Onyx's girl foal

I am in Saugerties, New York, staying with friends.  Billie and Richard live in a farmhouse that Richard has restored:  the kitchen he added on is bigger than most apartments I've lived in, and the deck off the south side of the house affords a view over the vegetable garden, some of the flower beds, a lawn, and the Thoroughbred horse breeding and training farm across the road.  

When I arrived here a week or so ago, I walked over to meet the foals.  I've been a fool for horses all my life and think I would happily have moved into the barn to be close to the mares and the foals, to smell that wonderful horse-ness, to hear the anxious whickering of a foal not sure where her mama was and the low, calm answering whuffle the mother makes.  How not fall in love?    

Last week, the youngest foal was three days; the oldest, two weeks.  The changes I've observed over the intervening days have been astonishing.  Foals who could totter around in their mothers' shadows can now run (not too gracefully yet), who could rear up (not too far off the ground, please) can now do a creditable job of it, who could buck (hesitantly) can now do a rodeo bronco proud.  Last week, the mothers would chase even the other foals away from their babies; now, those foals are figuring out how to play together, to understand that they are each others' natural foils, to test strength one against the other.  

My favorite is a little female foal whose mother is named Onyx.  The day before yesterday, Onyx's foal figured out how to lie down:  how to accordion up those impossibly long legs with the improbably big knees, to lower herself to the straw before rolling onto her side to lie in the hot sun.  Prior to that, she would bend her legs, get this perplexed look on her face, and just flop over like a tree falling to the ground.  No control, no understanding of simple mechanics - - just submission to gravity.  I think she was offended when I laughed.  

Onyx's foal has lost her hesitancy around me.  She comes to the fence when I appear, stretches up her beautiful little head for me to scratch the center of her forehead, switches her tail in time to the scratching.  I love her immoderately and am convinced she will grow up to be strong, beautiful, and fast. She will win races, thus proving her value as a broodmare; she will pass her boldness on to her own daughters; she will whuffle when those daughter foals wake up in the straw and wonder where she is.  

How I wish she were to be mine.  Go well, Onyx's girl foal. Show those males what you can do.  Run with ever-increasing grace, rear up tall and proud, and show those broncos what bucking is all about.