67. The line on lungeing

In the unprecedented cold of this early November, Gus gets mighty frisky when I take his blanket off.  I unclip his lead line and let him roll, but he wants to trot and trot and trot, so I jog alongside him.  About halfway around the arena is enough for my old lungs, so each time I reach the brink of syncope, I click and we stop for a treat (and a gasp).  For self-preservation, I pick up a lunge whip and hold it straight out behind him, like a long extension of my arm, and with the other arm I give a maitre d’ this-way-sir gesture to invite him forward.  Remembering the good lungeing training that Sandy had given him years ago, he trots around me in a circle.  Every half lap or so, I click, causing him to turn on a dime toward the circle’s center and trot right up to me for his treat.

I’m so unused to lungeing that it makes me dizzy to step around in a small circle and watch Gus moving around me.  Again for abject self-preservation, with each click I spin quickly in the opposite direction to unwind my balance.  And as soon as I’ve completed my tight, fast turn, there he is, in my face, eagerly waiting for his treat.  But the counterspin does do the trick, keeping me on my feet and able to resume the circling for another few moments.  If my long-ago experience is any guide, I know that the more I practice, the less the twirling will unseat my otoliths and set me reeling.

In the past when trying to lunge Gus, I failed at keeping him far enough away from me or keeping him moving.  But I’ve studied the “horse speak” book’s excellent chapter on lungeing, and the dressagey walking-alongside exercises of recent months have helped hone my body language.  Now, by carefully keeping myself even with his hip, and by opening my maitre d’ leading arm nice and wide, I’m able to keep sending him around.  When I drift too far ahead — across from his shoulder or neck, say — he feels my body position blocking his forward motion and he immediately slows.   Between the two of us, we manage corporeally to signal and adjust and resignal to each other, and we achieve some good lungeing.

After a particularly steady lap, I click and treat with a peppermint.  Oh, baby, oh, baby!  Then when I step to his other side and send him around in the other direction, we achieve even more good lungeing.  Yay!  This means that this winter he can get warmed up without my running myself ragged.

Next we play some less active games, like basketball and pedestal and standing on the mat.  After half an hour, my feet and fingers are starting to freeze, so I end the session and lead Gus to the arena gate.  But Caesar does not wish to leave.  We debate the options with equal conviction.  I try luring him with an apple, but he backs up.  Since the barn doors are closed, I drape his lead-rope over his back and walk away.  I busy myself in his stall — including a very audible toss of treats into his feed bucket.  When I peek at him from his stall door, he hasn’t budged from standing in the middle of the barn aisle, but he's gazing hard at me.  I repeat the apple lure, to no avail, and again I retreat into his stall.  Finally I hear his little hooves slowly clop-clopping, and he walks into the stall with me.

He gets a nice rub-down, cooperates beautifully with hoof picking and re-blanketing, and just as I head for my car, Sandy arrives to serve dinner.  Da life of Riley.