little you: take two

So second time lucky. Saturday morning and it's back out to the airport.

There are girls at the cargo counter this time - they don't find anything about your packaging funny.















Patrick gets to our place an hour or so later - and this time there's no need for sedatives: it's a simple slide the straws in and go.

Gramps, who is up from Nelson and 94 yrs old, watched with amusement.

I think his comment was "Well that was romantic."

14 day scan

So today was your 14 day scan.











So back to the vet we went - Ping into the crush and me standing at the back, holding her tail.











I was hoping to see a little you pop-up on the screen (that's Mum's insides you can see below).





















But look as he might, he couldn't see a you - no matter how little - anywhere (see, he's taking a real good look at the screen).











Next step? We go back in three days and make sure you're not there - hiding somewhere.

Dad: Northwood Jet-stream

So this is Dad.

He's a 17.2hh four year old by Coalman's Touch (ID by Touch of the Blues RID) x Zabalu/Sir Bart mare (TB)

The pics are of him at 2 yrs old.

Handsome huh.

Mum: Ping

This is Mum.

She's 15.2hh Paul Johnson stationbred by stallion called Bond (apparently Telereign and Aberlou in there somewhere).

When I brought her I was told this great story about how she was delivered to her new owners.

Apparently she was lead all the way out the car window.

I guess that way they could say that from an early age she was good on the roads...

A little wary but on the way.

For a few days Mum was a little sore and suspicious.

I guess she went to sleep un-pregnant and woke up (fingers x'd) pregnant and sore.

After three days of rest though we went for a hack around Whitford's beach and she seemed OK.

Poppy (that's the bay horse below, she's 5 and a bit of a monkey) is being rather protective of Ping. Which is nice - perhaps she can tell you're in there somewhere brewing away...

So there you are... or were

So that's the 'tube' you came in.














And that's the cooler box the tube you came in, came in.

And boy, when Patrick opened that up to get you out - man, you were smelly!!

She didn't like it so much...

Ping didn't like the idea of you being shot in artificially so Patrick had to give her a decent dose of the good stuff.

Thank goodness she had a beam to lean on - she was out cold.

I didn't get a photo of him squirting you in but I can paint you a picture:

Patrick has glove on that goes all way up to his armpit.

Huge amounts of lubricant on said glove.

Ping out cold.

Patrick pushes semen from bag into huge syringe into very thin long 'straws' then into Mum.

All done, he packs up and Ping stays like that, asleep against the beam for 40-odd minutes.

Poppy stays with her thinking "well I never."

Little did Mum know...

The vet, Patrick (the new vet don't you know), was late.

Ping, that's Mum, didn't mind though. Well, she didn't have any idea what was going on so why would she (although, the day before when she'd been shut in a crush and scanned she probably wondered what was going on!).

Anyways, the vet was late and given how long you'd been in the mini-cooler box I started to get a little worried.

Despite the temptation to have a look at how you'd been packaged, I kept you out of the sun and left you all sealed up.

Memo to sticker writers: Can you put the word 'horse' in there somewhere?

From Dad to Mum via Christchurch Airport, Auckland Airport and a trip in the car.

So, the guys at the national cargo depot at Auckland airport laughed at me.

"Who's the semen for?" they asked.

"Me," was my clumsy reply.

"I mean, me for my horse."

Good save Mo.

I think I was a little flustered because in my quest to find the national cargo depot I'd stopped in at the NZPost depot.

You should have seen the look they gave me when I asked "is this where I pick up air freighted cargo"

"Like what?" they'd asked.

"Ah... horse semen?" was the reply I managed to squeak out.

Their only reply was "I think you're in the wrong place."

Indeed.

When you arrive I place you in the passenger seat next to me and wonder - how carefully does one have to drive fresh semen? Is too much jostling and lane changing a bad idea? Will it reduce the chances of making it?

Then I figured, well, you'd just spent an hour or so in a plane so you must be a little resilient. I thought about putting your seatbelt on... but the cargo guys were still watching and I thought they'd had enough free laughs for one morning.