foals. When he was old enough the farm weaned him and Foalquest brought him
down to Olds, Alberta, Foalquest HQ, to get him ready for his ride home.
That is him, on the left, day before his trip home.
I live in Seattle
(hoping to move soon) and after some help by the
very excellent(!) Sandy Heisey, Washington State Foalquest representative,
I was fortunate enough to find a place to board a foal for a while.
Anna Albright, very awesome boarding person, was planning to pick up her
foals from Canada. So I went along for the ride, saw a lot of wonderful
sites, gorgeous foals and before I knew it we were loading up four baby
horses for their trip back to Washington State! As unhandled as these foals
are, they loaded like champs and trailered down extremely well. I am not
sure who was more tired after 20 hours on the road, but we made it!
Welcome home Albert!
That all happened in early
October (2001)
 and Albert is now growing into a
fuzzy fellow who leads very well, picks up his feet very nicely and can be handled
all over. Pretty amazing for a fellow that spent his formative months pretty
much only with horses. He was not anything like a wild horse, but he didn't
get "imprinted" by anyone but his fellow equines. (wink)
So here we are in the Great
NorthWET, getting to know each other. I rode under BHSI's and retired US Cavalry folks, so every time I work with
Albert, I remember their wisdom and try to honor it and my little fuzzy horse
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