I bought Sonja from a horse trader over in Eastern Washington. The owner buys and sells riding horses but also feeds up "unsellables" he's gotten cheaply and then sells them to slaughter. Sonja was in with about 15 other draft mares. They all came from a place over in Idaho that had exposed them to thoroughbred studs. I think it was probably a PMU (pregnant mare urine) facility as it was early October and all the black mares were coal-black. This suggests to me that they were kept indoors, presumably on the urine production line. If they'd been kept outdoors they would have been sun-bleached. Sonja was still producing milk so she must have *just* had her previous baby taken away.

Out of all the draft mares at the lot, Sonja was, hands-down, the most skittish and unapproachable. However, she also had the best conformation so we undertook to haze her into a corral so we could get our hands on her. We chased a band of about five or six mares into a corral and then evicted them one at a time until only Sonja was left. She ran around and around in circles but I eventually managed to get a loop around her neck. Once caught, she only struggled and fought a little bit before she stood shivering at the end of my rope. I handled her a little bit (she was headshy and wouldn't let me touch her feet) and decided she wasn't explosive enough to warrant passing her over in favor of a less-well-built mare. She wouldn't lead, she wouldn't load; we had to squeeze her into the borrowed horse trailer using fence panels and making strategic use of an open trailer window between Sonja and the rest of the herd. She sweated and fretted the whole way home, dancing herself into a lather and turning the trailer into a steam box.

Sonja and Luna set eyes on each other for the first time:


Once we got Sonja home she tamed down quickly and let me start handling her and teaching her to lead. She is a gentle hippie girl who just wants peace and love and hay. Took her a while longer to stop looking so worried and wary. Here she is anxiously eating hay.


Here she is December 2005, two months after we'd brought her home.


Here she is sixteen days before she gave birth to a colt.


Here's a shot of her fourteen days before she gave birth.