ANIMAL TALES & TAILS OF ANIMALS
LILY That’s all you need to hear….Lily. The name of a mare but not any kind of mare, one that make’s you never forget her, because in all the cross reference in genetic matching of stallion and a mare, she is the one that forwards her genetic imprint. So strongly that you forget the stallions name. All you end up with is having to cope with her imprint and terms. If you want to get somewhere with her foals, it has to be on her terms.
There is that saying “ to jump the gun”. Well, I will relay a picture that will bring you right with me in the middle of the stories of Lily.
It was a day as usual, after working in the hospital in St. Luc and after picking up my daughter Méline and my son Sam from school, we went to the riding school. I crossed Yvette in the bar and she said…… O Anne, they’re bringing in a foal of Lily. After five years coping with this genetic lineage of this leader breeding mare, something in my body stagnated for a second like a kind of tension. My organisation for the day was ruined. Yvette continued….. O, I think I hear a truck arriving ; the youngling is here. Now I had to go down, no excuses so I said okay I’ll go and have a look thanks. It takes a couple of minutes to walk through the corridors and I could hear the truck’s engine still running. When I turned the corner, I saw that the truck entered the hanger deck, the backdoor of the truck wide open and the 3 yearling of Lily standing still within the truck, I saw the father of Yvette getting back in his truck and then I noticed this. There was a rope that started after the neck of the yearling going behind the shoulders coming back between the front legs and this rope was tied up at the wall. So the foal was standing in the open truck and a rope attached to a wall outside the truck-;At the same moment, the father of Yvette slowly advanced his truck and I saw that this son of Lily started to feel that the ground under his feet was moving and probably because he didn’t want to come off the truck he needed a little ‘push’ so the rope left him the only way out ; jump off the truck , which he did , and then he shaked it all off like it was nothing or nothing happened. I noticed that I released a heavy breath, turned around, went upstairs called my kids and I said we’re going to eat now instead of later. Because I needed to eat something in order to digest everything that was coming. I knew he wasn’t any different then the previous foals of Lily. After five years I was hoping that the “Lily” lineage was going to give me a different foal but it was not going to be this year.
It was not that they were bad or that they were troublemakers or that they we’re not good looking or having any physical anomaly. It was quite the opposite, they we’re nice horses to look at, they had all the same colour namely dapple grey. So you know that if they are born, they have the colour of steel grey or iron grey and once they get older they all end up being white. Also this is known among breeders that the grey coat colour in horses is governed by a dominant “G”gene. It is a dominant threat a horse only needs one copy of the “G” (heterozygous, Gg) to become grey. And there you have it; the word dominance, Lilly carries…..so Lily decide my way or the highway. If I were to describe their anatomy, then I would say compact, not too big not too small exactly a good size where kids and grown-ups could ride with. There anatomy : front legs : from the shoulders down to the ground they stands in a perfect position, so no deviation of any kind ‘straight down to earth’ not slightly behind the shoulders or a bit before the shoulders no no, straight down. The back hand slightly underneath ready to get the engine going and also one specific thing I would add : if you stand in front of these horses they had that little upside down“V” (see picture below)
The sharper the angle the more flexible the forehand is capable of making quick turns. All the foal’s of Lily has a kind of this. So they were much fun in riding them, but you needed to be centred. The thing was before you could ride them, I needed to make up a kind of manual, because of their character. Horses with a back hand slightly underneath supporting already the entire body and upfront a forehand that could ‘angle” different directions in a split of a second, if not centred, you are likely to fall off during a quick turn. By this I mean ; if the rider has a loose flexible pelvis and if you keep that pelvis in contact with the saddle in a pervious way, meaning, allowing the pelvis smoothly move with the horse and by this way ready to direct the horse in a specific direction and keeping your shoulders a bit behind, so your pelvis is more in front of you, then you’re good. Because that way if there is a sudden move, it allows you in time to cope with an unexpected move. But if you are trying to hold on by contracting your muscles fixing your pelvis in the saddle, then you will have difficulty in order to follow unexpected quick turns. You can compare it if you’re sitting behind upon a motorcycle and a person takes off and sometimes your body stays behind because it was not prepared for the move. So as I mentioned it was fun riding them once I had figured out how to get them to do things or how to get the job done. Each time a different foal was a different approach in preparing them. Hence the need to make up a manual towards the future owners.
So, going through the basic training, meaning lounging, no problem because they had a body that could take anything, the only thing was their character, I needed to figure out what they decided to do and make them aware that there was going to be a person in their life asking them to do things. In this period I started more to continue to train them from the ground and I would put somebody upon them so I could correct them from the ground up. So at that time another rider called Marijke came in for help, and actually she’s the one who continued after me training young horses and her favourite younglings became Lily’s foals. It was sometimes a two men’s job . I remember …… Like in that moment when we were ready to mount for the first time a younling of Lily, I would direct and ask the movements from the ground and marijke was just going to be the passenger on top of him. So okay, it was always a moment of holding one’s breath for what was coming because you never knew what kind of behaviour they were going to take on. Out of the blue, he went straight up standing on this two legs, stayed there a few seconds and came down like nothing happened. It was not about resistance, it was just his way of expressing upon something new. After that, he never did it again. It was just his first reaction towards somebody on top of him. He did this with such an elegance and such a balance it was like ‘piece of cake ‘ for him. I think you can start to understand why I always hold my breath when another foal of Lily came in.
Another time the riding school was invited to participate a parade. Yvette had ask me if I could lead a group towards this event. The dress code was the middle ages so we had to dress up, but we didn’t had any time to get the horses used to the clothing. Most of all, none of the horses were prepared to deal with an audience. I was riding a youngling of Lily, and somebody else another youngling of Lily. Once we came to the starting point of the event, we found out that the group before us was a fanfare. The older horses were positioned in the front of us. By the first sound of the drums of the fanfare the older horses were scared around and scattered. That left me and the other girl riding the younglings of Lily standing now at the front line right behind the fanfare. At that moment the two horses were body against body and me being slightly behind the shoulder of the other horse. With my right leg, I was just behind the stirrup of the other girl and from that position I could navigate that youngling to advance by pressure and that is the way it worked and we kept all the parade being ahead of the group. so you can see, they were horses that were bold and on the other hand bold enough to “dare you” like getting you out of your comfort zone, or try to see if you mean it. I can remember a day that a buyer was looking for a horse and a youngling of Lily was presented. This youngling was just out of training and she was not keen on taking a leading position yet. I took the guy that was interested in the horse with me outside to go for a walk . I directed the whole time the youngling without the guy noticing that I was directing and riding both of the horses.
If I remember correctly none of the younglings of Lily stayed in the manage; they were all sold. That brings me to a period where I thought I never would encounter another Lily again, guess what….. but that is for another chapter.,