Sooty

Sooty is my lovely and even more loving homebred stallion out of my Lansing mare Lolly by Starpower TN.

Sooty didn’t have a great start to life. They were away foaling (thank goodness in hindsight). Lolly didn’t lay down to foal and what we didn't realise until some

time later is Sooty tore both her uterus and vagina on the way out (Sorry to the squeamish). She developed a gentamycin resistant E. coli infection. Any other mare would have died but for once her stubborn nature served as an advantage. There is no way she was going to leave that foal. Any other foal would have died too but Sooty wouldn’t even accept us supplementing his milk. They spent months in specialist hospitals and the fact they are both here to tell the tale is pretty amazing. Lolly would stand eating tea while I flushed her uterus with litres of saline and would stand for numerous injections daily without even needing to be caught. Consequently Sooty became very used to people. I never thought ugly ducking foal would turn into the lovely stallion he is today. Sooty was Lolly’s first and only foal. She is still around though. She is at Mt Stalker at the moment living up to her nickname “hippo” but will likely come down to Happy Valley over summer as shes as she’s handy to use to tease the stallions when collecting.

Until I met Ghost I had no idea stallions could be so easy to have around and I must have really lucked out because Sooty is even more gentle than Ghost. If you let him he would lie on the couch. He loves to be pampered and cuddled. Of course he’s still a stallion and a baby so has his moments and is managed accordingly. He‘s definitely a firm favourite around the place.