March 23, 2008 – Walking and growing

Rory and mom

On Saturday my friend brought me a birthday cake. She had iced it with green icing and used a decorative tip to make the top of the cake look like grass. Then took two foals and some toy fence and made a little paddock with the two foals in it. They had a "haybale" and a bucket of water, and there was a grooming kit outside the fence. And the foals were bay and grayish brown just like TOW and Rory! The TOW foal had a little poop pile (chocolate chips) behind him. Super cute! Yummy too.

Anyway, I took Rory out for our little walk about on Sunday as usual. This time I took him straight out behind the barn and shop and we walked across the slab of melting ice and snow. He wasn't too sure about it, but then hopped across the water at the edge and crunched around with me. He crunched through in some places but didn't get excited or worried about it, just careful. We wandered around the parking lot, then back out front and towards his paddock with the idea of going to say hi to TOW and then leave again. There was no sign of TOW, so I turned the other way and we walked down the driveway instead. We trotted a little bit too. I had him on my left and he kept crowding me and I had to push him away, but then he got it.

We went a little way along the road and then down into the ditch (because he was blowing and looking down like there was a monster hiding in it) and across the slab of snow/ice. He followed me down and again hesitated before jumping onto the snow. Once we crossed the snow we were standing beside the fence for the front field and I saw one of the horses shoot her head up and stare in our direction. I took a little firmer hold of the leadrope and started back towards the driveway. Rory was blowing at every hump and hummock of snow, dead grass, road gravel on the snow, etc as we made our way along. We reached the driveway and started up before the horse came up to the other side of the fence. She brought a couple of horses with her and Rory bounced a little bit and tried to run up the driveway. I was ready for that and steered him towards the fence, getting him stopped. We turned and walked down the driveway a bit, moved his haunches away from pressure, backed up and started up the driveway again.

He was very good and walked quite well all the way up so I decided that since he'd been really good I would put him back in the paddock before TOW starting screaming and Rory got distracted. TOW didn't even notice us come back until I opened the gate.

I went out again a bit later and took a few photos. When we were out walking we had walked past his granddam and it was at that moment that I really saw just how much he's grown. She's a small mare, but he's getting up there! I took a few photos of him and his mum (the weanlings' dams are out with them and the other two mares now) and it's quite a big difference. Of course body length is still much smaller, but the height change is surprising. I see him most often when he's in the barn so I don't really have anything to relate his height to. TOW is growing too and they are pretty well staying about the same relative to each other.