Starting on Sunday, April 17th foal watching began for Flame's expected delivery. Known for her timely adherence to schedules of this nature, Inferno's Magic was actually due to foal on the 19th, but indications were such that it seemed eminent. Foal watching, for the uninitiated, is keeping an eye on the expectant mare until she has her baby, at which point foal watching changes to active participation in foal midwifery! Mrs. Flame had looked ready to pop for at least a month so we all rather thought she was going to go early. But Sunday's foal watch became Monday's, Tuesday's, and even Wednesday's foal watch. By the fourth night, all foal watchers had started to get goofier than normal and not a little punchy.  We crashed on the well seasoned couch in the Big Barn office in turns, watching horse movies and eating copious amounts of greasy snack foods. Nothing else keeps one awake between the hours of 2am and 5am. Nothing. Luckily there was a VCR and a stack of horse videos to keep us going. Of course some scholars did their homework or tackled "War and Peace".

On Wednesday, we were all quite sure that Flame's time had come, so we had ourselves a little Big Barn sleep over!

Allie and Ashley are relaxing in Allie's new 4 X 4 sleeping pad, conveniently outfitted with air mattress, side table and edible stairway. Meanwhile, back in the office, Spirit settles in next to the foaling kit and imprinting kit readying himself to scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting snoozing foal watchers in about 4 hours.

Michelle is in between Walnut Hall foalings and gets ready to walk the rest of we mare midwives through the process.....and of course Connie finds time to catch up on her bacherlorette ponderings while her hubby and little girl vacation in Florida. (she's the one who actually was reading War and Peace, by the way - I remain impressed as all I was capable of doing was watching really bad TV and crashing in the back of my lucky mobile)

The waiting continues......click here

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