…lives Maya, Sahara’s younger half-sister.

It’s been a while since she joined us from the bush, and she has grown into a nice-looking young lady, who enjoys life with her yard-mate Freya (also a Sahara relative, but not ours!).

This past weekend, we went over to visit her and see how she was doing.

We got lots of [...]

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Remember Maya, Sahara’s younger sister?
Today, our horses got a visitor, a two year old filly from the bush who happened to be none other than Sahara’s younger sister.
January 4th 2008

She was a bit underdeveloped when she came in from the bush (looking more like a foal than a two-year-old filly!), but has been doing a [...]

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An expat friend wanted to see the Zinder race track, and so I offered to bring him there on horse. As Arwen is heavily pregnant and Sahara was still limping slightly, Ali brought over Maya and Freya from Gill’s concession and the four of us headed out on a very pleasant excursion.

The track was vast [...]

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This weekend, I rode out with Koro & Gill and three mares for a real long ride in the bush. It was amazing, despite the heat, and despite her belly which is having Zinder in general pretty concerned by now, Arwen set the pace and it was not particularly “slow-slow”…

After the ride, Maya stayed the [...]

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After a week of long hours at the office, I took out the horses three times during the weekend, spending all together about six hours of my time on horseback. It was wonderful! On Saturday morning, I rode out with my sister-in-law, and then in the afternoon, I rode out to the track with my [...]

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Two weeks ago, just after my return to Niger, Anette and I took our two mares Arwen and Sahara to see the third member of their flock: Sahara’s younger sister Maya who now stays with another expat family only a block away.

Maya was happy to see us again and made sure as usual to plant [...]

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It’s been a long time since I blogged about any of the animals, and since I am in a “longing for Africa” mode tonight, I realised it was time to blog about the horses again!

I never told you what happened to Maya, Sahara’s younger sister who stayed with us for a couple of weeks, the [...]

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Today, I reread some old posts as I was moving them over from Ishtar News. One of them was Trusting the impossible. Here is an excerpt:

My mother and I, Cyprus 1983
…Now, that little voice I was talking about two posts ago has been proclaiming lately that her time is up and that from now on, [...]

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I am a lucky person. It was always my dream to ride in the bush with Arwen’s future foal running freely by her side. Unfortunately, Arwen hasn’t given birth to anything yet, but when Maya happened to come our way, I just couldn’t resist the temptation of letting her loose, believing that the need to [...]

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Sahara looking beautiful as ever - but who would have thought she’d grow so much during the time that she’s been with us?
Maya starting to become less and less like an indifferent bush horse and more and more like the other mares in the flock
Arwen with the right posture. I wanted a picture of that [...]

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We took the sisters out to my brother’s big garden, to let them figure out their differences like horses like to do. As a safety precaution however, we tied one side of Sahara’s legs together so that she would be able to do any serious damage to Maya, who was a few sizes too small [...]

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Today, our horses got a visitor, a two year old filly from the bush who happened to be none other than Sahara’s younger sister. She was destined to our neighbor, but although with her two years she would seem ridable to most people in Niger, she is too frail for any of us. So she’s [...]

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