All legs and personality.

This summer I returned to Stud UK Euro, they breed competition horses and I visited last year to get some shots for them and blogged a series of photos of their rising 2 and 3 year olds as well as the new foals.

I had seen them tweeting throughout spring this years new arrivals and was itching to go and play with some foals so asked if it would be ok to come and take some more photos, to which it was happily agreed that it was fine for me to come up any time.

He stalked me all around the field.
We became very good friends!

When I got to the offices to let them know I was there no one seemed to be expecting me so I mentioned that i'd arranged it with a lady over twitter that I was coming over to take some photos of the foals. Little did I know, twitter duties had been handed over from Katie, whom I had arranged things with the previous year, to Rupert (Husband & Business partner of the company). They called across to him to confirm that I was supposed to be there and directed me over to his office where upon arrival he introduced himself with "Hi, i'm the twitter lady." Bit humiliating!

Anyway, onto the foals! They're brilliant. In short, hilarious, sweet and cheeky. I had one little chap follow me around for a long time and kept getting in the way of my shots because he wanted ALL of my attention, I found myself sneaking round the field trying to outsmart him so that he would leave me in peace to work. For the most part they are all very inquisitive and as soon as I stepped through the gate I was full on ambushed by the lot of them, all curious to see who I was, what I was doing and what was in my hands. As well as the foals there is also the mares to contend with, those which are very sweet and enjoyed a scratch whilst others, understandably, were keeping an eye on the "kids." One in particular was happy to mind her own business and stay out the way but she had a particularly friendly foal who walked over to me a lot so she stood a little distance away but never took her eyes off me.



I think you'll see in the photos the different characters, there was definitely a good mix of the outgoing, shy and cautious, chilled out and the troublemakers:

These two were hilarious. I'd been sat down for a while and they were across the other side of the field acting casual under the facade of grazing whilst really eyeballing me the entire time. They slowly grouped together, because everyone knows there's safety in numbers, before very slowly walking in my direction, stopping when I glanced over at them before seeing which one was brave enough to make the next step and the other would follow. They did this for about ten minutes before they reached me and were pleasantly surprised that I offered them a pat and a scratch before I carried on shooting.

 

Playing "piss off the adults" was a clear favourite pastime..

The mares were worth photographing too ofcourse. On the left is the mother that watched over her baby from a safe distance.

Many thanks to Rupert for letting me come down and spend a beautiful summer day working in the peace and quiet with these little characters for company.

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