A pretty busy autumn passed with quite a few events and happenings at Lovelyta!

• Sandra, Nanook and Cyclon traveled across the big sea to take part in an endurance ride across Patagonia. The road was full of bumps and difficulties, but they are bound to return home soon, with a new addition to the stables in tow.
• Hope and Kassendale's Regenbogen went to take part in the RDHS Cup 2021. It's a bit out of Rain's league as eventing and regular dressage are a bit different, but regardless, we are crossing our fingers for the pair and hope to have results soon. (Thank you Jess for your help as a reader!)
• LR Emergency Code was entered into a 3-race challenge, and shipped off to Spain to take part in the first race of the series, the Trinity Cup. Best of luck to him and our regular jockey, Thomas Brosley.
• As we already wrote, our hototos have been exported to Ireland to Phoenixvale Stables where they will be kept free-range in a big herd, and will hopefully be happier than they were here, especially due to the colder climate as well. We will certainly miss some horses who have been with us for several years, such as LR Stjerne and RD's Norrsken, but hopefully we will still hear about them in the future.
• With that, our 10-stall "hototo wing" was freed up in the barn, and temporarily became our "racing wing". It came in handy, too, as our thoroughbred collection expanded with the 3-year-old stallion, NEC Big Brother.
• NEC Big Brother was shipped off with LR Hell Hath no Furie to Kentucky to take part in a race meant to give them some experience and prepare them for a stellar 4-year-old season next year. Watchman was ridden by our new jockey, Martina Gonzales, who's also going to be the regular jockey of Compass Morale and Egyptian Mau when they come of racing age.
• LR Hell Hath no Furie was ridden by Tom in the BCCS Qualifiers, we hope both she and Watchman come back home with good news!
• Lovelyta Ranch Kennel wasn't idle, either, as the Thompson family set out with iron determination to take our dogs in hand. At just 9 months of age, our beautifully grown Keyes tackled obedience training with full enthusiasm to fulfill her potential as a future police dog.
• Reborning Future is confirmed to be in foal to Suicidal Romance, and everything seems to go quite smoothly so far.

I poured a lot of time and effort into Lovelyta this month, which has been fun, but I'm missing all the other arpgs I've been neglecting. I'm considering adding a break month between years to "officially" have time for everything else, but for now, I'll see how winter/July goes and make a decision accordingly. I plan for a slower, calmer winter season. However, break months might become necessary after September, as I'll be working on finishing my psychology masters and it's still a huge question mark how much time that will leave for my pixel horses (and my real one).

A really quick update, a small change, but something I feel really good about: as of today, all our hototos have been exported to Phoenixvale Stables. Whoever doesn't know yet, don't be alarmed, PVS is a second HARPG stable owned by me, and I feel we came to the point that it's a lot better if I put my hototos in there. Lovelyta operates with a fix number of spaces to keep things realistic, and I already had 11 out of 10 hototo spaces taken up. Which is a problem, taken how much I love them and that I dream of having a huge hototo collection and breeding them, of course within the rules laid down by the creator of the breed. Hototos just really took my heart, and I feel putting them into an astral world where they will be roaming free is a good decision for them. Especially since I had some hototos who didn't prefer human interaction, and now I won't have to try and find a way to use them.

Don't despair, however! You will see my hototos drawn and even enter into competitions, just like before, except the riders will be different. I feel like it's also a great decision for Lovelyta, as I'm down to fully realistic breeds now, plus half of my barn is empty, which means I have a lot of space for new horses now! The hototo barn in on itself was a separate little division within the stable, and now I'm planning on using it for something else, maybe thoroughbreds until they exceed 10 stalls as well (right now Lovelyta only has 7 thoroughbreds).

So technically, not a lot will change, I just put my beloved 11 horses from here to there, and I feel great about the decision.

Summer came and summer passed, but there were things happening at Lovelyta regardless!

• We welcome a new rider, Martha Stone among our staff! Martha's going to join both our baroque and sporthorse division, specializing in dressage. She came here with her own horse, the beautiful andalusian stallion Heart Throb.
• Youngster training continued! Our older youngsters got some moving exercise, while younger ones got equipment training.
• A bit late for breeding season, but regardless, our first fully homebred thoroughbred is on its way! Reborning Future and Suicidal Romance were the happy couple, and we are expecting a foal for next year's spring!
• We also figured out that huculs can be naughty. Just saying.

So again, plans for autumn: competition entries, this time for real because I have deadlines. I have nothing else planned for the horses, just competitions for autumn, some more life things for winter, and then we will have a major roll over as we go into year 2, horses age up and competition results also get rolled. I might need to get a headstart on that.

And we are officially through with our first season! It was a close call with everything else going on, but we had a few things happen during this month.

• Training of our youngsters started! It's very important for us that our young horses get solid basics that we can build upon in the future, so as soon as the weather let us, training started. The 2-year-olds, such as LR Golden Sunshine, LR Chrysanthemum and LR Starry Dreams, start getting used to the tack and commands, while the more baby horses will start with some basic things. You can take a peek at Sunny's training here!
• Lovelyta has greeted the Thompson family among our staff! We are very happy that they decided to take up employment with us, because this means that the kennel department can really move forward now.
• Not long after the Thompsons took up the kennels, 2 of our dogs, Black Diamond Indigo and Ninja's Rosenrot vom Werehaus went to a dog show. We are excitedly awaiting to hear how it went!
• This season also turned out very exciting as we branched out our social connections some more! Sempervivum Syndicate is now welcomed among our affiliates, we are hoping for a happy and fruitful cooperation in the future.

While preparing for the launch of our new timeline in April, there were a few new animals added!

With my ever-growing love for the hucul breed (as my real-life horse is half hucul so I have personal proof how awesome they are), I decided to take up a new project and add some huculs to Lovelyta Ranch! They will be endurance horses primarily but if they show talent for other disciplines, they can compete in basically anything, from dressage to show jumping to eventing. Huculs are a pretty sturdy all-rounder breed, and I'm excited to get to show that off in HARPG and maybe spread awareness and love for the breed. Our first two huculs, Nanook and Cyclon, have arrived already!

After dogs and horses, apparently we are also adding cats! Mason and Chiva arrived to be our - hopefully most of the time - lovable stable cats! Their info will be added later with specifics, for now we are just happy to have them.

With that said, besides the timeline thing and focusing on HARPG once again, I have something very exciting cooking. I have seen people making their barns in various games where landscaping is possible, e.g. Sims and Planet Zoo. These are either too complicated for me to handle or won't run on my laptop, so I found a great alternative to them, SketchUp. The 3d model of Lovelyta Ranch is already being made in SketchUp, and while it won't be the first attempt to outline the property in both 2d and 3d, there will be new things featured e.g. the kennels, which never before have been seen!

The eventual plan if I have a lot of free time and whatnot, is to be able to show details such as what houses look like on the inside. This 3d model will be most useful when making realistic backgrounds, as it gives me a way to have a perfect understanding of what is visible or not from a given point on the farm.

Long time no see! I plan on making a few changes/progress to Lovelyta which means a horse clearout. The following friends we had to say goodbye to:

• Boom-Boom-Pow passed away at the tender age of 14 due to an eventing accident
• Cherokee Star passed away at the age of 28 of natural causes
• Golden Beauty passed away at 23 due to laminitis complications
• LR As Long As You Love Me passed away at 26 of natural causes
• LR Not Your Babydoll passed away at 18 due to colic

So, plans going forward:

• I'm going to be trying out a timeline of 1 real-life month being one season. We are starting with Spring in April and see how that goes. It will be 100% that the horses will go on this timeline, I'm still undecided whether I want to double up and include the kennel as well.
• This news page might be transferred to another platform where it's easier to manage and archive. It will still be within Toyhouse, but I'm thinking whether a bulletin or something might be a better place for it - still very much undecided. This already happened, news have been transferred to bulletins which should make it all a bit nicer!