Coral at one year old, May 2005.


Definitely a gangly teenager now! May 2005.


She just needs a pair of wings and she could be Pegasus :-)


Coral with Carrie (dun filly) and Pat, July 2005.


Coral and Carrie, August 2005. I was attempting to get these gals to do something more exciting than eating. Here is Coral expressing her opinion!


Coral heard her friend Carrie, who was in the barn, calling to her. August 2005.


I really liked the way her mane looked in this picture!


Coral has really filled out over the summer and now looks more horse-like than foal-like. October 2005.


Coral and Carrie. Carrie will be leaving for her new home in CA at the end of the month (October 2005). It's kind of sad to think that soon this friendship will be split up. I guess you have to learn to deal with it if you breed and sell horses. Our Pat and his half sister Mimi are lucky- they will never be parted.


Most of the pictures I've taken of Coral this year have been with my old Sony. I couldn't seem to get the new Nikon to behave- it was blinded by Coral's "whiteness", making all the pictures I took of her in full sun overexposed, and for a long while I couldn't figure out what to do. Well, I finally changed the settings to center weighted metering so the camera will adjust exposure to the value of the subject in the center of the frame. Much better- don't you know I was happy! November 2005.


Here is the conformation shot I tried all summer to get! Of course, now she is all hairy and those red clay stains are not coming off with anything short of a bath, but I still think she's beautiful!


We have been having a January warm spell- 70 degree days- and I've been taking full advantage of it to get outside and enjoy my horses! Here is Coral at sunset. It's not hard to imagine a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead! January 2006.


Coral is watching Jim on his bike. I'd asked Jim to ride it down by the horses so they would look at him instead of eating, and I could get some good pictures of Connor. I didn't expect that Coral would also be fascinated by the bike. June 2006.


Coral and Connor checking out the bike.


Jim bought one of those big exercise balls for the horses to play with. I took the ball out into the pasture and set it down. Coral was watching, trying to figure out what I had brought. Then the breeze caught it, so it moved!! February 2007.


Coral was not too sure what it was at first, but it took her less than a minute to go up to the ball and start pushing it around!


Coral has made a new friend. Charli is a little more sedate of a companion for Coral than her full brother Connor was. Guess it's an all girl's club now. July 2007.


8/14/07: Coral's been neglected in the photo department lately. So I gave her a bath, trimmed her feet, and then did my best to get her to pose for some pictures. I got a couple noodling around, jog trotting pictures that were ok, as you can see above. But Coral really just wanted to eat.


Just then, Jim got home from work, so I called to him to come help me. He only got half way down to the barn and then started flapping our mail in the air to get Coral's attention. Well, you would have thought she had seen an alien spaceship landing. Here she is taking a good look before going into action (see the next series of photos).


She snorted, flagged her tail and went into a huge trot that a park horse would envy. You can kind of see the "gray Arab" resemblance in these pictures. She kept this show going for a good five minutes and I was really wishing I had the camcorder instead of the digital camera!


Coral has spent the summer with Frosty and Charli. Charli adores her. Lately I have noticed that Coral is looking more full bodied and mature- less like a young horse and more like a grown up mare. September 2007.


May 2008. Coral reminds me of the beautiful Crabbett/old type Arabs I admired in the pages of ARABIAN HORSE WORLD magazine, a library favorite when I was growing up.


Coral is getting spotted! I admit to being a bit perplexed by this. See that spot on Coral's rump? That is NOT dirt (in fact, I had just bathed her and this is about as clean as I have ever gotten her). It is a Bend Or spot! She now has developed a few other smudges and hints of Bend Or spots elsewhere too; there is gray hair in the core of her tail and a few stray gray hairs in her mane. Her dapples are fairly obvious right now as well. So- just how minimal can sooty (Bend Or spots are thought to be related to sooty) be? We know sooty runs in this family (Californio) but Goldoak's offspring tend to be not only fairly light in shade but not as sooty as the other branches of the family tree.  Late May 2008.


I'd gone out to the pasture to get new pictures of Charli but ended up getting a bunch of good ones of Coral too! August 2008.


October 4, 2008: Our annual fall event at the farm is the Southern Model Horse Convention, now in its 21st year and always held the first Saturday in October. SouthCon was designed as a way to promote Morgans amongst model horse hobbyists. It works- several SouthCon regulars now own Morgans!

Mandy Triebel traveled the furthest to come to SouthCon- by far -all the way from Germany! In 1997 she was a foreign exchange student with a family in Alabama. She has stayed in touch and every few years, she visits them. This year she decided to see if there were any model shows in the area while she would be in the States, and that is how she found SouthCon. Mandy had never seen a Morgan before. Coral gave her a proper introduction!


March 1, 2009- Snow in Georgia! Coral had never seen this much snow before and was really not enthused. Charli, on the other hand, was like a little kid.


March 2, 2009- The snow was becoming a little more acceptable to Coral. Once she rolled in it she couldn't get enough- she did several repeat performances.


May 2009.


Coral watching something in the woods, July 2009.


August 2009.


September 2009- I have been working regularly with Coral, to get her under saddle, since June. We were blessed with an unusually cool summer with many low humidity days so I took full advantage of it. Coral has been ready for me to climb on board for about a month now but with the days getting shorter and no one here during the day when I work with her I did not want to just go ahead by myself. Though I've never had a problem with riding my youngsters I would feel pretty stupid if something happened and no one was here to scoop me up :-)

Here is Coral at the canter on the lunge. We have only recently started using the side reins so she is not yet in any sort of consistent frame, but she is making steady progress. It is wonderful to see her progress from an easily distracted, clueless state to a more serious minded, confident one.


First pic: fixing the stirrups and unfastening the reins from the saddle after lungeing. Second pic: This is as far as I got in the last few weeks- it was as much as I was comfortable doing alone. Just lying over Coral's back. At the end of every lunging session we would stand quietly at the mounting block for 10 or 15 minutes. I started out just standing over her, then progressed to lying over her back like this. Over and over again. She just stands there and that is exactly what I want. The one thing she does that is funny is check out my feet, like she is doing here.


I had never put my weight in the stirrups before. In fact I usually lunge her without them as they just get in the way. So I stepped into the stirrup and got halfway up a few times. Then... there's no turning back now!


And here we are! I got on and off of her a half dozen or so times and she never moved, even when I did a not so graceful dismount and missed the mounting block entirely ;-).


October 11, 2009- It has been difficult to work with Coral with all of the rain we have had in the Atlanta area in the past few weeks. We don't have a sand arena, and the grass is just too slippery (or quickly becomes churned into mud if I attempt to work a horse on it) when it rains nearly every day. Finally we had a few dry days in a row so I got on Coral again and this time we went for a little ride. She figured out what I wanted very quickly and was very smooth! I am excited!


December 2009- I'd always wanted to do a Christmas card with all the horses on it. So when I saw these pet antlers at the Dollar Store, I had to get them. The next step was taking a picture of each horse wearing the antlers, then creating the Christmas card you see here.


February 13, 2010- We had a rare snowfall in Georgia so I was up early to take pictures of the horses having fun in it. They were kind of duds... all they wanted to do was search for bits of green under the snow. Coral looks less "white" when compared with all the pristine snow!