In the past couple of months Rocky and I have had only 6 or 7 sessions, not counting the turnouts in the arena where I spend a few minutes with him before returning to the office. We are proving that the Parelli method works even if you can’t live in a tent with your horse 24/7 — that you can do a lot even if you only have an hour a week or 10 minutes every other day. Rock is still jogging to the gate when he sees me coming and he still jams his nose into the halter with exuberance, so I know I’m doing enough good stuff to balance out my many mistakes.
We took the neighborhood loop walk on one of those sessions.
Loop walk map
It was one of those crisp, cold, clear days that you know are going to be the Last Day Ever before the new ice age, so you must get out and experience every moment of it, work and deadlines be damned.
Jan and Salsa came with us, and we girls had some fun with our cell phone cameras. It’s funny how hard it is to get all scared and nervous when your horse hits a threshold when you really just want to get a good angle to photograph the panic. I was calm and laughing through the whole experience because I just could not get an expert shot with my phone.
I uploaded some of the photos from the slide show, in case you want to get a closer look at Rocky’s body language (and, alas, mine). Click any of the photos after the jump to get a bigger version.
Rocky sees a cow
Salsa isn't worried
Rocky wants a closer look at cows
Rocky decides this is close enough to cows for now
The cow is just as fascinated
Horsegirl on a Journey 