118 Science fiction?

      

      The Don and his late wife had been fortunate to purchase a young horse with good blood lines and potential.   She grew to become an international championship mare.  Retiring her at the peak of her show career with the idea of producing show quality foals.  While it is rare to have the type of success she had in the show ring.  It was even rarer to pass on those same qualities to an off spring.    She did and the way they did it was to this country lad pure science fiction.

    Her and other valued animals are bred artificially to reduce the danger of injury.  One of our trips with our employers was to take her to a reproduction (Repo) farm to be artificially bred, a few days later the embryo was flushed and placed in a surrogate mare.  See here's where the science fiction comes in, if it takes eleven months to produce an offspring doing it natures way.  Now with this

Ruthie guarding our packages. 
Waiting for our employers.

procedure a valued mare can produce several offspring in a year.   With the recipient mares carrying the colt to birth.   I think I heard them tell of one colt whose sire had been dead for 15 years.  Can't be, I must have been dreaming.  On this particular farm they had over a thousand mares to carry the famous foals.  As we learned more of this practice of using surrogate mares as a tool we found it was actually a common practice in many forms of livestock reproduction.   It was hard to picture the plain brown mare I passed every morning in her paddock was once the champion show horse you see pictured.  Ever since her triumphant show career almost every foal born on the ranch carries her blood line.  Lets go one step further, she is either the mother or grandmother of practically every foal born on the ranch.  Many of her off springs are quite famous in the Arabian English pleasure world.  I had to keep in mind that these colts could be worth as much as 75,000 as soon as they are born and many are already sold before conception.  There future is to be English trained Arabian show prospects.  Beautiful, spirited, friendly animals.  It was obvious Bobbie and The Don were educated horse owners and had exposure to training.  I could learn much as they shared their knowledge of the horses they loved.         However then my practical side showed its ugly face and I asked how much money she earned when she won all the major shows that year.  The Don told me it was not about the money it was about the ribbons, trophy's, honor, prestige and glory of winning.  I guess its not for me, my grocer still required cash.   The rich have expensive hobbies that I can only enjoy as an observer. 

     On the way back from the farm we stopped at a Sketcher's factory outlet mall.  I wasn't aware I needed shoes however it seemed we all came out with two boxes ( some sort of a buy one get one half off, we must have been very fortunate to visit on this special sales event. ).   The shopping was a fun time and our employers seemed to be more relaxed for a time.   I even heard them mention it as a family outing.  Today we seen a sign of some darkness between The Don and Bobbie however I think it is premature to talk about it.  Maybe it was just a stressful day.