This is RiverPointe Bridget’s Golden Air Duna who we call “Duna.”

When we purchased Denny’s dam, Bridget, we purchased her in the autumn of 2022 in foal to Denny’s sire, RiverPointe Numero Uno.  Having a homozygous dun grulla sire and a heterozygous dun bay dam, we knew that she was absolutely going to be a dun foal, 100% chance.  We knew that Bridget was in foal for a birth late in the summer, so we knew that she was going to be heavily pregnant through the hottest part of the Tennessee summer (and thankfully we live up in the mountains, so our temperatures are not usually as bad as the surrounding valleys, but it’s still hot here).  We’re slowly moving our foaling season to be in the mid-April to mid-June timeframe as the breeding years march onward, but we still have them staggered this year from early April to late July (with the ones on the outside edges of that timeframe being recent acquisition mares where we had less control over when they were bred).

Duna was born August 1st, 2023.  Within several weeks, we had her DNA results back.  Like her dam, she was a bay-based dun horse (homozygous black), but like her sire, she was homozygous for dun, which is a special thing as a Gypsy Vanner Horse, since there are only a handful of homozygous dun mares in the GVHS registry.  If she has her own foals someday, they will always carry a dun gene.

Like Cherry’s dam Jewel, Duna’s dam, Bridget, is the top mare in her paddock (Jewel being in Nazareth’s herd and Bridget being in Mason’s herd…Bridget is in foal to Mason for this year’s foal).  Duna, much like Cherry, came in to weaning with the attitude of a future top mare, but she was not as wild and spunky initially like Cherry was.  She was a bit more retiring, avoidant, and fearful personality-wise than Cherry was.

I take a very long approach to desensitizing horses that have strong, fear-based instincts.  Some would say that I’m too slow with my methods, but I feel that to get the horse’s head right, you must take that time and work slowly at the horse’s pace to make it right.  Both summer of 2022 and summer of 2023, I had one foal that took the lion’s share of my time.  I’m slowly improving my methods, but I have a method that seems to work for me and the foals that I raise (always subject to tweaking, for sure).  Standard foals take about 40 or 50 hours of overall time spread out over about six months (most days, especially early on, that’s just a few minutes every day putting hands on them a little bit…the heaviest effort begins at weaning).  The more challenging personalities can take much longer than 40 or 50 hours.

I spent many, many quiet hours with a fold-out chair just sitting in a barn stall with Duna talking to her throughout her baby training.  Most days, once she began thinking with the logical side of her head, she would eventually approach on her own to explore.  Once she mastered that fear, then all the other training followed at her pace (haltering, leg-lifting, yielding of quarters, leading, turning, stop and go, and tie-down/patience.  Along with that comes the education for display of displeasure, usually a firm, quick, loud, and resolute, “No.”  Displeasure cues are generally reserved for rearing or outpacing maneuvers that most foals attempt during their training.  All of this is a crash-course for most foals prior to their first farrier session.  Once all of that is mastered, when they are safe for outdoor leading across wide open expanses, then it’s time for the foal to head back out to the big pastures as a weanling with the adults and other younglings to learn to become a horse again without the assistance of a mommy.  That’s where Duna is now.

She has more leading exercises to do, and trailering is also on the list for her, but she’s nearly where I want her to be as a product of our farm.  She took about three weeks longer than most other foals to get to where she is now, but I had lots of time on my hands over the winter months to do it slowly and gently with her post-weaning, since she was the last foal of 2023.  She has a good head on her now, and she does not shy away from my approach and further lead-line training out in the paddock (even when all the other horses mob me begging to take their turn (or just being super nosey)…if you have a Gypsy Horse, you’ll know what I’m talking about).  I have her trust.  When you have a difficult foal, when those breakthroughs happen in their progress, it puts you on cloud 9 for the rest of the day.  Foal handling is one of my favorite things to do.

Duna was basically sold the day we received her genetic testing back.  Due to that, we’ve not featured her quite as much as many of our other horses on our social media.  This may be the last look we provide of her until she leaves our farm sometime later this year.  We do a “going away” video for every foal and many of the other horses that leave our farm.  We’re super-excited about where this little filly is headed to.  She’s going to do great things someday, and she’s going to be in greatest of hands.