I found a foal in an old pizza box on my way home from work. Something must have happened to it’s mother as the colour wasn’t bad (at least by fluffy standards), it was an earth foal and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.
I decided to bring it home because I felt bad for it and, despite what some ferals are like, I had found most of my friends’ fluffies to be well behaved (except for Tally, whose mummah had spoiled her) and entertaining companions.
As I gently scooped it up it began chirping, no doubt thinking that this was not the way it’s mother felt. I tried stroking it to calm it.
“Shhhh, it’s ok, I’m not gonna hurt you… um…”
I look down.
The pizza box looked like it had been there for a while, the image on the lid was quite worn but a few letters could still be seen.
--------r --i----
--------o- – ----- -l----
Riol.
It wasn’t the most usual name but it sounded like something you could get used to.
Almost as soon as I was home I was reminded that foals were gonna be some work to take care of.
I thought I wouldn’t punish him considering how young he is and the outside world is all he knows. Instead I kept an eye on him and made sure to place him in the litterbox if he began lifting his tail and squatting, at least until he was old enough to be a ‘tawkie’ and could understand that he needed to do that himself.
He was able to do this before his mane/tail had started growing. It was going well until one day I was watching him playing in the safe room. I left to find something for lunch when I heard him say “Babbeh nee’ make peepees” and when I returned he had crawled away from the litter box to do it.
After receiving the sorry stick (lightly, he was still quite young) and being told only bad babies don’t follow the rules and only good babies get sketti he quickly learned to use the litterbox.
Everything seemed fine but as he got a little older he seemed to become a bit more tempted to try to misbehave. It was only small things; Knock things over as he walked by, attempt to steal my food (even if I was holding it), get upset when TV time was up. Nothing that deserved any harsh punishment until one day he raised his voice at me when I told him it was time for a bath. All it took was reaching for the sorry stick and reminding him what happened the last time he broke the rules for him to quickly, although still grumpy, fall back into line.
After that incident he didn’t try anything else but he definitely wasn’t quite the same. I just thought it was because at that age he would’ve been the fluffy equivalent of a teenager, which I was willing to tolerate as he had even stopped doing the minor things. He was even able to behave enough to come with me when I went to see my friends who had fluffies (we still kept an eye on him when he was around the mares).
Then one day I came home from a particularly exhausting day at work…
4 days later…
