I am learning to communicate with Rocky. For me, talking to animals and listening to them – from dog training to bringing an apple to a blind pony – is a spiritual experience, fascinating and compelling and I work at it every day. I am learning a lot and recording what I am learning and am eager to write about that in a book over the next year or so. Communicating with animals requires me to listen, to use my emotions rather than my mind and my mouth. Sometimes all three.

I am communicating now with Rocky, who is blind. Today, we broke through to one another in a new way. This calls for patience and observation. I am fortunate to have lived with donkeys for seven years and have learned so much from them. Also from photographing Maria, an intuitive communicator, with donkeys, chickens and dogs. Although I am not being photographed, we do it together in many ways. It is a passion we share.

With Rocky, I see his rituals and patterns. I am getting to know him. For instance, several times a day, he makes his way to the edge of the pasture and scratches himself against the fallen tree limbs. Sometimes he pokes himself on his face or neck as he doesn’t know quite where he is until he feels the branches. Same with me. I walk into the pasture, sometimes with an apple. I talk to him constantly so that he always knows where I am. I speak softly and evenly. If I have an apple, I drop it on the ground when he gets close, and he puts his nose down and sniffs it, then eats it, breaking it into chunks.

Then I keep talking softly. Today, for the first time, he came over to me, sniffed to search for me. I held my hand out until he came into it and knew where I was. And then he leaned into me the way the donkeys do when they show affection or want attention. Today, for the first time, he led me scratch his neck and mane, run my fingers along his coat. He lowered his head, sighed and closed his eyes. We did this for several minutes, and then he moved off out into the pasture. He was done with me. But this was a breakthrough, a connection. We know and trust one another now. We are beginning to talk.

This took many months, dozens of visits, many apples, lots of talking, waiting. This is his move to make, not mine. Back tomorrow.