When it was time to contemplate separating my former eventer Cairo from her foal Fable, I decided to go with a slow wean. Sort of.
I am generally a planner, but the time for Fable’s weaning crept up on me. (In my defense, I am the editor—about to be the owner of a newspaper that fought its way back from an embezzlement, and it was election season. I was … distracted).
I thought I would let Fable stay at Cairo’s side for maybe eight months. But around 5 months old, Fable decided to unleash her daddy’s Irish draught genes and get big.
And Cairo, who was a very good mom, was starting to get annoyed with a growing daughter who was as hangry as she was. Fable had started noshing on Cairo’s grain by 2 weeks old. At a month or so, her favorite pastime was snoozing on her mom’s hay and periodically waking to take a bite. At 4 months old she would merrily eat her own food and try to eat Cairo’s, too.

At 5 months Fable was getting pushy, and Cairo was having to push back. Plus, I only had a short window of time where I could send Cairo to stay at her breeder’s farm, the place where she was born and spent her first four years.
So first I put Cairo and Fable in stalls across from each other. Fable seemed annoyed but not upset. Cairo seemed relieved. The next morning when reunited in the paddock, Fable latched on fiercely. My heart twisted at the way Fable clearly took comfort from nursing.
Cairo looked resigned.
We did this for a week, and then I felt we were ready. I had been taking Fable and Cairo for short walks apart from each other, so neither of them would get upset when the other briefly left her stall. I put a stall camera on Fable, gave her dinner and snuck Cairo onto my trailer. Her breeder’s farm is 20 minutes away, so I was back to Fable in just over an hour.
Fable snacked the whole time. The 2-year-old Friesian cross mare I am working with, Cinder, was next door, as she had been since Fable was born, so she had a friend. Cairo and Fable both had ulcer preventives and calming herbs. I like to hedge my bets.
That was easier than I thought, I remember thinking.
Whoops.
ADVERTISEMENT
The next day I put Fable and Cinder out in Fable and Cairo’s paddock. I had pondered introducing Cinder earlier to both Cairo and Fable as little herd to ease things along, but worried Cairo would not welcome that.
All was well until the geldings in the pasture next door trotted up to say hello. Fable was used to them, and several of them are fascinated with her, but Cinder? She lost her little flaxen-haired mind over the boys’ club and began to race around.
Fable was horrified. I knew baby horses have a certain disregard for their own safety, but aside from an attempt to jump a wheelbarrow at 2 months old, Fable has demonstrated a pretty good regard for herself and her body. But when she saw her friend Cinder blasting around, she tried to exit stage left—over or through the gate, she didn’t care.
Luckily in a fit of stupidity—or genius—I had not actually latched the gate, so when Fable chested it, it opened, and she trotted away. Toward the driveway of course.
Luckily, Agustin Cisneros, our barn manager, has a family full of horse-savvy folks, and his son Christopher saw what happened and blocked Fable from gallivanting up the driveway. Fable was easily caught—and didn’t have a mark on her. Cinder, too, was unscathed. I put Fable away and Cinder back in her normal pasture, relieved it was not a total disaster but at a loss as to what to do.
I wracked my brain that night trying to think of a solution. Who could Fable be with? What stable, older horse could I borrow?
I decided I needed a consult with Agustin, who is a horse whisperer. Maybe I could borrow his daughter’s unflappable gelding, Bucky (so named because he bucked people off, until Agustin charmed him into being the perfect kid’s horse).
Talking to him the next morning, Agustin nixed Bucky, explaining that, while a gem under saddle, the gelding played rough. But, he said, his mule, Samson, was great with babies.
I had not considered the mule.
Samson had come from the local livestock auction, allegedly having previously served on a pack string in Idaho. He was sold as broke, but it was soon clear that was debatable. Agustin took him in training, one thing led to another, and it wasn’t long before the mule was Agustin’s and we were watching him rope off him and ride him everywhere.
Agustin said we would put Fable and Samson together in the high-walled indoor arena to get to know each other. I have watched this man turn three stallions out together in that arena and control them with voice and body language, so I was comfortable that he could control “Baby Fabey” and Samson.
They entered the arena, and I wisely stayed out of it. I didn’t want to cause trouble looking tense. Fable raced around the arena and periodically vroomed by Samson. Samson flicked his large ears at her and stood quietly. After the third or fourth drive-by, he consented to trotting a couple steps. A quiet word from Agustin, and he resumed quietly watching the zoomies.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Leave them for a while,” Agustin said and went off to shoe some horses. I walked around the corner, but continued to lurk like a mom dropping her kid off for the first day of preschool.

Later, after the successful introduction, we walked them out to the paddock. I was freaking out, worried about a re-enactment of the day before and never wanting to see my baby horse smash into a gate again. I had tossed out some flakes of hay and wondered if that was a mistake—what if Samson fought with Fable over food? No one had ever denied Baby snacks before.
The only snack he denied her was his non-existent udder.
Having decided Samson, who was innocently eating hay, was friend and not foe, Fable sauntered up to him. Then she butted his side with her head. He was unfazed—until she stuck her head underneath to investigate his nether regions.
Samson never moved an inch, he just wielded his skinny mule tail with impressive precision and whapped her upside the head.
Shocked, Fable backed away, pondered the situation and stepped forward again. One wave of his tail and she decided the hay did, in fact, look appetizing. Samson didn’t just share the hay, he let her eat it out of his mouth.
Every baby horse needs her personal guard mule.
If the geldings next door start running around, Samson puts his body between her and them. If she whinnies, he trots over to her. He stands with his head over her back and watches out for her. We put him in the stall across from her, where Cairo had been, and he spent the night watching her. The barn regales me with tales of Samson’s watchful ways over his red-haired charge.
I had to bring Cairo back three weeks later. As I put her in a stall down the aisle, yet again my heart was in my mouth: Was this too soon? Would mare and weanling freak out?
Cairo, when she saw Fable from a distance from her paddock, whinnied at first and threw a buck or two. Fable? I am pretty sure she would learn to bray if she could.
Camilla Mortensen is an amateur eventer from Eugene, Oregon, who started blogging for the Chronicle when she made the trek to compete in the novice three-day at Rebecca Farm in Montana. She works as a newspaper editor by day.