Marte and Rocky

I learned about gaited horses today.  I always assumed that horses were trained to do an ambling gait.  Marte explained that certain breeds have selective breeding for natural gaited tendencies.  Then she and Rocky demonstrated his lovely gait.  

There's a story behind this.  Rocky makes a wonderful four beat sound when he ambles (about the speed of a trot but very smooth) on the blacktop road.  Marte wanted to record the sound on her cell phone and use it as a ringtone but couldn't figure out how to do it.  Since I am her "cell phone guru" she called and asked for my help.  We had a very nice  socially distanced lunch on her patio while I got her phone set up to record.  The plan was for me to ride my bike next to them while holding the phone as close as possible to his hooves.  What could possibly go wrong?  Anyway, that was a massive fail, probably because I was nervous about getting too close.  Next we tried attaching the phone to Marte's chaps and that worked much better.  Why didn't we just do that in the first place?   

I'm just glad it was accomplished.  The motivation to get it done is that Rocky is 28 years old and has been with Marte since he was 3.  She wanted to make sure that she will always be able to hear the sound of his hoofbeats.  

I am grateful for the time spent with my friend today.  We don't see each other often enough!