You may recall that when our old mule Roy recently lost his buddy, blind Scout, he mourned for quite a while. We began to let him just wander at will across the ranch, which made him happy and got his creaky joints moving. He also began to focus on his human servants as masseurs, ear scratchers and providers of other useful services.
But he also started spending time hanging out next to Luna and Hannah, two blind mares whose corral is at the south end of Beauty’s Barn. When Roy parks himself in the barn aisle facing south, he looks right over their corral. We didn’t realize to what extent he had bonded with them — even if they hadn’t really bonded with him — until we started taking the horses out to pasture two weeks ago.
We had taken Luna and Hannah out to their pasture that first weekend, closed the gate, and then took blind Bridger and blind Madison out to the adjoining pasture, which is closer to Beauty’s Barn. About ten minutes after we closed their gate, Roy walked up to it and started banging on it with his front hooves. He was looking past Bridger and Madison’s pasture and out to the next one, where Luna and Hannah were.
We opened the gate and he walked all the way across the pasture to the next gate, leading to the girls’ paddock. He patiently waited until we opened that gate, too, and then he walked through it and off to visit with the mares.
Ever since, Roy follows the girls out to pasture every morning and back to the barn in the evening. The funny thing is that he has free access to this pasture any other time he wants it, but he never goes out there unless Luna and Hannah are in it. He also doesn’t actually get very close to them; he’s content to simply be in the same pasture.
So yesterday morning I videotaped this mule-and-mare procession as Alayne led Luna and Hannah out to their paddock. Once they got there, I tried to shoot some additional video of all three equines, but as you’ll see, I had an old mule who kept walking up to me, demanding some attention. This is a 30 second video clip:
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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