Cholla's Birth

"We have a little one!" my dad shouted excitedly through my bedroom door. It was three a.m. and we had been expecting our mare, Lady, to give birth for a couple of weeks now. I jumped out of bed and quickly got dressed.  I wanted to run out the door to the corral to closely examine the object I've been anticipating for a long twelve months. But I knew I had to take a slow and calm approach.

When I got to the corral I saw baby was already licked dry and walking around. I slowly walked towards mom and baby, not sure how either would react. They both remained relaxed and seemed unbothered by me. I touched under baby's belly, as it was too dark to see with my dim flashlight. "It's a colt", I called to my dad who was standing several feet away. Although that was more of a gut feeling, as the only thing I felt under his belly was the stub of an umbilical cord. It was late March 2005 and cold by desert-dweller standards.

  Later that morning, in the light of dawn, I was surprised to see Cholla, a name I decided on months before, running and jumping over small brush in his pen. He couldn't have been more than a few hours old. I know that because my dad had told me he checked on Lady around midnight, and there was no baby then. Jumping Cholla turned out to be the perfect name, or was he a Jumping Cholla because of his name? He had great coordination for a newborn. My only knowledge of such, up until this time, was from watching movies of wobbling fledglings who looked so vulnerable and weak. Cholla showed no resemblance to his "movie star" cousins.

I decided to keep my distance that morning. Watching him with such apparent vigor for his new world was a great joy to my dad and I.  I had heard from experienced horsemen that a horse's name is a predictor for their personality. As I watched Cholla run circles in his pen and jump like an old pro, I realized one of many mysteries of life, those horsemen were right!