Cornelius and his own Dear Auntie Fay

This afternoon, our timing was exactly right.  I arrived home and was out of the car, unlocking the gate just as my elderly neighbor, Fay, and her toy poodle, Muffin, drove by.  She tootled her horn and I waved.  Cornelius, who had started up the pasture towards his pen when he saw my car, stopped, turned and stared after Fay.  After I got back in the car and started up the long drive to the house, I heard the beat of an overweight Percheron's hooves hitting the ground.  I turned to see Corny thundering down the pasture, back towards the road.  Fay had stopped her car and she and Muffin were, in their own, much slower and tottery ways, setting up the road towards Corny.  Fay was holding a bag of carrots. 

I backed the car all the way down the drive and pulled over to where Fay was and got out to speak to her.  This is what I learned: Fay goes to the market for carrots/apples for Corny several times a week.  She tries to stop and feed him in the morning on the way to work, but sometimes doesn't have time and then Corny has to wait until the afternoon.  She's been doing this since before Christmas.  Corny likes apples more than carrots, but she feels that carrots are healthier for his teeth.  So carrots are on the menu more often than apples.  If she isn't able to stop, my boy calls after her and then she feels badly.

By this time, Corny, who had finished his carrots, was looking down at his tiny auntie and her tinier dog with... affection?  I think. It might have been greed, but it was a very polite, good-natured sort of greed. 

Fay is in her 70's and the walk through the tall grass from the road to the pasture fence is full of gopher holes and squishy after the rains.  She dresses quite stylishly and wears spiky-heeled shoes and lots of glittery necklaces.  As she stuck the five carrots, one at a time, through the fence and Corny crunched them up, she mentioned that it might be safer if we cut the grass lower to make a path.  And it would be easier to see if we bordered it with rocks.

I gave her a hug.  Fay will get her path and the rocks by this weekend.

Corny says that it's about time.