63. VIDEO: Globetrotter Gus

He’s way upstate, but Gus could join the Harlem Globetrotters.  His dunking-the-basketball trick is nearly perfect, with plenty of goofing around the net preceding a definitive swish.  

Our progress was a bit delayed because Gus enjoys flapping the ball back and forth, scraping it on the arena floor, and bashing it into the backboard a good deal more than he enjoys dropping it into the hoop.  To pinpoint the dunk as the sought-after behavior, I was clicking the instant the ball entered the net, because clicker-training rules clearly state that a click ends the behavior — that is, he should drop the ball immediately in order to get his treat.  But in this case, Gus prefers to continue his fun for a few more seconds, which often means dropping the ball when it’s no longer in the net, which I don’t want to click for, but I’ve already clicked . . .  aaargghhh!

Not to worry; it’s par for the course.  To teach a dumbbell retrieve to dogs, the moment they take it into their mouths, you click, causing them to spit it out instantaneously in order to get the treat, so you look as if you’re training them to drop the dumbbell.  Eventually, though, you can delay the click a teeny bit, and then a teeny bit longer and longer, to build the duration of the dumbbell hold.  Refining and chaining all the steps into one trick is a messy process at first.

Interestingly, what greatly accelerated Gus’s learning the dunk was my introducing the occasional peppermint candy as a treat for extra-special success.  Until now I never quite trusted that “higher-value” rewards would contrast with regular rewards in an animal’s mind during routine trick-training, but the first big, sweet peppermint made Gus’s ears and eyes pop visibly.  And sure enough, after just a few more peppermint specials over a couple of days, now the dunk is executed, though still with much prefatory monkey business, far more reliably.

62. Channeling Eeyore

With the forage around the farm beginning to toughen and dry out as autumn creeps in, Gus gobbles up as much as he can while the gobbling is good.  Plantains are flowering but still emerald-leaved; grasses are yellowing at the tips but mostly still green and fresh enough; chicory and chickweed remain off the menu. 

Today Gus suprises me by grazing around the gate of a paddock where boots and hooves have trampled the ground to barren dirt.  The nearby grass is dry and powdered with dust, but Gus rips it up hungrily.  This micro-desert also hosts mats of tiny, wiry, vining weeds.  Gus works at gathering a sizable hunk between his teeth, so that a yank of his head succeeds in tearing off the whole tangled skein.  He stands in the sun, chewing and chewing until the stringy stuff is swallowed. These scrubby plants are literally “the odd bits which got trodden on” that Eeyore dolefully expects when picnicking with Pooh and crew.  In fact, Gus’s unexpected Eeyore impression is so complete that, though he has never given a thistle the time of day, now he sniffs a big thorny one before deciding to move on.

When, too late, I identify the stringy little plant as a spurge, I worry.  Spurges are notoriously toxic to humans and many animals.  They can cause vomiting, which equines are structurally unable to do — so is Gus in real danger??  I quickly recall that he ingests the occasional mouthful of oak leaves, ragweed, buttercup, and God knows what else, all with apparent immunity, so I trust his iron constitution can handle today’s garnish of spurge with the same gay abandon.  

Sure enough, he’s hale and hearty on my next visit.  Nevertheless, I do not let him graze near the patch of spurge again.

61. Mammal a mammal

Gus seems to like every animal he meets — horses, dogs, chickens, humans.  He always watches them with calm interest, and if they’re nearby he invariably extends his snout to offer a greeting.  The barn manager’s little old dog has invented a game for the two of them, wherein she approaches, he lowers his nose to say hi, and she growls and snaps at him, making him jump back.  (My family once had a cat who did the same thing with our dog;  despite her hissing and nose-swatting, which made him sneeze, which elicited yet another swat, the two were great buddies.)  When Gus makes an overture to the chickens, they just waddle away at top speed with exclamation points over their little heads.  The only nice-nice he ever gets is from horses and humans.

But now some friends come to meet him and bring along their two wire-haired fox terriers, Norm and Hank.  Both are immediately fascinated by their first-ever donkey, and Gus is very keen to meet them too.  At first, the dogs shy away when Gus gets too close and lowers his big head toward them, but all parties (each on a lead line controlled by a human) try more rapprochements.  I want to show off some of Gus’s crowd-pleaser tricks, but he’s distracted and attracted by the terriers.  Norm is a bit more skittish with Gus than his brother Hank is, though both finally brave a few brief nose-bops.  At one point, Hank walks behind Gus and starts to stand up to rest his front paws on Gus’s hocks in order to reach high enough to sniff his butt.  !  Gus has never kicked that I know of, but Hank’s owner very properly brings him away.  All anybody gets to sniff is noses.

By going deeper into the arena, farther away from the visitors, I get Gus focused on some cone-fetching and tilt-a-chair games.  Then he socializes again with his new friends, and they join him for awhile as he grazes on the lawn outside the arena.  Since the entire environment is new to them, the dogs are overstimulated and getting tired; meanwhile, Gus looks gratified, fulfilled, and happy.  For him socializing is as thoroughly positive an experience as dining — and when he gets both together, he’s in asinine heaven.

60. VIDEO: Driver’s ed

In disaster-assessment mode immediately after the cart crash, Sandy and I blame ourselves.  We shouldn’t’ve assumed the best-case scenario, in which Gus remembers the enjoyable aspects of pulling the trap and is Just Fine with doing it again.  We should’ve predicated our training on the worst case, in which his memories of pulling the trap have faded except for the past episode of terrifying calamity.  In that frame of mind, we’d begin by clicking and treating Gus for staying near the trap while we jostle it a tiny bit.  And for hearing it rattle as we pull it around.  And for hearing it while his back is turned on it.  Later we’d manoever him near the shafts, immediately click and treat, and lead him away to safety.  We’d manoever him near again, have him wait one second, click and treat, and lead him away again.   We’d rest the shafts on his surcingle rings and then promptly remove them.  The most we’d accomplish, and it would be a crowning glory, would be to have him to take one or two steps forward with the cart.  Then we’d celebrate with a peppermint, unhitch him, and let him play fetch.

But now we’ve got on our hands a donkey who’s well and truly spooked.  And who, in a way, succeeded in escaping by means of running amok in the most dangerous fashion.  We need to get that taste out of his mouth and cover up that memory with a lot more positive and pleasant experiences.

First Sandy hopes that Gus might assent to being rehitched, so we try bringing the cart behind him.  Even at a distance, and no matter how rapidly and repeatedly we click and treat, he jigs and spins his hips away every time.  He insists on facing the menace head-on — perfectly natural.  Next she leads him between the shafts head-first, and he’s quite willing to make that approach.  Next she leads him across the shafts sideways, as if they’re ground poles, and he’s quite willing to step over them calmly.  But when she turns his back to the cart, he’s still not at all willing.  So:  the cart is tolerable when it’s stationary and visible.

Now she takes a Gus-rein in one hand and a cart-shaft in the other hand and walks forward.  She allows him a long rein, to let him put space between himself and the trap.  His body is tense; his ears move constantly, like ground-control signallers at a very busy airport; and he gives that rattletrap plenty of sideways hairy eyeball.  But he manages to walk along, with the trap rolling just on Sandy’s other side.  So:  the cart is now tolerable when it’s moving and visible.

These are much better outcomes than white-hot panic and emergency extraction.  

We set down the cart in the far corner of the arena, and I take Gus outside for some grazing.  He tucks in with gusto and relief, never raising his head from chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing.  After 15 minutes, we go into his stall for dinner — more oral gratification.  After gobbling his grain, he avidly browses his hay.  These are basically the equine equivalents of a carton of ice cream and a spoon.

Now that Gus’s last two experiences with the cart have ended in cataclysm, we’re definitely behind an eight-ball.  His powers of recollection are strong.  Yet so are his resilience and courage.  Each time I visit from now on, I can ask him to touch the cart and stand near it and hear it rattle, all in brief sessions and tiny increments.  Maybe that way we can work our way back to hitching up and driving with confidence and relaxation.  Eventually.

59. Cart-astrophe

Amid the riot of last week's New York State Fair — a butter sculpture depicting life-size customers in an ice-cream parlor; cage upon cage of ducks and chickens and rabbits; pen after pen of goats and sheep and pigs; a Snickers candy bar wrapped in bacon, then dipped in batter, then deep-fried; an exhibit of art made from “junk in a bucket” — I happened upon some carriage-driving contests in the equestrian coliseum.  There were pairs of dapper Belgian draft ponies, and also big Percherons in “tandem hitch,” which means one in front of the other like a tandem bicycle. 

I’ve seen a few cart and carriage accidents, and heard about others.  Driving is certainly more dangerous than riding:  if a cart bounces or tips, the humans can get catapulted from the seat while the animals can get entangled in straps and shafts.  Once upon a time, Sandy had Gus nicely trained to pull a little two-wheeled trap as she walked behind it, and after he was good with a 50-pound sack of feed in the trap, she figured she might . . . just . . . sit in it herself.  Instantly the imbalance or torque freaked him out and sent him running off wildly, causing the cart to flip over sideways while still attached to him, causing him to freak out even more.  Sandy managed to bail out and roll away unhurt, but by the time she and others got Gus stopped, the harness was so twisted and jammed onto his shoulders that they had to cut it off of him.

Happily, all went smoothly with the Belgians and Percherons I saw at the fair.  And when I tell Sandy about it, it sparks her interest in reintroducing Gus to driving.  His crash was far in the past, and he’s great with long-lining — what could go orwng??

First we fail to realize, when Gus shows some suspicion on seeing the cart in the arena, that he still associates it with bad hoodoo.  But he lets us bring the little conveyance behind him and tie its shafts with bailing twine to the side-rings of his surcingle.  Sandy takes the reins behind the cart, while I walk at Gus's head in order to deliver instant treats whenever she clicks.  Off he steps like a professional and walks along well.  Almost right away, though, he doesn’t want to stop to receive treats, and he doesn’t want to whoa on her command.  He wants to walk along smartly.  Then to quick-march.  Then to trot.  The more he accelerates, the more the light metal cart jounces and rattles.  And the more it rattles, the less he likes it.  Gus’s intent evolves visibly, from pulling the cart to fleeing the cart. 

At this point, when Sandy tries to slow him, he instead runs off blindly, pulling the reins from her hands.  He gallops to the arena gate and tries to barge out through it, toppling a couple of chairs and wooden rails loudly.  But the gate won’t give, and the trap won’t stop chasing him, so he veers back to the center of the arena and crosses it diagonally, bucking and bucking and bucking.  By this time the cart is upside-down, scraping and banging, the twine is broken away from one shaft, but the other shaft is sticking under and between his hind legs. It all started so promisingly, and now we're fearing for his life!

As he rampages away from the gate, I make like an X — standing tall with my arms extended in the air and my feet apart, forming the international (and interspecies) symbol for halt — and I aim my X at his neck.  Sandy probably does the same thing, but I don't look; I'm focused only on Gus, both to influence him with my body language and to keep my actual body far away from him and the cart.  To our amazement, he stops for us.  I put a hand on his halter to keep him still, and Sandy begins ve-e-ery carefully disentangling him.  I produce my pocket knife (exigencies like this are why I always, always, always keep it on me) so she can cut the twine and drag the cart back away from him.  Gus waits and then walks off with me.  Considering his ordeal, he now seems fine — no trembling or panting or jumpiness.  And by amazing grace, no injuries.

Of course we don’t want to end on such a negative note, so we work with Gus for awhile afterward, hoping to give him some positive, or at least not terrifying, associations with the cart.  Details about that in the next post.