The beginning...

The farm I worked for began purchasing mares in the fall of 2009 to expand their breeding program.  The mares were all carefully selected with the initial intention of breeding them to a particular stallion in 2011.  One of the mares purchased came from Florida and she was a maiden mare.  For those who may be reading this and don't know what a maiden is, it's a mare that has not previously had a foal.  These aren't unusual in the sales, they are typically 3 - 6 year old mares that have recently retired from the track.  However, this mare was 10 years old.  We made jokes about her not knowing how to handle the herd and stared at her in wonder for her lack of winter coat (felt bad for her too). 

George at a few days old.

A few months later, she finally had her first foal, a little bay filly with a triangular star on her forehead.  The foal was two or three weeks late and by far the smallest in the barn, less than 100 lbs. at birth.  I first met her when she was two days old.  The tendons in all four of her legs were lax, so much so that all four of her toes were up in the air and she was walking on her heels.   In order to protect her heels we used gauze pads and elastikon to make little "booties" for her.  My job that day was to hold her so that my supervisor could put these booties on her.   Before we started my supervisor realized she didn't have enough gauze, as I was already in the stall, I decided to just wait there.  The filly was on the other side of the mare, and I had no idea how skittish she would be, so rather than play ring-around-the-mama (especially dangerous with a maiden), I decided to peek under the mare to get a look at this filly.

Standing at the mares shoulder, facing her hind  end, I leaned down to look under her.  Looking under the mare, a little brown face with ears erect stared back at me, wondering exactly what I was.  Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to see if she'd sniff me and reached my hand under the mare's belly.  The filly sniffed and stared.  Because I have a weird compulsion to do so, I did what I do with many horses I meet, I lightly poked her between the nostrils.  A majority of foals would have freaked out and run backwards into the wall.  This little filly felt my finger on her nose, and pulled it back an inch or so, out of my reach.  I poked her three times, each time she pulled her nose out of my reach just a fraction for a fraction of a moment, slightly surprised, but not in fear.

This tickled me so that I stood up chuckling to relay the story to my supervisor before she returned from the lab.  As I laughed and started to try and get her attention, I suddenly felt something poke me three times in the hip.  The little filly had walked under her mare at the girth and done to me exactly what I'd done to her.  We got the booties on her, and as we turned the filly and her mother out into the paddock, I dubbed her Curious George.