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.
No comments:
Post a Comment