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.