Happy Foal Friday - A Mother's Love · 5:32pm May 20th, 2016

Meet Standardbred Harness Racing mare Emprize Hanover and family.

The little filly, Ella, (the one nearest, with the white star on her head) is hers by champion stallion E L Titan. The colt (back to the camera) is Ella's brother by another mother. Junior, as he is known, is by Holiday Road out of Emprize's late pasture buddy, Noble Flirt. Yes, you read right, the 'late' Noble Flirt. Sadly Junior's birth mother passed while delivering the little guy in late March. But as junior started calling out for his mother, it was to the great surprise of all in the barn that it was Emprize who 'ponied up' and answered back. Transferred by blanket carry, as Junior hadn't even stood up for the first time yet, to Emprize's stall, the mare of the 12 day old Ella accepted the little colt as if he was her own, nuzzling and licking the newborn. Ella, apparently had a different reaction, believing she had just been sent a new playmate .

Well thing did work themselves out, Ella did get a new playmate and sibling once Junior found his hooves, and Emprize is happily raising her little family. Oh, and quite literally living up to her name, by the way.

You see, emprize, means a noble or chivalrous endeavor, and part of the code of chivalry is to protect the weak and the innocent who cannot defend themselves, which is, by unexpectedly ponying up and taking in the newborn orphan, exactly what Emprize did.