Bonnie and The Foal

What's the most exciting kind of model horsey parcel? One which arrives with this sticker on!

Inside, there's two long-planned and much-anticipated little paper wrapped parcels, with the distinct smell of fresh latex and paint. One big and one small, whatever could they be?

It's them! Portrait models of my two real ponies.

I've handled lots of tempting brand new spares in their plastic bags over the years at shows, but somehow none of them quite come close to the sight of your very own horsey friends immortalised in Julip form. 

After a little bit of hairdressing to make their manes behave the same way the real ones do, and waiting til I had a day off work to catch the brief hour or so where the sun gets far enough in through the window above the front door to set up my scenery, they've had their photoshoot and are ready to be introduced.

First up, Bonnie. A purebred papered shetland pony of true island stock, I've owned her eight years, and she's currently thirteen. 

Bonnie was my impulse buy, my depression cure; something to focus on, to give me a reason to get up in the mornings, and to have a friend in my daily life, even if that friend was a pony. Every day, no matter how miserable and bitter-cold, is better if it starts with hugging a shetland.

We've since done a lot of harness long-reining and long walks round the country lanes, in-hand jumping, and many hours of just enjoying each other's company, as I cut weeds while she nibbles.

Bon is that rarest of things, the nice shetland, so the Julip pit pony's cheeky-but-sweet expression is perfect for her.

The real Bonnie's sooty palomino colour changes all the time, from pale golden cream with grey legs in winter, through warm gingery tan with deeper brown points in spring as she sheds not one but two successive winter coat layers, ending up a surprising dark chocolatey colour in mid summer which contrasts with her shock of blonde mane. Then in autumn her coat grows through the gingery shades again, before ending up back to light gold by midwinter.

This presented quite a dilemma - which Bonnie should I get a Julip of?

In the end, I decided her april-to-june and september-to-october 'in between' coat would be better than either extreme of her sleekest darkest summer coat, or her deep winter fluff - that way, the model would be accurate twice every year, not once!

 

Laura, the Julip artist, was very worried that she couldn't capture this ever-changing coat, but the mini Bonnie Bunny is a spot-on match for the colour I had in mind, and looks so much like the real thing!

These pictures were taken at the only show we ever went to, and doesn't she look like such a Julip Pit Pony here! When the older Shetland Pony mould was resurrected I remember having a couple of 'oh, you'll be having that for Bonnie then?' conversations at shows, but I've always imagined her in the Pit Pony mould, and still think it's by far a better match for her.

   

Her mane always flops partly to the near side of her neck, so I copied the messy style with the help of a little bit of hair mousse (I bought a can specially for Julips!)

Here she is in her headcollar, a copy of her real one, apart from one thing - there's no way I could embroider her name into the tiny grosgrain ribbon, so it's missing the word BONNIE on each side!

After I'd already owned Bonnie for a couple of years, she gained a field companion, in the shape of a really, really annoying foal. We just called it 'the foal', and put up with it being there cos it needed a friend and a place to stay, and the owner thought my shetland would provide the companionship, while I provided the early handling.
Of course, it's impossible not to fall in love with the most scatty, affectionate, protective, eccentric, and just plain weird foal you ever could imagine meeting, we bonded into a little trio, so when she was going to be sold on at two and a half, I bought her so she could stay. She already thought she was my horse - or perhaps I'm her human! - so it was inevitable.

I backed her to ride, and we had a really great year or two exploring together, but we're both retired now - she never really enjoyed it so much as walking in hand with me, and I've got old injuries causing new problems which made it increasingly uncomfortable to be in the saddle rather than on foot, so we stopped the riding pony idea and are just field companions.
She'll be turning nine this spring, but she's still called The Foal, because nothing else ever seemed to stick. 

At first, I thought the Julip CJP would be the best mould for her, but as she grew up and matured, her shape changed a great deal, and last year I finally decided that the Welsh Cob mould looked far more like the adult foal. Both ponies have a little bit of feather under their heels, so I asked for their Julip counterparts to have that little bit of customisation, too, just to make them even more alike.

Left, the day after I bought her, and right, how she looks now!

Foal is another who changes colour with her seasonal moults, not so dramatically as Bonnie but enough that I had to make the choice which I'd rather have for her Julip self - I went for her light, bright and shiny summer coat, cos in winter she's very shaggy with fluffy legs, which the mould isn't!

This is definitely the right mould choice, just look at that quirky face! The Welsh Cob mould always looks like it's up to something it shouldn't be and just got caught, which is perfect for a horse who's devoted so much of her life to stealing my hats; picking up anything that can be picked up and running around with it; obsessing over buttons, velcro, and toggles on every item of human clothing she can get into her mouth; stalking wildlife; pestering trees; biting/licking/turning-upside-down/climbing-in or otherwise molesting wheel barrows... the list is endless!

 

You can see clearly here how she hasn't got fully black legs like most bays, but is actually the variation known as wild bay. Most of her mane is on the right side, apart from the little chunk which always flips over her neck to hang the other way.

What do you mean? I didn't push the wheelbarrow over. Those aren't my hoofprints where I tried standing on it with both front feet, and they're not my teethmarks in the wheel. I wasn't even near it. I wasn't even looking at it. I wasn't even thinking about wheelbarrows. I don't even know what they ARE!

In an amazing co-incidence, Julip foal ended up with one stray white strand of hair in her forelock, which only came to light when I gave her a parting to make sure we can see her little star. Real foal has one too, though this wasn't visible in any of the pictures I sent to Julip, and I didn't mention it!

I tried to find a sensible forward-facing headshot of the foal to show you, only most of her closeups look like this...

Or this!

But this is a nice one :

As with Bon, I made a copy of the foal's real headcollar, complete with fluffy noseband (it's actually her old one I stopped using cos the buckle rusted and got difficult, but the new one is an impossible multicoloured-green-checkerboard pattern I can't make in miniature!)

And here they are together - it's so, so nice to have Julips of my girls at long last, I'd always thought I would, but it's taken a very long time to get round to actually ordering them. They're definitely worth the wait!