The breeding of horses is awful complicated and there's so much to learn. I don't mean it's tricky to get horses to breed, or to birth the foal, or to care for it. Those are things as I already learned, some back in the Mark in tending the animals on my family's farm. Breeding goats or sheep ain't that different from breeding horses when it come to it. More I learned in Hookworth as an apprentice. And Éogar taught me some more, some of his own tricks, things like how to help a foal what's born sickly or hurt, and ways to convince a sire to cover a dam when they don't get on with one another, like if they're both dominant in the herd. But getting two horses to make a foal ain't nothing hard to learn. Horses do that when there's no one around to help.
What I been spending most of my time learning, here at Hengstacer, is more about how to choose sires and dams so as to get the foals you want, the foals as people will buy. Éogar is proud to say his horses are better than any in the Northlands; more than that, better than any anywhere other than the Mark. That's not something just happens. Takes a lot of time and a lot of work, but more than that, takes a lot of knowledge, what I'm struggling to learn.
Of course, the easy part to understand, but the hard part to do, is getting good breeding stock to start from. Éogar had the horse of the Mark he rode north on, and otherwise, just the same horses to breed as anyone in the Northland had. (The tale of how he came to ride here to the north with a single horse, he told me of it one night, after I told him about the reasons I got nothing but my work left, why I don't take my days off. I should probably write his tale another day.) He'd pay near anything he could to get a few more horses from the Mark, good breeding stock. He was most disappointed to learn I'm not allowed to breed Heafoc, on account of the Thane's decision.
But any breeder what's got good stock can produce good horses. That don't take much wisdom. There's nothing to learn about it. Well, maybe a little. A good horse for one job, or for one land, might not be a good one for another. Bring a full breeding herd up from the Mark to the North, and breed them only with one another, and you'll breed fine horses, but ones what suffer in cold winters. The real art, and what I'm working hard every day to learn, is how to take the stock you have, and breed it to get horses better than the stock you started from, and better suited to a particular situation or use.
Don't seem like you could make them better, do it? But you can. Just as a child might be smarter than his ma and pa, or faster, so too a foal might be smarter or faster than his sire and dam. With people, though, you just get what you get. With horses, you want to take control of the outcome, and you do that by matching sire and dam. There are some traits that a foal is more like to get from the sire, and some from the dam. It's never sure, but there's rules you can follow, many rules, complex and hard to learn, so you can hope that a particular foal will be a particular way. Maybe stronger, if you need plough horses, or maybe shaggier, if you need one to go farther north into colder lands, or maybe swifter, if you need one to carry messengers. And then you take that foal, when it's grown, breed it again, to make an even stronger, or shaggier, or swifter one. And if you keep doing that for years, eventually you get horses better than any you started with, and that's how Éogar's herd is the better of any in Bree-land.
Learning is all I do now. Éogar has me up with the stablehands and apprentices in a bunk room on the farm; I got a top bunk in a corner where I can keep to myself. There's food every morning and night, mostly Emma's soup; Éogar told me, all apologetic, that I didn’t get so much coin on account I got a room and meals, but I was glad of it, as I got enough coin for a master's license and a stable already, and I’d rather not have to find a source for food (especially as it's far from here to anywhere I can fish, or buy anything). I do a few hours of work around the farm, but now I'm a journeyman, most of the hard work, the mucking and hauling, falls to Éogar's apprentice, and the stablehands. Sometimes I miss it, that bone-aching work that helps you forget the things you don't want to think about, and on the days Éogar gives me for myself, instead of riding to town or something, sometimes I go do what work I can find. My trade is all I got left now, of all the things I gave up the Mark for, so I got to stay in it in my thoughts.
Well, I do still got that house in Hookworth, but I don't go there. That's just another way to make myself think about the hurts of all the other things lost now. Maybe one day I'll be able to go back there.
But mostly I follow Éogar around and listen to him while he explains things to me, or study in his room of record books. How he's picking this one sire to breed to this one dam, because the dam's a dominant in the herd, so her foals are like to end up the same, whether the sire is or not, and he's hoping this foal will be one to sell to the stables at the Bree west gate, what'll need new stock in a few years, and the keeper there wants a horse as will head his herd. But how he's using this sire on account he's swift, while the dam is not, because the foal is more like to be like the sire in swiftness -- at least for this particular sire, which he knows on account he knows the sire's breed and lineage. Looking at what all the sire's sire and dam, and their sires and dams, were like, he can see patterns he's teaching me to see, what tells which things about the sire are like to breed true with a particular dam. He got books full of charts and lists he's showing me, going back to the first horses he bought when he built the farm years ago, and even telling about horses on local farms and other stables, what he might hire for breeding.
He were happy to know I come to him already knowing to read, as he reckoned he'd have to teach me. That's like to cut a couple months off my term of service afore he's ready to let me go on to another master. Or so he thought. Thing is, this is the kind of thinking and learning I'm poor at, and goes slow. I can tell he's frustrated some times, as he asks me which dam I'd pick for a particular breeding, or why he picked one, and I can't tell. I should know by now. It's coming slow. Makes me think that, if I ever do become a master ostler, breeding won't be the work I specialize in. Just as well, as Bree-land already got Éogar and though he's got a few more years behind him, he's got plenty still ahead. And as much as Bree-land ain't the welcoming, joy-filled home I thunk it was when I chose it over the Mark, I still don't got nowhere else to go.
When foaling season is starting to come to an end in a few weeks, we'll be focusing more on training. I wonder if I'll be better at that.
