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This summer big changes happen to my little herd of horses. Arroyo is gone now to US, Florida, he will not see the snow again, may be ever! 🙂 And I bought
a new horse! He is very young, only 6 months old. His name is Romulus. The journey to acquire him started last year and may be even earlier.
A few years ago I found a small breeding operation in Red Deer called
Key Warmbloods. Doreen Kulcsar has a small herd of high quality mares that she breeds to
European stallions through frozen semen shipments or to very best ones in Canada like Zhivago of Canadream Farm. Last year I looked at the crop of foals she had
and the one I liked was already sold. It was from Keyloma, beautiful black Dutch mare by Tolegro. This year the good lack was on my side and I loved a little dark one month old baby from Keyloma
on the first visit – long legs, long ears, long neck, expressive head, light, elegant movement, barely touching the ground. I bought him…. 🙂

The wait began… I started searching for the name. To be registered as Dutch his name had to start with R. Not the easy letter to name a horse. When I was riding in Russia,
our breeding farm had a stallion of Budenniy breed whose name was Rokovoy and all the babies by him had to have names started with R. That was a task, as we had 3-5 babies each year! 😀
I decided on Romulus, a Latin name of one of the founders of Rome (legend says).

He was born on June 14, quite late baby. To bring him home I had to wait until the end of November, he was weaned just before 5 months old and had couple weeks to settle within a herd of youngsters.
My gelding Arroyo suddenly got sold to Florida and last transport was leaving on November 20th. In 3 days I had to finish all the paper work for travel across the board and bring Arroyo
to Century Race Track parking lot to be picked up by International Horse Transport on November 20th. I decided to deliver Arroyo and bring Romulus back in one trip. Santo was to travel with horses
to babysit both! Bless his heart, he did his job in spades! 🙂

November 20th had horrible weather: -10C plus snow blizzard – felt so miserably cold. The parking lot was open, naked place with wind blowing,
horses calling. Arroyo was third, couple more horses were loaded before him. He never seen a ramp before and it took him a moment to climb up into the big rig. He was provided with a stall and had straw
and hay in it. We left him there and drove off to Red Deer which had sunshine, no wind and cool but beautiful weather. Alberta!!! LOL

When we arrived we introduced Santo and Romulus to each other in Doreen’s outdoor riding arena. Santo was curios, Romulus afraid, but soon they figured it out and started hanging together.
We went inside for a cup of coffee and a delicious cake. Discussing loading strategies we decided to park trailer just in front of the barn doors and walk Romulus into it from the barn, he went without hesitation.
We put him backwards and closed slanted divider, he could see Santo who came next and both settled to munch on their hay. The trip home was uneventful except snow, pitch dark and stop at the gas station.
Boys were amazing!
Unloading took a moment mostly because Romulus was not sure of stepping down from a trailer. However, as soon as Santo started walking away he jumped out 🙂

It has been a month! Every day Romulus is showing me how wonderful he is. He thinks, he doesn’t panic, he is kind, he moves like a dancer, He comes to the barn with Santo where he gets haltered, tied, groomed, feet picked up.
Then we go for an outing. I ride Santo and Romulus comes with us. I do not pony him, he is too small for it and it is not my favorite training tool. He runs free! 🙂 We go to the field on a narrow trail through the pine forest
and in the field Santo works and Romulus plays and rests when tired. He is getting bolder every time. He is now running in front of us or scouts around and then gallops to catch up 🙂
A hail to Santo, who has been an amazing babysitter, uncle, chaperone, “teacher” and hopefully friend. I cannot get over the fact how helpful and patient Santo has been with everything when it comes to the baby!

Happy riding…