[finoodle]

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Owner: Astraela
Name:
Height: 24 hh
Gender: Mare
Coat Color: Blueberry Blue Roan
Eye Color: American Beautyberry Purple
Season: APCT Custom Import

Please post your writing and any art entries for the APCT event on this page.
The new deadline for the minimum 400 words is as follows!:
September 6th 6:59 AM (Chicken Smoothie time)
September 5th 11:59 PM (PST)

[Astraela]

Name: Afină (Romanian, meaning blueberry)

Arrival at Fire Water Ranch:
The whole stables was up in anticipation awaiting the transport truck arrived with our newest challenge. The tournament official told us the draft we are to train, compete with, and, hopefully, adopt was a large, quiet mare, and that she seemed docile enough for handling. Little did I know that I'd be getting a massive blueberry of a mare!! This giant, blue, antlered, mare pranced straight off that truck and into the pen with such ease and elegance one would expect out off a purebred show pony, not a huge chunk of a draft! But she was absolutely gorgeous! The way the sun gleamed on her blue coat, how she held her head high, and moved with grace around the pen. Her antlers gleamed with the runic markings.
As she started to settle in, I climbed the rails and sat at the top (which was just below her withers) when she stopped and turned towards me. Nervously, I sat still as she approached when she lowered her head to put her nose in my face and *snort*! She blew a big snort in my face and gave a nudge of my arm like she expected to be greeted. "Friendly one, aren't you?" I laughed and gave her a pat on the forehead. As she trotted off to find her food, I climbed down, "I'll give you some time to settle in, decompress from your journey, and explore, but after we start training!"

Training: Week 1: It's been 3 days since our pretty blue lady arrived and she has quickly made herself right at home. She enjoys her food, doesn't mind Onyx - from a distance at least, and while her and Rana aren't exactly friends, they weren't too mare-ish either, but that might have alot to do with our new girl's demeanor. After being able to watch her I've decided on a name, Afină. Simply means blueberry in Romanian and I feel it fits her perfectly. It also seems like she likes the name choice! Today, I started with simply haltering and leading. Afină did not appreciate being haltered, but followed me around just fine! Im not sure if it was the halter itself or just her inexperience, but the dusty brown halter was the only one big enough with clips in the right places to get it on her head! Once the halter was on she refused to move and pinned her ears back when asked to do anything! After about 20 minutes of that I took the halter off and she went right back to her normal self. Interesting- I'll need to order Afină a custom halter to fit her better.
Since the halter was a no go and she responds pretty well to direction, I attempted to lunge her around the pen at liberty and that actually worked out in both of ours favor! It seems as if she's been handled before and actually loves the attention and training! We worked at the walk, trot, and lope, over some ground poles and found Afină has a very nice high step and for being such a big girl she has some speed to her. She may do well in the dressage competition and we will have to see how she feels about barrels! We continued to work at liberty focusing on ground work and gaits while we waited for big girl's custom halter to come in!

Week 2: Afină has made great strides in her groundwork and has learned to take cues for switching directions and between different gaits! Her willingness and grace amaze me! Also, her new halter came in and she has been a doll about it! It has just made all the difference. With her accepting her halter, we have moved on to testing the waters with tack and she seems fine with the majority of it. She does not care for anything other than HER halter on her head so we added custom clasps to be able to add a bit and turn it into a proper bridle for riding. Oh! And speaking of riding, it is not wise to attempt that in the mud. Wet grass-fine. Through a flowing riverz whatever. But mud- NO. I ended up being the one covered in mud and walking next to Afină back to the barn when she saw it coming up on our jog and decided to stop on a dime. Luckily she threw her head down when she stopped or I would have been an antler ornament! Needless to say her ability to control that massive body of hers and the speed she can get up to has confirmed our place in the barrel racing competition. Besides finding out she refuses to be dirtied and will not hesitate to stop as she so pleases, Afină has a natural affinity for dressage so we really focused in on those skills! We have worked very hard on refining her natural gaits (she almost has a natural passage), working through half passes and flying lead changes, and teaching her piaffe and pirouttes. Have her train on and pick up the different collected gaits was probably the easiest part of it all, with the exception of the piaffe. This big girl LOVES to move, to trying to get the beautiful collected trot to be almost stationary was a challenge!! Its not perfect but its getting there! I feel like she throughly enjoyed learning how to piroutte- particularly at the canter. Again, she is a mover and very elegant at that, and even when she would become frustrated and trip up, she was nothing but sweet towards me. Also this week we started walking and trotting the pattern for barrel racing, and she has done well, but with us really focusing on dressage skills this week, she keeps trying to go through the pattern in a half pass and attempts to piroutte around the barrel. We were all proud to see she is learning but made us all laugh! Next week we will attempt the field arena for barrels and see is she will let loose!

Week 3: This week has been a long one! We continued to touch on Afină's dressage skills, but tried to hone her in on the barrel racing pattern! While dressage is out main event, I would love to see this girl run in the Barrel race for the experience of it! Last week, she was having issues mixing the 2 events in the pattern, so this week we took her out to the field arena and just let her run at liberty, just like when she first came to us, to let her loosen up. Once she come back to me I put my large western saddle on her and I could tell she knew it was different from the lighter, smaller English saddle. She sniffed and snorted at it, and gave a big huff once I cinched it up. We started walking the pattern, trotted a circle around the arena and then moved right into cantering the pattern to try and keep Afină from confusing the two events and it seemed to work! She took off like a bullet! We did this routine for a while before I really let her loose to run the pattern at full speed. And I tell you! Hang on! Because she moves like a freight train coming through and will only stop if she wants to!!
We are steadily coming up to event time and are working to put the finishing touches on our performance! Afină has worked so hard, grown so much, and never once shown a mean bone! She has finally succeeded in doing a piaffe, luckily our routine only has us doing a piaffe once! But she can do it! And has stopped piroutteing around the barrels as she now runs the pattern much too fast to even try it! We have high hopes for our big blueberry and are excited to see where her training goes from here!


Personality: In keeping true to her color, Afină is a blueberry of a mare!! She is very sweet natured, dependable, and pretty docile. She is as graceful and elegant as they come(much to Rana's dismay), although her large proportions might have you guessing otherwise! She's not quite a diva, but does NOT enjoy being dirty and loves to have her antlers shined and to be adorned with jewelry! As nice as this big girl may be, she is loyal almost to a fault! You mess with her person, her herd, or put an unkind hoof out of line, and you will quickly find out how fast and strong she really is.

Theme song: Dream in a Dream by Ten

Event: Event Day!! We have all of Afină's tack polished up! She is washed, brushed, antlers shined, mane braided and tail adorned all in preparation for our first event, Dressage! We walked into the arena, settled in the center facing the judges and gave our starting bow. The song I had chosen came on, an instrumental version of Africa by Toto. We start of on a walk to the side of the ring and then pick up a trot around to the corner, and as soon as the melody picks up, I have Afină do a half pass across the center of the arena to the other side and continue trotting around and do the same on the other side when the song picks up again. Just before the chorus we trot to the center, complete a standard piroutte, and aas the chorus plays we take off in a passage to the back of the arena, complete a canter piroutte, passage back to right infront of the judges, another canter piroutte, and as the song comes back to the softer piano I ask Afină for her piaffe, and she hesitates for just a second but then does it like it was second nature! Then we trot off to the left as the song continues and repeat the same trot around the outside of the ring and half pass sequences, and again as the song picks up, we pick up into passage around the ring and to the center as the song fades out and we give our ending bow. The crowd claps and i give Afină's neck a couple of good pats. She snorts in approval as we leave the ring. We got plenty of time to cool off, clean up, and rest before the barrel races this evening!
After resting and watching some of the other events, the barrel races were starting to begin. I got Afină saddled up and into the warm-up arena and could tell she was excited to run!! She left all the dressage behind and was rearing to go! The called our name and we went into the alley as the contestant before finished their run. It was our turn! Afină gave a couple of snorts and reared, I have her her head and she took off just like we practiced. Bolted out to the first barrel on the right and around it with ease. We made it to the second barrel but as we turned there was a large wet patch. MUD. oh lord help me I thought as I instinctively grabbed the saddle horn, but to my surprise Afină did not flinch! She ran straight through with a little slip but just kept going as if nothing had happened. We approached the thrid and last barrel and Afină gave meaning to the phrase "Turn and Burn"! She took me around the barrel and flew back down the arena and into the alleyway. It felt like as soon as it started it was over and Afină did amazing! I am so proud of my big blueberry and all she has accomplished in just the short amount of time she's been with me.