Is it something I said? I think it’s something I did, and that something is lungeing. It’s the only change in Gus’s life that coincides with his rescidivism in obstreperous, bratty behavior lately. I’ve always been concerned about lungeing's compulsory elements, as well as my clumsy skills, and I think Gus finds it annoying and domineering and just plain Not Okay. In consequence, he’s being a real pill at least 50 percent of the time.
He still hee-haws when my car pulls in. He still gladly walks with me into the arena. He still waits semi-patiently as I remove his blanket, before crumpling in place and rolling luxuriantly. But the cool weather and/or his fitness level seem to fuel his energy and eagerness to get moving, so after his roll I’ve been trying a bit of lungeing to let him trot and warm up. He clearly feels a need for speed, and he'd run me off my feet if I ran alongside him. Yet when I bring out the lunge whip and hook the line on his halter, he begins his evasive maneuvers. He sniffs for dropped treats on the ground, he twirls toward me or away from me so that I can’t position myself at his side, he cranks his neck and pulls in any direction that I don’t desire him to go, or he plants his feet and refuses to budge.
I try tapping his rump. No dice. I cluck and cajole and walk alongside to get him started. Bupkus. I visibly wave the whip, toss its lash, even let it tickle his heels and hocks. Fuhgeddaboutit. Finally I stomp toward his hip and whap the whip fast and hard onto the ground behind him, and that does send him forward. I click and treat for that, and sometimes he’ll resume nicely and walk or trot a half-circle or so, in which case I click and treat for that too. Sometimes, though, I can’t get him restarted. I move to his other side and try sending him in the other direction, often with no luck. Even when he does move around me, he soon begins spiraling inward, getting too close to me and putting himself on too tight a circle. To push him out farther, I point the whip at his shoulder, then I wave the whip at his shoulder, and sometimes I poke the whip into, and even bend it against, his shoulder. He looks me in the eye and just continues to object, evade, and resist. If donkeys could blow a big, wet raspberry, that’s what he’d be doing.
Today, after a few fitful starts and a lot of resistance, he gets to cantering around — feeling his feisty oats. So feisty, in fact, that he suddenly veers off, yanks the rope from my hand, gallops across the arena, and dives under the gate to go clattering into the barn aisle. But instead of committing his usual nuisances — nosing open the tack and treat trunks, invading empty stalls to nosh on their hay — he just stands there. And when I invite him back into the arena, he comes right along.
I can only conclude that he does want to play in the arena, but he doesn’t want to lunge. So we don’t.
In stark contrast to his ball and pedestal and chair tricks, and even unlike his walking alongside me in various patterns, lungeing requires his submission to my control every minute. I’m armed both with a line on his halter, controlling his front end, and with the whip as a long extension of my other hand, controlling his hind end. He’s sandwiched between two powerful forces. And I’m probably mishandling those forces half the time — telling him to go from behind while blocking him in front, wishing he’d stay out at the end of the lunge line while sending signals that draw him closer to me, intending one thing while inadvertently insisting on another. Add that confusion to Gus’s innate independence, and it’s no wonder he’s such a pig and a pill.
His mood is soured now, so he’s fussy about other activities too. He chases the beachball at a rousing trot, with a few hind kicks and head tosses thrown in, and he bops it something fierce; but he quickly loses his focus and returns to hoovering the floor for stray tidbits. He fetches the basketball and misses the dunk. Hearing Sandy delivering grain, he nips over to the arena gate, where I head him off and somehow convince him to execute a few nice circles with me at liberty. On our next turn away from the gate, though, he abruptly reverses course, rams his way under, and this time trots directly into his stall and jams his face into his feed bucket. Swine!
I attach his stall guard, give him a cursory grooming, and head home with half an apronful of treats. He wants to end our session early, he pays the price. And next time, half his treats will be two days old. I can blow raspberries too.
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