After our extreme divergence of intention a couple of years ago, I never would have thought my beautiful mare La Roca and I would again be on the same page. Since we moved from Pusch Ridge to Beth’s she has been nothing but a wonderful ride. Will I ever sort out the mystery of her disobedience?

Perhaps my inclination to insist upon obedience was part of her problem. She’s a beautiful, opinionated creature with a lot to say. I wasn’t listening carefully enough. My expectations of her actions were outweighing my listening skills. No wonder she looked at me with resignation and stepped away with zest and definitiveness when I tried to mount. The owner at Pusch Ridge said she saw that we had rapport, but we just weren’t going in the same direction. That’s a pretty good explanation.

My assumption was that my direction was all that really counted. Her job was to carry out those directions, no questions asked. Poor pony! What a place in which to exist for her. I had moved her to a new environment. She didn’t know anyone, she was in a pen all by herself, with neigh-bors, yes, but I was the only friend she really knew. Everything she was trying to tell me, I didn’t quite get.

I still don’t always get it. I do get that our fellow creatures have a lot to say and that they appreciate it greatly when we actually listen to them without the filter of our inane human chatter. Boy, that’s hard to do.

I swear my cat, Fuzzara Lee Lilycat, used to communicate with me telepathically. It might be my imagination. She would come to bed with me when I was a kid, growing up feral in Wyoming. She was so snuggly and warm and purry, but then she would tell me that she had to go. I would beg her to stay, in my mind. I didn’t grab at her, I implored her with my thoughts. She told me she had to hunt. And away she’d go. I’d drift off to sleep, but I knew the next thing that would happen would be Fuzzy jumping on my window screen to be let back in. I would get up to let her in. The challenge was to let her back in without the mouse or whatever else she managed to capture because I wasn’t fond of mice under my pillow. Once, I kept a mouse she brought home in a small fish tank which I used as a cage until it recovered, then I set it back out into the night.