Awareness of the outside world. Kevin Drum: Is the world really all that scary? . A) No. B) there’s always something to get your knickers in a twist about.
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We have been taking the horses for walks in the morning just about every day since April of last year. We’ve developed some habits.
Habit one. Toss the leadrope over the neck. Let the horse amble along on his own. Doing this depends where we are in the walk. The first lap often has a few stops while we all process the arrival of a new day. Also depends on the marching order. The following horse will follow. These days, the lead horse will often go on his own as well. And so on.
Habit two. Stop at a particular turn on each lap for cookies. This started as a reward for going solo. Now it is a tradition. Rodney often gets to the corner first, on his own, and has to wait for the rest of us to catch up. Cookies happen once the everyone is present. There is no point in getting there early. Rodney has not gotten this message. Fine. You do you. We’ll be along shortly.
So, last Friday. Early on. Rodney was marching down to the cookie corner. The rest of us were coming along behind. Rodney got halfway down the short side of the pasture, hung a hard right, and headed back to the barn.
From a distance, I reminded him about cookies.
He stopped.
He considered.
… cookies … barn … cookies …
Nope, I’m outta here.
The three of us – me, Greg, Milton – looked at each other. Storms were forecast for later. The sky was Wagnerian.
You know, maybe he’s got a point.
Maybe it’s time to call this game.
Took Milton’s halter off and we all headed home.
On Sunday, we were back to status quo cookie.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
Rodney may not be PhD smart but his lizard brain may be smarter than ours.
Go Rodney!
Joan
It was a weird day.