26. VIDEO: Doublicious

After a two-day hiatus, I park in a dry area a good distance from the barn and whistle for Gus before we can see each other. Instantly he honks his bagpipes, and I find him still braying and trotting hard to the pasture gate as I arrive.  Usually a full-throated hee-haw  (which, unlike a horse's neigh, is vocalized during the inhale as well as the exhale) is a stationary activity.  It never occurred to me that donkeys could bray while trotting, but now I can testify that they can and do.

Little Caesar's eagerness to get released from the paddock for some fun doesn’t last long.  Mostly he wants to wander and sniff around idly.  I want our sessions to provide him an opportunity to do what he likes, so I’ve been allowing his independent explorations, recesses for rolling, and general lollygagging.  But lately I think he’s been taking advantage of my indulgence.  So now I clip on his lead line and get him trotting, walking, halting, and backing.  Once he does a little of this, he seems reattuned and engaged.  

Along with some of our usual tricks, we play double tilt-a-chair, with two plastic chairs in a heap.  A few times when his efforts are thwarted by the entangled arms and legs, he turns his head to me for help, but I offer only encouraging words, and he quickly returns to “working the pile” on his own.  If the muddle is particularly intractable, I click and treat for a good maneuver or a near miss, to keep up his incentive; in a pinch, I reach in and detangle just a bit.  As soon as he rights one chair, I move it behind me so he can focus on the other one.

This higher-order problem-solving seems to tax his cerebrum pretty thoroughly.  He’s tired enough to be congenial in his stall and almost entirely acquiescent on the walk back to his paddock.  We practice I-step-you-step [above], and he seems to be catching on that it’s a simple, slow little game of companionship with no agenda.  He likes that.  I think . . . 

25. VIDEO: Better 'n' better

Today Gus and I try leather reins that Sandy provided for our long-lining.  They feel more substantive, as if they make my cues on his halter much crisper and clearer.  Also I take Sandy’s advice to thread the reins through rings that sit higher on his surcingle, running them almost over his shoulders rather than along his flanks.  Thanks to these equipment upgrades, we redeem ourselves after our semi-disastrous driving last time. 

We do have a momentary balk, and later, on video, I watch myself creeping up on Gus’s heinie; the reins are loopy and I'm crowding him. Not in driving a car, but in driving a donkey I have a habit of tail-gating unawares.  And nobody likes being tailgated.  At another point — and this time it's for reasons beyond my ken even when I watch the video — Gus is a big hairy fussbudget about halting.  He jigs and backs and wheels, as if he’s standing on fire ants.  I repeat “whoa” and just wait.  At last he achieves a nanosecond of stasis, whereupon I click and treat.  

Aside from these brief glitches, our 15-minute Sunday drive goes really well.  I manage to walk upright like a normal hominid, with almost no contortions for body-Englishing him around the turns.  And we’re able once again to execute some tight maneuvers, such as marching between the big pedestal and the nearby doors.

To celebrate, we expand on the pompom pick-up that we debuted last time: now he carries it to the pedestal and holds it high.  Rah!

24. Enough?

Absence makes the h. grow f., they say, and I do believe them.  But for active, job-oriented pets like dogs and donkeys, a day off isn’t so much a welcome holiday as a slough of despond.  While domesticated animals are experts at coping with tedium, they don’t always like it — it’s not as if they can crack open a book, or go see a movie, or clean out a closet.  Once humans introduce them to learning or work or entertainment, they usually take to it zealously, and miss it when it’s missing.

When I first became a dog owner, I drastically reduced my movie-going and I packed my photography darkroom into a box in the closet.  I committed to applying the vast majority of my nonwork hours to quality time for the dog. Humans bred dogs for captivity in our houses and yards, to serve as our companions, so now it’s my responsibility to reciprocate that companionship by providing walks or woods running, chew toys or hide-and-seek, obedience classes or trick training.

Since I never owned the horses I rode, however, I worked them only two or three times a week, guilt-free, knowing that the owner would contribute his or her own days at the barn as well.  Plus, horses get turned out with equine buddies and/or get used by students in riding lessons.  I wasn’t their only social outlet.

Gus doesn’t have a lot of outlets.  He gets walked between paddock and stall, Sandy looks after his needs, and people say hi to him in passing.  Unlike his horsey colleagues, he seems to derive little fulfillment from herd time in turnout; his donkeyness craves other action and stimulation.  Now that he’s come to expect and enjoy my appearances in the role of entertainer and Pez dispenser, I’m pretty sure I can tell that his response is usually a hair duller on any second consecutive day and a hair sharper after a day or two off.  Naturally I find our sessions more gratifying when he’s up and keen; I just wonder, is part of his keenness the fruit of desperation, which I flatter myself by characterizing as pleasure in my company?

Competitive dog trainers who want ribbons and titles often confine their dogs in crates much of the time.  When the dogs are released for a training session or a trip to a show, of course they’re peppy and bright.  They learn hungrily and earn their owners lots of big rosettes.  Thing is, all that crate time alone must be a major drag.  Is that how Gus feels when I’m absent for a day or two days?  Should I go play with him every day?  What he’d really like is multiple sessions every day.  I’ve always said excellence is overrated and good-enough is enough, but in this case am I doing enough?  Where’s the line between plenty and paucity?

I do believe my every-other-day visits make an appreciable difference in Gus’s life.  I’ve considered trying to increase them, and parts of me would relish more time with Gus and at the barn, but other parts of me want to do other things.  I dasn’t make any promises, as I’d hate to whet his appetite and then start skimping on the portions.

OK, then, enuff a’ready.

23. VIDEO: Random thingamabobs

Perhaps because I played with Gus the day before, today he seems a tiny bit jaded, so I add a little novelty from a plastic tote of bits and bobs that Sandy keeps in the corner of the arena.  How well can he generalize from traffic cones and dog balls to new items?  The answer is: perfectly well.  

First I rustle the tresses of a paper pompom, which piques his interest.  He touches it.  I touch his neck and chest and withers and belly with it.  It's all good.  Next I set it on the ground, with its smooth, plastic handle sticking straight up.  It might be too slippery for donkey teeth?  No problem.  His inner cheerleader emerges with verve to spare.  He immediately seizes the pompom and — as he does with every nonfood item that he puts in his mouth — shakes it and rubs it on the ground and waves it in the air by way of scientific experimentation (or aggravated assault with intent to kill?).  Then he brings it to me dutifully.

We move on to a flexible plastic tube that, when waved in a fast arc, produces an eerie, shrill hooting, like a UFO coming in for a landing.  That noise also piques Gus's interest.  And again he immediately welcomes this foreign object into his wide family of Fun Things to Mess With.  Ya gotta love his spirit.

22. Soggy and groggy

Spring has sprung a screw loose in early March, and for one rainy day the thermometer tops 60 degrees.  The farm entrance is under six or eight inches of standing water, so I leave my car on the road, climb between fence boards, and wend my way over slushy lawns and ponded pastures to get to the barn.  When the ice was treacherous, Sandy had flung shavings and manure and old hay (excellent traction materials) along paths and around paddock gates, and now that’s all soppingly disintegrating, greatly enriching the yuck factor of the squelching, sucking mud.  

Wellies on the job

(Still, the yuck factor is small for me.  I learned to ride when I was 10 and we were living in England, which is pretty much all damp all the time; it's home to the Wellington boot for good reason.  Every weekend I went with a neighbor girl to Umberslade Stables for a one-hour ride, at a cost of 12 shillings, which was my weekly allowance.  Umberslade's ramshackle stableyard was always a mire.  And as our rides took us over hill and dale through farm fields and country lanes, horses and humans usually came home well spattered. That was fine with me, because it meant access to gee-gees ranging from Big Jane the huge chestnut hunter, to Popcorn the piebald school horse of mongrel provenance, to Merrybell the tiny, shaggy Shetland pony with a fondness for fruit-flavored ice lollies.  Mud and horses simply belong together when all’s right with the world.)

Gus and Henry are loafing up on the little knob of hill in their paddock, and although Gus is eager to be delivered, he’s loath to dip his delicate hooflets in the low-lying slough.  Better him than me, so I wait with his halter and make him walk down to the gate.  From there we have to mince and slog to the arena, with Gus sidling onto the remnant snowbank whenever he can.  We find the far end of the arena also floody-muddy, which strikes him as even more hideous than rattly doors; he avoids the area assiduously.  Of course his couth stops at his ankles: he rolls in the dry dirt until he’s well and truly caked.

It’s so warm, and Gus is still so furry, that today he does seem to be operating underwater on Valium.  After a long hiatus, I decide to return to long-lining, and between his low energy and my complete atrophy of any skills built up in the fall, we stink up the joint.  Luckily Sandy is on hand, and (gallantly suppressing any apparent horror at Gus’s mistreatment or my idiocy) she offers me a few tips; plus, the long-suffering Gus cuts me a very deep break, working patiently despite my blundering.  When I remove the surcingle to let him roll again, he grabs a quick snooze with his chin resting on the ground, ears airplaned out to the sides, and eyes sagging closed.  I let him lie for a couple of minutes.

We do some desultory walk-trot and tilt-a-chair and cone-fetch, and then I figure he’s had enough.  But he balks at the arena gate and positions himself by my shoulder:  he wants more walk-trot.  Since I’ve been getting better at matching paces with him, he seems to enjoy it — either it’s just easier without the distraction of syncopated human steps alongside, or he does welcome the pace-matching as a buddying-up activity.  Either way, I’m glad of it, so we jog over the ground poles a few more times.  We do some walking in the “dancer’s arms” frame, at which we’re both improving.  And we play a little I-step-you-step back and forth.  Now he’s content to leave the arena, and he even cooperates, after some delaying tactics, in the gloppy march back to the gloppy paddock.

21. Let 'er rip

Trigger warning and viewer-discretion advisory: some toity-talk follows.

I have never seen Gus urinate or defecate.  I’ve mucked out his stall and walked his paddock, so I’ve seen evidence of both.  Like most large prey animals, equines tend to take extra precautions when peeing, as it requires a wide parking stance from which it’s awkward to rise and flee; they wait for quiet moments to drain their prodigious bladders.  In contrast, they think nothing of dropping a load while standing in cross-ties or show-jumping or doing pretty much anything else, several times a day, in public or private.  So why has Gus yet to poop in my presence?  Maybe it reflects a species-wide habit, or his own (literally?) anal-retentive psyche, or an unremitting wariness with me . . .  Anyway, his donkey daintiness has extended to flatulence as well.  Horses let fly all the time; but not Gus.  Until now.  

The more we’ve been trotting to stay warm, the more Gus is wanting to trot even on milder days, and today he barely takes time to roll before zooming over to me and explaining in no uncertain terms, “Time to run!”  We trot around, and when I set a ground pole up on four-inch props, he canters along to my jogging and springs over the pole with glee.  His mischievous eye and tossing head tell me he’s ready to rumble, so I roll out the beachball and unclip his lead line.  And for the first time in our sessions, he frolics.  He cavorts.  He positively gambols.  He kicks up his heels with abandon and rockets around at a full gallop.  He spins and bucks and farts.  Yes — Gus farts!  He pretends the beachball is attacking and he races away; he returns and charges the ball but slams on the brakes, wheels, and gallops off again.  Tooting sassily as he goes.

I’m so busy laughing and egging on this irrational exuberance (including, when he gives the ball a good nose-bop, clicking and risking life and limb to hand over a treat) that I never think to pull out my cell-phone camera.  Gus’s uninhibited, sphincter-releasing jubilation has an audience of one.  In hopes of a next time, I buy a mini-camcorder as soon as I get home.

The game continues for several minutes before Gus begins sniffing the floor and then rolls again.  We move on to traffic-cone fetching and tilt-a-chair, ending with a new variant of bringing the cone onto the pedestal: bringing it onto the wooden mat.  I can see that he’s blown his wad when he sniffs, rolls yet again, and then doesn’t get up but simply lies there with his legs tucked under him and dozes.  I sit in a chair on the other side of the arena, turn my body partly away from him to remove any hint of expectation or pressure, and join him in gazing into the middle distance.  (I have my dogs in my bedroom every night — on their own beds on the floor, thank you very much — because even co-unconsciousness counts as together time.  Same with equids: loafing in each other’s general vicinity qualifies as a team-building activity.)

No surprise, Gus is a model citizen afterward.  He doesn’t barge in his stall, he suffers me to hold each foot for a thorough picking, and we play some more I-step-you-step games.  In the paddock, we exchange some exhalations.  By way of mutual grooming, I scratch his withers while he lips my hand.

As soon as I leave, he probably poops voluptuously.

20. Happiness is a cold donkey

A cold, windy day, and Gus is extra-eager when I arrive.  He waits nicely while I remove his blanket, but then hangs by me and clearly wants to move or play or learn or anything. Maybe he’s just hungry for treats.  But he’s also concerned by the sporadic banging of the arena doors, so after he rolls I swagger over to them and give them what-for.  I scold them, shake and swat them, and snort with brio.  When I turn back, I find Gus has parked himself immediately behind me, watching closely.  Again, he seems to buy into my sentry schtick and ignores all future noises.

Asinine elation

He’s still very energetic, though, so I leave his rope off — safer for both of us if he does shy suddenly.  Since he’s so focused on me, I don’t need a line anyway. He trots by my side, staying in pretty good position even while flinging his head around wildly.  As I trot over a ground pole, he leaps over it as if clearing a two-foot oxer.  That seems to tickle him even more, inspiring repeated bouts of giddy trotting and jumping.  To catch my breath and keep him moving, I roll out the beachball, and he chases it many, many times all over the arena.  He trots after it with predatory glee, sometimes grunting at it a little, and tries to bite it.  Each good nose-bop gets a click, but sometimes he resumes the chase before I can deliver the treat.  

When he leaves off ball-rolling in order to roll himself in the dirt again, I put the beachball away.  We work with equal esprit on the plastic chair, traffic cones, pirouetting, and dancer’s arms.  Betweentimes, he responds to my beckoning almost every time promptly, and often at a trot.

This is the most laughing out loud I’ve done with him so far.

Back in his stall (and knowing that dinner is due soon), Gus is his usual pushy self around the door.  He’s barging and leaning on the stall guard, rubbernecking into the aisle, filling up the space I need to enter and exit, and I’m sick of it.  I add “stay!” to my “ba-a-ack” commands, and he begins to show a modicum of self-control.  He’s good about hoofpicking and blanketing.  When I try a little “fun with feet,” mirroring one step forward and one back, he hesitates to step forward, probably because we had just been doing stays.  Agenda item:  be sure to distinguish clearly when a stay is and isn’t required.   

19. Footwork

A dressage training technique involves walking alongside and guiding the horse’s every step by way of what some call “dancer’s arms,” using one hand at the girth or haunch and another at the halter or bridle.  With Augustus Little Caesar, my arms don’t have far to reach —  barely shoulder-width apart, rather than dramatically outspread.  

Since his response to my touching his girth is to walk backward, not forward, I need to tap his hip instead.  As long as I also twist my body to face forward, he’s catching on to walking along in the frame I’m setting with my arms.  In this he’s a precise and patient teacher, helping me rate how fast I should go, how to block him from rushing too quickly ahead, how to keep him moving but not nag at his girth, etc., etc.  The idea is also for the two of us to match paces (something horses apparently do with one another, as a togetherness gesture), and I’m fumbling a bit with that too:  Gus not only takes short, fast steps but he often changes speeds slightly.  Luckily I remember how to skip.

After we practice this a little and then return to his paddock, I silently take one exaggerated step toward him and he backs up one step. When I then take one exaggerated step back, he comes forward one.  We're so attuned that we do this three times in a row, and his only reward is my turning half-away and exhaling.  I'm so rapt that I inadvertently snub Barbara as she's turning her Henry into the paddock and trying to converse with me.  Vital affairs to discuss?   Sorry, gotta play patty-cake with my donkey.

18. Performance review

Six-month checkup.  For our first few months, I hardly saw Gus startle at all, and I never saw him in an outright spook.  Now it’s happened a few times, including a recent mad bolt when wind or falling ice near the arena wall made a sudden noise.  With an absolutely stricken look on his face, he spins, gallops, slows at the arena gate only long enough to scoot under it, and then keeps running until he’s outside the whole barn.  I find him standing there, just outside the door, looking a hair sheepish but also genuinely cowed.  He agrees to come back in, but he’s jumpy and spooky still, and soon another noise sets him off again; this time, I had left the arena gate open for ease of panicky egress.  After that, we just walk around outside the barns.  

Thing is, why is he spookier now than before?  Maybe it’s the cold and windy weather.  But I have to wonder if it’s a psychological change happening inside his overactive little burro brain.  He’s been gradually sweetening, toward me as well as other humans, acceding to our wishes more often and more graciously.  Plus I’ve been stepping in more as sentry for him, winning some partial or grudging trust as a reliable leader.  Could he be experiencing an unstable state of flux, some half-surrendered limbo, where he’s allowing me to take the reins (ahem) even while he’s not fully convinced that I’m responsible and capable enough for the job?

By all appearances, he’s settled in a pretty comfortable power-sharing arrangement with Sandy.  He hasn’t signed over the entirety of his sovereignty — I’m guessing no donkey ever does — but mostly she’s the boss of him.  Maybe he’s in an uneasy process of ceding similar functions and responsibilities to me?

Does this mean his flightiness will abate when he determines that it’s OK to put his safety in my hands?  Or might he be even spookier, because appointing me as herd sentry puts him into the role of vulnerable dependent?  Am I creating an equid Blanche DuBois?  Nahh, I can’t see that happening.  Ever.

I may also have reached an understanding of Sharon Wilsie’s advice about slowing things down as if underwater on Valium.  Gus’s actions are almost never slow, but they're punctuated by delays — sometimes leisurely, long ones — devoted to staring at a horse or person, stopping midway between paddock and arena to gaze into the next county, surfing the floor for dropped treats, or minutely examining a section of arena wall.  So it’s me who has to be slow — i.e., willing to wait until he’s ready to return his attention to me and resume his quick, energetic behaviors.

Jonnie J. Whippet

As for my own psyche’s journey over the months, I can say that I’ve learned a lot about equid ethology, and I’ve fine-tuned the patience I began developing when I first started clicker-training, with my whippet Jonnie.  A cat-dog if ever there was one, he loved the attention and learning, but he would lapse into near-catatonia at the slightest pressure from his teacher:  any meaningful looks, any leash, and especially any hands-on.  Clicker was the only approach possible.  I soldiered through a lot of restiveness and rationalizing — “I don’t have the patience for this nonsense; I prefer him to be untrained.”  But I used only clicks and treats to teach that whippet not just to sit, down, stay, and come, but to align in front, heel with precision, and fetch and retrieve the dumbbell.

After more training with other dogs, and after watching clicker trainers with horses, I have no trouble summoning the patience to handle Gus. What’s surprises me, though, is how riveted I am by the procedure and the relationship.  Working with him is still hugely entertaining, gratifying, rib-tickling, and fascinating every single day.  I’m more enthralled and enchanted than I’ve been with any other animal training.

As long as that remains the case, count me in, up to my eyeballs.

17. Pushing buttons

After each session, Gus has a habit of walking circles to avoid having his blanket put back on.  It’s a tedious little dance, with me repeating “whoa” and holding his rope with one hand while flinging the blanket onto his back askew and eventually tugging it flat and straight with my free hand.  Once it’s on him, he always stops fussing and stands patiently.  

It occurs to me that a particularly apt horse-speak conversation might be what Wilsie calls approach and retreat.  It’s how horses almost always interact, giving each other the chance to decline but then asking again. So when it’s time for reblanketing, I try retreating just one step when Gus begins to circle away.  Holding the blanket but with my body turned half away from him, I look down and kick the dirt and blow softly; when he relaxes the ever-so-teensiest bit, I turn back to him, asking if the blanket would be OK, and I stay there.  Now he stays put too, though there’s still tension on his lead line. I do another “aw, shucks” slump-and-scuff maneuver, and then slowly toss the blanket over his back, and he doesn’t swerve away or fuss at all.  

He’s knows there’s no escaping the blanket; so is it simply that he wants the opportunity to lodge a formal objection?  Or his system of etiquette decrees that no means no and also that it’s OK to keep asking until no changes to yes?  Anyway, it takes me just as long to chase him around in circles and fling the blanket crookedly as it does to approach and retreat, win his cooperation, and blanket him easily.

Yet another Wilsie suggestion is to use what she calls the follow-me button.  It’s a spot high on the neck, not too far back from the ears, where you can press a hand for a second and then turn and walk away.  It’s where a mare nudges a foal to say she’s leaving and it should follow her.  The very first time I try it with Gus, he plods right up behind me and comes alongside.  Cool!  I don’t really need that gesture, of course, but I remember Wilsie’s assertion that the herd leader is the one who most often initiates these requests and activates these “buttons.” In the uphill struggle to convince a mulish, hard-ass donkey that I should be his leader, I’ll use all the buttons I can.

16. Goblins begone

After our next session, Gus again refuses to return to his paddock, so I pop him into his stall and step away. As if on cue, not five minutes later he’s agitating to bust out.  When I arrive at his stall, he reaches over the stall guard, grabs his halter from the nearby hook, and literally flings it at me.  Well, I can certainly parse that message, I tell him with a laugh.  When I pick it up off the ground and offer it toward him, he shoves his face into it urgently.  This time he walks along to his paddock with only one hesitation — a chirrupy “walk on” from me suffices to unglue his feet — and we enter the pasture amicably.

                                            ___________________________

Another use for horse-speak, according to Wilsie, is to act as sentry so that other herd-members feel safe.  The sentry horse pricks its ears, stiffens its body, and looks toward any sudden noise or odd sight or other danger; it often snorts emphatically; and when the risk is past, the sentry noticeably relaxes again as a way of sounding the all-clear.  

Sentries earn trust and respect for their services.  Where do I sign up??

When I first try the stare and snort, after I notice Gus prick his ears toward a noise, he doesn’t fall for it. In his experience, no creature can be a better sentry than he is, and my play-acting leaves him cold.  Far from being impressed by my guardianship, he almost seems embarrassed for me, as if I’m the one who’s the ass in this duo.  (OK, that’s probably me being embarrassed for me.  Projection, anyone?)

Soon after, one breezy day in the arena, Gus’s ears spring forward at a rattle of the doors, and I try again.  I stop and stand up very tall, drop his lead and march at the doors, slap and tap various parts to demonstrate their stability, and tell them to settle down and stay there, you bad doors, you. Then I come back with relaxed shoulders and exhale low and slow to Gus, and damned if his ears don’t noticeably wilt and his lips relax.  And we continue with never another concern for the doors.  Maybe I'm badass enough after all.

15. Talk, talk, talk

I’m reading Wilsie’s book closely (and repeatedly) and am really eager to incorporate some of her tips into my donkey handling.  One day, for example, I arrive just after hay was thrown into the paddocks, so I let Gus munch while I use Wilsie’s horse-speak to commune quietly with him:  I stand next to him, not facing him, and I cock a hip to rest more on one leg.  I drop my shoulders a bit, I look down, I sigh heavily and express a vibe of having zero agenda.  When Gus lifts his head from the hay pile for a moment, I offer him my fist to nuzzle.  I sigh some more.  Eventually I scratch his withers a bit and then flop an arm over his neck chummily.  He accepts that, so I leave him awhile, honoring Wilsie’s reminder that, so unlike humans, horses value space more than touch.  When I go back to the paddock, Gus is happy to come away with me into the arena.

But even though — or because? — we were communing, both of us at a zero level of intensity or intent, once he gets into the arena, he kinda blows me off; he just wants to sniff the ground independently.  I give up on the chair and the traffic cone and the beachball, and we do some new training from the Wilsie book.  I walk alongside him with one forefinger draped over the noseband of his halter, and with my other forefinger touching his side (where a rider’s heels would be); it’s a very controlled little pas-de-deux designed to rate his speed and orient his body just so.  He’s willing and interested enough, but when I pause at all, he goes back to his distracted sniffing.

As Gus’s pasturemate Henry comes in with Barbara, his owner, I’m running out of treats, which tells me it’s time to end my session with Gus.  I put his blanket back on and then stand a minute with him, breathing heavily and relaxing us both down to zero — Gus’s eyes are soft, his ears nearly limp, and his lips drooping.  We leave the arena in this mellow state, but at the barn door he refuses to go outside toward his paddock and pulls me toward his stall.  I take him there and groom him while he chomps his hay.

I leave him for awhile to go watch Henry in the arena, but soon Gus realizes he’s alone and bleats a booming hee-haw and butts his chest against his stall guard.  I return to his stall and lead him out, but again he won’t go past the barn door, and this time he hauls me to the arena gate.  (I don’t always let him choose his destinations, at least not without a fight, but I figure he needs to get his way sometimes.  He’s a donkey, after all.)  We stand at the gate, spectating fixedly.  Watching Henry move around and receive treats doesn’t get Gus at all excited; yet he can’t take his eyes off the action.  I blow deep breaths, chill out, and take him with me down to zero.  His gearshift is firmly in Park. Occasionally he jostles the gate with his nose, but he doesn’t try to barge under it (at which he’s an expert), and I get him to leave the gate alone with a little re-mellowing.  Such a polite audience we are.

After a good ten minutes of stationary observation, Gus seems finally to be getting bored, just as Henry’s session is ending. My scheme is to get Gus to follow Henry in an exeunt omnes, but instead he scoots into the arena as Henry leaves it.  I immediately turn him to tag after Henry, which he does for a few paces into the outdoors — until Henry disappears into his own barn, whereupon Gus stops short, pulling the lead rope tight behind me.  I stop but don’t let up on the rope, which Gus defies by thrusting his head high and backward, which yanks my shoulder, which makes me mad, which makes me instantly give him a hard retaliatory yank, dammit. That seems to chastise (or at least nonplus) him ever so slightly for a nanosecond, and now I go right back to zero, reconcile, and offer to continue leading him.  Nope!  The only place he’ll consent to go is back to his stall, so I take him there, shut him in, and go home.  Little shit.

14. Talk like an equid

In the bleak midwinter, Barbara shows me a video by a new-on-the-scene horse whisperer, this one claiming to translate some very subtle equine body-language signals and suggest how humans can mimic them in order to communicate in “horse speak.”  The video shows the trainer, Sharon Wilsie, working with three horses of different temperaments, with whom she “converses” via stance, breaths, and other small movements.  It’s pretty compelling.  And she's slated to speak at a Saratoga bookstore, so we show up to ask her some questions and buy her books.

It’s fine that “horse speak” is all about asking and discussing in negotiating rank and leadership; thing is, I inquire, what happens if the upshot of the palaver is that the horse is in fact more dominant than the human?  Doesn’t really happen, she replies, because the very act of posing more questions and starting more conversations is an assertion and signal of herd leadership.  OK, not only am I the only one in our sessions dispensing treats, but I’m also doing far more asking and sending and beckoning of Gus than he is of me, so that should keep him following my lead.

Later I ask Wilsie if she has experience with donkeys, and she answers, “Yes!  I love donkeys and mules, and horse-speak is just the same with them, except that you need to do it as if you’re swimming underwater while on Valium.”  Huh.  I’m happy to hear that it works well with long-ears, but surprised that they need it slowed down.  Most everything Gus does is faster, not slower, than with horses.  But I’ll try some horse-speak at various paces and see how it goes.  In any case, it’s always a good idea to move slowly when training any large, ponderous animal — even one whose little hooves twinkle along at such a merry clip.

13. Gamesmanship

Now that we’re expert at picking up and carrying the toy traffic cones, I bring out a rubber latticework dog ball.  Like the cones, it lifts a little burst of dust when it lands after I toss it, which is enough to pique the interest of any red-blooded donkey.  Almost immediately, Gus is reliably picking it up and handing it to me.

I put the ball away and drag in the kids’ basketball hoop.  It’s bright-colored plastic with a cloth-string net maybe eight inches wide, and it’s set about four feet high.  Gus, again reliably, begins nudging and mouthing it all over.  Under this assault, it rocks and teeters, it makes ratcheting noises; nothing fazes his blithe curiosity.  When his nose passes over the open part of the hoop, I click and treat.  He startles and shoots me a quick look to ask “What was that for?” before resuming his explorations.  Nose momentarily  over hoop, click again, and this time I reach under and hand him the treat from inside the rim of the hoop.  I do that just one more time, and his next move is to put his head very deliberately over the middle of that hoop and look down for that treat, which he gets promptly.  And his next move is to cram his whole head deep into the hoop and wait there in sure and certain hope.

Uh-oh.  That’s not the behavior I want (although even if his head got stuck, I’m sure he’d manage to extricate it, with force but without concern), but I reward his enthusiasm with a click and treat.  From now on, however, no more clicks for burying his face; only hovering above the hoop gets the click.  And within a minute or two, he figures it out.

Over the next few days, we keep practicing fetching and hoop-hovering separately.  And now when he fetches the ball, I’m placing my hands near the hoop, so he has to deliver the ball there.  Soon I’ll have my hands in the hoop, and then — no doubt much sooner than I expect — I’ll remove my hands and let him dunk the ball directly into the hoop.

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The more we play interactive games, the more Gus shows me the indefatigability of his interactive drive.  One day, he cranes his neck around behind my waist and plucks at the strings of my treat apron. Another day, he suddenly brushes by me and trots off, but quickly stops and turns his head back, showing me what’s sticking out of his mouth: a mini-kleenex packet, which he’d just plucked from my chest pocket without my realizing.

With Barbara and others at the barn, I’m trying to dream up new games for him.  One person thinks we should build a cage puzzle where we’d shut him in and let him shift and disengage various bars to open it.  Me, I’m scouting thrift shops for an old-fashioned baby pram: he could push it around and then extract a toy donkey from inside.  Probably the only game that would really challenge him is chess, but I’m too dim to teach it, and anyway he’d beat me every time, so the hell with that noise.

12. Incidents happen

One rainy day (and I know Gus hates rain and puddles), I approach his paddock with my usual whistle.  No donkey.  His halter is hanging on the fence rail, but he isn’t.  He’s unsinkable, so I’m not really worried, yet I can’t help imagining Bad Things that could have befallen him.  In the slushy snow, with his pasturemates following me lazily, I slog around the entire perimeter of the paddock, looking for any broken fencing or broken donkey.  One low fence rail is missing, and I recall Sandy saying, “Gus is like a mouse. He can squeeze through the tiniest holes.”  He’s certainly in the wind now.  

I trudge all over the farm, around the other paddocks, off into the far fields, behind the old equipment barn . . .  Finally I check each stall in each barn, and there’s Gus lounging in his pasturemate’s unoccupied stall and eating his hay.  “Oh, hi,” he says.  “Here to play?”

Gus magnanimously teaches me how to lead him around in the arena.  He wants clear cues, and if I fail him, he lags behind or crosses behind me to my other side or arcs across in front of me.  Thanks to him, I’m getting much better at knowing when and how much to pivot my head and shoulders for a turn and to lean back a bit and clomp my feet to a halt.  We have moments when he and I are both in the zone and we can walk some off-lead circles and figure-eights in pretty close ranks.

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When winds rattle the arena doors, Gus gets distracted but not afraid.  Until.  A very blustery day, and Gus can’t get those doors off his mind.  He resists going near that end of the arena, and I agree to stay away.  Far from the doors, but with our backs to them (human error #1), we begin walking side by side, with him on the inside of the arena and me next to the wall (human  error #2) — and he suddenly loses it.  Before I know what’s what, he’s jostling my elbow and hip, ramming me from behind, scraping me against the wall.  He’s genuinely panicked, but I can’t get out of his way, and I do not want to fall down ahead of him, so I dance as fast as I can.  Rolled between wall and donkey, I get spun around, run backwards a few steps, trip over his feet, twirl again . . . and finally he’s blown past and is galloping free ahead of me.  Luckily I’m still vertical, and therefore unhurt.  

It’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed Gus violently spook at anything.  But he calms down quickly, having put some real distance between himself and those doors.  I collect him, exhale softly by his face and relax, and we resume our session.  All’s well, etc.

11. Chairmanship

Just for grins, I take a cheapo molded-plastic chair and set it in the middle of the arena, step back, and do nothing.  Gus wastes no time sniffing, nudging, and tasting it.  He bites it, knocking it sideways, and tries to hand it to me.  Enterprising, but potentially destructive, so we practice “leave it,” with a click when he turns his face away from it.  Our prohibition on teeth gets expanded to forelimbs when he paws at the toppled chair and gets his foot caught between its arm and seat.  Yikes!  Luckily he lets me lift his foot and winkle the chair off.  I’m repeating slow, whispery whoas, but it’s only to calm myself; he’s unperturbed.  

Like Godzilla, Gus has never seen an edifice or object that he doesn’t want to knock down, and within a few seconds he bowls the chair over onto its back.  I figure a new trick can be tipping it back upright.  I start by setting the chair on its arms, with the top edge of the backrest facing Gus.  During his freestyle nosings, the instant he slips his snout under the edge of the backrest and nudges upward, that’s when I click.  Over the course of three or four sessions, he’s consistently lifting the chair-back, raising it higher, and resting it on his nose for a second or two.  Next session, he understands the hold-it-on-nose concept so well that he takes it further by walking one or two paces forward with it balanced on his nose. This pushes the chair far enough for it to tip upright onto its feet.  Big click-fest!  As with the cone-retrieving, Gus soars ahead and gets the trick down pat in mere minutes.  

Trying to keep one step ahead of him, now I set the chair on its side or its back, and Gus methodically rolls it and flips it. It’s a donkey Rubik’s Cube.  When he can’t get it to settle with the backrest available head-on, he’s learning to lift it from a corner, where it rocks and twirls on just one foot and he has to maneuver his nearly prehensile upper lip to keep it under control.  I’m stunned to realize that this donkey isn’t learning what specific movements to make, but what the goal is.  He understands that the chair should end by being upright, and that his task is to manipulate it in whatever ways he finds necessary to place it there.  He’s exercising deliberation and creativity.  That’s a scary intelligence to be playing with. Thank God he lacks opposable thumbs.