[KathrynKat]

 Owner       >>> Rondell
 Name                >>> Pennyroyal
 Gender         >>> Female
 Adoption Price         >>> 1 Rare
 Training         >>> .
  =====
  .Calm
  .Easy Going
  .Nurturing

 Offspring;
 X X X Sired by X

 [Discipline >>>>> ]
 [Shows Entered > R: W: E:]
 [Shows Won >>>> R: W: E:]

 [Ej > ] [Ep > ]
 [Eh > ] [Ws > ]
 [Wp > ] [Wt > ]
 [Rf > ] [Rs > ]

[Rondell]

---- Penny uses THIS color (#BF0000) in the fanclub/in RPs. ----

Personal Preferences:

.........................

Likes:
*Forehead rubs
*Sweets
*Snow
*Soft blankets
*Her foals

Dislikes:
*Bullies
*Eating grass/leaves
*Panic
*Damp straw in her stall
*Getting dirty

Favorites:
*Flower - Cornflower
*Season - Winter
*Treat - Gingerbread
*Pastime - Roaming in the pasture
*Place - Her warm stall in winter

Herd Dynamics:

0 Sam --> The underdog. In Penny's eyes, Sam is her little brother. She spends quite a bit of time with him and cares for him deeply, doing her best to shield him from the bullying of F and mellow his nerves. She can't understand why he's so jumpy and uneasy all the time, as he's not the smallest Nera she's ever met and in fact quite strong. She's tried telling him so, but he just seems to shrug it off.

0 Curare --> The impsh one. Quite frankly, Penny does not like Curare one bit. They just never hit it off, and quite frequently get on each other's nerves.

0 Mosaic (Moe) --> The real boss. Penny sees Moe as a sort of big brother, and appreciates his calm, laid-back attitude as well as his confidence. Since he's not a stallion, she's never thought of him as anything more. She does, however, wish that he'd be a bit more assertive when it comes to Efialtes and his shenanigans.

0 Pennyroyal (Penny) --> Calm and motherly to a fault, Penny is simply a member of the herd. She holds no special place within it. Nevertheless, she gets along with nearly everyone and seems to exert a calming influence over those around her simply by existing. She doesn't startle easily, and doesn't take kind to anyone - Nera or otherwise - picking on her loved ones.

0 Efialtes (F) --> He's hot stuff, and he knows it. Penny has a very complicated relationship with F. To begin with, while she did used to have a crush of sorts on him to begin with, it quickly went away once she got to know him better. Beneath his undeniably handsome exterior, his personality is extremely juvenile and bratty. Wholly unlike the Romeo she envisioned him to be. Nevertheless, he is the father of her foals. This is primarily by virtue of the fact that he's the herd's dominant stallion. Even knowing him as she knows him now, though, she can not deny that despite his intolerable arrogance and cheek, Efialtes is a handsome devil.

0 Ikelos --> The fragile prince. The second born of three triplets sired by Efialtes, Penny can't help but fuss over her son despite the fact he's all grown up now. She's wont to grooming on his stringy little mane, trying to get it to lay straight for once, and does her best to keep his spirits up and encourage him to come out of his shell.

0 Fantasia (Fanny) --> The strong-minded princess. The youngest of Penny's triplets, Penny simply can't understand why her daughter has grown to be so rebellious. She hopes it's just a phase, and continues to dote upon the filly regardless of the fact that Fantasia doesn't seem to enjoy it. Penny's convinced that, deep down, her daughter actually does.


Origin:

0 In Character: Not too long after Moe was delivered to the barn, I dropped by the main Agency office to finalize some paperwork and happened to spot a for-sale add on the bulletin board featuring a Nera I'd long admired. So I called the number on the flier, made and offer, and that was that. She came via trailer the following week.

0 Actual: My fourth Nera, I simply got lucky and happened to be online when her old owner, MustangKnight, decided to put her up for sale.

[Rondell]

Pennyroyal's Training

0______________________________0

I have to admit - as I stood there in the yard, waiting for the trailer containing my newest Neravontii to show up, I was vibrating with barely contained joy. I hadn't been this excited since I'd brought Sam home with me! She was stunning, for one thing. I could see that with my own eyes. According to the file the Agency kept on her though, she was also much more. She was calm. She was reliable. She was gentle. All in all, she would make the perfect addition to my little herd! And even though I had never met the mare, we already had a history. Or... I liked to think we did. You see, I'd first discovered her existence quite by accident. I'd been at the Agency office around the time most winter holidays seem to fall, finalizing a few things related to Sam's first bit of training. While the person behind the desk was double-checking my paperwork, I took it upon myself to poke through some of the little catalogs that were lying around, including the binder that lists all of the Neravontii currently available for adoption. Not that I was planning to take on another Neravontii just yet, mind you. But I was curious.

At first I found nothing remarkable. The pages featured gelding after gelding and the occasional mare, all very pretty, but none that particularly stood out to me, and certainly none that I thought were more fetching than my boy. Besides, a good number of the photographs already had big red stamps across them, marking the Neravontii in question as one that had already been adopted. I didn't spend much time looking at those pages. I just acknowledged their existence and kept browsing. Then, quite unexpectedly, someone finally caught my eye. A beautiful mare. Lovely from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail, she was primarily brown and white with a healthy dose of red striping on her undercarriage that immediately brought to mind a bundle of candy-canes. I don't mind mentioning that I'm a sucker for red and brown (Just look at Sam!). Unfortunately, another prominent feature of this mare was that she was on one of the stamped pages. So it didn't matter how much I liked her. She already belonged to someone else.

Of course, as you can perhaps tell by the fact that I'm now writing about that very same mare, she didn't stay someone else's for long. No, not even a month later I was lucky enough to spot an add up on the billboard - 'for sale by owner' - with her photograph smack in the center of it, looking just as lovely as she had that first time I'd spotted her back in December. Needless to say, I jumped on the opportunity immediately. Which brings me back to the beginning of this story.

After what seemed like forever to a person so horribly excited as myself, the trailer finally arrived, making its way up the long unpaved drive that wound around the front paddock at a painfully slow pace before pulling into the lot next to the barn and coming to a stop near where I was standing. The entire process, from the moment I'd sighted the trailer and the truck that pulled it to the moment the engine stopped, probably only took two or three minutes. But it had felt like another small eternity. Then it was all I could do to stay out of the way while the driver unloaded his precious cargo. After all, he had more experience in such things than I did and I strongly believe that I would have just gotten in the way had I offered to help. Which would have made the whole process take longer. An unbearable prospect! I so badly wanted to meet my new Neravontii... So I just stood there watching. And twitching.

I watched as the mare came out into the winter sunlight, flicking her ears this way and that to get a better grip on her new surroundings. She paused to sniff the air, then walked on at the man's prompting. I watched as she marched calmly and easily down the ramp, her bright stripes rippling slightly as her muscles moved beneath her hide. She showed no sign of being ill at ease. If anything, she seemed curious. Sam, Moe and Curare were out in the paddock, not too far away from where we were, and my new mare kept turning her ears in their direction, listening. Then I watched as the man led her over and offered me the lead rope. At this point I was practically bouncing. I could still barely believe she was mine! As I took the lead rope from him, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out several sugar cubes, which he also offered me. "She loves sweet things." He explained with a smile, then started back to his truck. I didn't see where he went next. I was too busy laughing as Pennyroyal licked the sugar cubes from my palm.

[Rondell]

When faced with the prospect of beginning Pennyroyal's training in earnest, I found that, for once in my life, I wasn't too worried about introducing a Neravontii to a saddle. Why? Well for starters, I feel more confidant around my Neravontii now - I've fully trained both Sam and Curare, and know much, much more than I did at the outset of this whole misadventure. I'm sure my ever-lingering, absolute joy at being able to own Pennyroyal in the first place has something to do with it too; I may just have to have them forward all my mail to cloud nine in the future and be done with it. But the largest chunk of my ambivalence toward the whole thing certainly came from the fact that Pennyroyal was such a laid back soul. Over the course of the week she'd been at the barn, she hadn't once given me any reason whatsoever be nervous around her. So why should I start now? In fact, whenever I was with her, I felt the opposite of nervous. I soon found myself completely relaxed and cheerful no matter what the rest of my day had been like. Her calmness was becoming contagious. It wasn't just me either. No, it wasn't long before I realized that she was having the same sort of effect on her herd-mates. Sam panicked less. Moe was less defensive around his favorite tree. Within my otherwise neurotic little band of Neravontii, Pennyroyal was quickly proving to be a stabilizing influence. The only one who didn't seem to be taking to her right off was Curare, who at this point in time is still a bit finicky around her. Then again, Curare just doesn't like other mares, so it's most likely nothing personal. Only time will tell if Pennyroyal's temperament will eventually rub off on her too. But in the meantime, I was, for once, almost looking forward to introducing my mare to her saddle.

I chose to do it in the bullpen this time around. Because it was a much smaller area than the Arena, I didn't have to worry about Penny wandering off to investigate something other than the bright, shiny new saddle I'd dropped in the dust at the center of the circle for her to get used to. Which was a plus. There also wasn't any room for her to shy away from it if she chose to take that route, although I highly doubted that she would. In fact, I doubted it so much that I just turned her out into the pen without so much as a second thought.

Left to her own devices, the mare promptly wandered over to the new object and shoved at it with her nose. When it didn't react, she began poking at it with the fingers of her right 'hand', pulling at the straps and fiddling with the buckles. She succeeded in flipping it over. After a few more sniffs and jabs, followed by a curious nibble, she must have concluded that the object wasn't worth her time because she sneezed on it and wandered off. She then proceed to make a circuit of the ring before returning to where I was standing, having come full circle in no time flat thanks to the small size of the pen. At this point she nudged my shoulder as if to say: 'What's this for? Why am I in here? Can I go now?'

With a grin, I reached up and patted her forehead. Then I opened the gate and slid into the bullpen myself. It was time to get down to business.

I'd actually been working with her for several days now, putting gradually increasing amounts of weights on her back to introduce her to the idea of something being there, and it had been going pretty well. She had barely minded at all, actually. Where Sam trembled with every increase and Curare demanded more eggs in compensation, Penny had just stood there looking bored. It was a very nice change of pace, I don't mind telling you. I guess the third time really is the charm... but I had yet to see how she'd take to her no longer shiny and new saddle. I went over to it and flipped it so it was right-side-up once more, giving it a quick dust-off as I did so, so that it was at least the right color again, even if it wasn't spotless. Then I hefted it up and set on the fence. After securing Penny in the center of the bullpen, using two lead ropes fastened first to her halter and then to opposite sides of the pen to fashion a sort of cross tie, I picked up the saddle for a second time and stood on my tiptoes to place it on her back as carefully as possible. Other than a slight shift in her stance, she didn't seem to react. I was feeling very reassured! Nevertheless, I still took a minute or two to stop and stroke Penny's neck a couple of times, just to let her know what a good girl she was being. I even said as much out loud. This caused her to flick her ears in my direction and lean into my touch. I couldn't help but laugh, and redoubled my petting, using the various pats and shoulder scratches to partly disguise the fact that I was gradually beginning to buckle buckles and tighten straps.

Before either of us really knew it, it was done. The saddle was on. Not tightly enough to ride around in, mind you, but on enough to be considered on. I undid the makeshift cross ties and let Penny meander around the bullpen for a bit to get the feel of the thing. I'd work on getting it tightened up properly over the next couple of days. No matter how patient she was with me, I didn't want to force too much on her all at once.

This had been the most painless and egg-free first saddle I'd had the pleasure of strapping on to date.

[Rondell]

I'd been taking it easy with the training for the past few days, only forging ahead when I was absolutely sure that I wasn't rushing just because I was excited. At the same time, Pennyroyal was getting to expand her culinary horizons. Every morning I turned the herd out into the paddock, then marched through the barn and into the tack room, where I kept a mini-fridge stuffed to bursting with random odds and ends for my friends to munch on. The entire bottom shelf was stocked with eggs. The rest of the shelves had a better assortment. Many different kinds of meat were featured, from beef to fish, and a surprising variety of fruit considering the carnivorous nature of Neravintii, including prickly pears for Moe, apples for me, cherries, pomegranates, and whatever else I happened to think looked interesting while I was at the store. I'd shuffle around in there for a couple of minutes, then come out with my selection of the day balanced precariously on top of Pennyroyal's saddle. After this, there was nothing left to do but tote the whole mess out to the bullpen and wait for my new mare to burn off a bit of energy in the paddock. I figured this latter bit would take about an hour or so. In other-words, just about the amount of time it took to muck out a few stalls.

After tracking down Penny and bringing her into the bullpen with me, I'd set up my makeshift ties and proceed to saddle her up. Each day I offered the mare a couple of new tidbits to munch on as a reward for being so patient. Each day I made the girth tighter. Once I'd gotten it to the point where everything was secure enough for riding - it only took forty-eight hours - I moved from the bullpen into the arena so I could have more space. The mounting block was also out there. This was important because, quite frankly, I'm short, so I can't get onto a Neravontii's back without it, and I'm just too lazy to drag it all the way from the arena into the bullpen. So moving into the arena also allowed me access to that. Which would help considering the fact that I was about to try and ride Penny for the first time. Next to the saddle, the mounting block was the most important part of my process. And I don't mind admitting it.

Anyway, after moving into the arena I took a day just to get her used to the space. I left her halter on and walked her around to begin with, then I turned her loose and let her explore on her own. The last thing I wanted was to do was try and hop onto her back if she wasn't comfortable with the space we were in - I'd learned that lesson the hard way with poor Sam. Once more, however, I was surprised by just how quickly and easily Penny adapted to new things. She was a little wary at first given the fact that the arena's sandy floor was probably unlike anything she'd ever run around on before, but was soon moving as if she'd spent her entire life in the space. She even developed the habit of digging her fingers and toes down into the sand whenever she was standing in one place. That way, when she started moving, she'd be able to take off in a spray of sand that seemed to delight her.

And then the time came for us to get back to business.

On the morning of the fourth day, I tacked Penny up in the barn, then led her out into the arena, where I secured her to the railing for a moment and drug the mounting block out from it's place next to the gate. Then I situated her next to it. With one easy hop I found myself standing on top of the block- I was an old hand at getting up onto the thing by now - and began to sort out Penny's reins. That done, I carefully placed my hands on the seat of the saddle and pushed down. The added weight didn't seem to phase her. So I pushed down a bit more. At this point Penny shifted her weight a bit, so I stopped and reached over to rub her ears before putting any more of my weight on her back. When I had her relaxed again, I placed my hands back on the saddle and leaned most of my weight onto the mare. Again, no apparent reaction, although her ears were focused on me the entire time. After one quick and final ear rub, I now felt confident enough to actually hoist myself up into the saddle. Penny seemed a bit unsure of this new arrangement. I talked to her a bit, stroking her neck from my new perch and telling her how good she was, than just sat there to see what she'd do.

For the longest time Penny just stood there. Then, suddenly, she began trotting toward the far end of the arena, taking me along with her. It took me a moment to realize that she'd spotted Sam out in the paddock, and was most likely going over to the arena wall so she could try and get his attention. I really didn't mind as long as it didn't look like she was going to try to go over the wall.

I didn't bother trying to steer.

[Rondell]

Artwork

0______________________________0

Penny (by me)
Penny & Ikelos & Fantasia (by me)