105. VIDEO: Airplane mode

In a tightly wound, aerodynamic creature built for speed, relaxation often allows certain body parts to go flaccid and dangle.  It’s not very dignified, but it’s a useful clue for trainers trying to judge the animal’s moods and interests.  When an ear-scritch or butt-rub is just right, equines may relax their jaws and muzzles so much that their lower lips dangle open.  Males sometimes let it all hang out — that is, their penises, from the sheaths where they’re usually stored up close to their bellies.  Several of us have remarked that slow, steady, clear training with a high rate of clicks and treats often induces a gelding to drop, and sometimes to dangle there for several minutes while continuing the training.  

Gus is unusually reserved and strait-laced as regards his boy bits.  He never peed in my presence until well after a year into our relationship.  And I’ve only seen him dangle once (I was momentarily perplexed to notice an extra hind leg . . .) during a training session.  But he’s a flamboyant and unashamed nudist from the neck up.  When his ears aren’t zooming around manically like antennae on a very busy bee, he lets them flop.  Horses also show airplane ears — horizontal on both sides — when they’re mellowed out.  But on Gus the vigilant-to-vegetative contrast is more striking, since his ears are so long and have so far to fall.

The horn-honking video displays this perfectly.  Watch it once here, for his trick with full semaphore ears, but then look below and watch only his ears.  I’ll pay you money if you don’t laugh out loud.

104. VIDEO: Honk if you love honking

On Gus’s list of reasons to love life, the classic squeeze-bulb bicycle horn ranks almost as high as the pompom.  After just a few bites on it, he was so eager and deft that I immediately raised the click-earning criterion to the signature two-tone honk.  He sometimes gulps the bulb too far into his mouth and sometimes not far enough, but he expertly adjusts his embouchure for the proper teeth to effect the proper squeeze to elicit the proper music:

103. Today’s menu

As this hot, hot summer progresses, Gus’s choice of forage does too.  Along with the grass, he’s delighting in big, shaggy ragweeds lately.  White clovers, even those whose flowers are gone by, are still pretty good; plantains, now most of them gone by, are apparently much less yummy than they were a couple of weeks ago.

What never changes, for Gus as for all the horses, is that bird’s-foot trefoil is universally rejected.  A friend who recently bought a small horse farm has found that one of its pastures is at least half bird’s-foot trefoil, and both her Irish sport-horse gelding and her Morgan mare eat all around it.  I’m surprised, since trefoil is a legume, like alfalfa — horses should love it.  My friend researched it and learned that it’s perfectly edible for horses, but they tend to avoid it unless nothing else is available.

In Gus’s little patch of heaven, there’s always something else available.

102. Happy hooves

As Sandy says, in the psycho-killer singsong of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, “He’s ba-a-a-ack!”  It’s her response to Gus’s recovery from the ouchy white-line disease in his feet.  She and I both notice he’s more obstreperous and obnoxious lately, a sure sign of his feeling in fine fettle.  Rather than stump along lamely as we lead him between paddock and stall, he now throws in the occasional neck-craning or foot-planting in an effort to control the direction of travel or simply to resist forward progress altogether.  

Flashing feet . . .

When Sandy sees us practicing the baby-carriage trick in the arena, she asks me to trot Gus a bit so we can assess his comfort level.  I pick up a dressage whip to send him along, but he pulls his refusenik antics until I smack the ground behind his heels.  Then he trots off, and keeps going voluntarily in a big circle.  Most of his steps look smooth and correct, with just a few strides that look very slightly gimpy.  As Sandy and I start comparing notes and I drop my whip arm, Gus immediately perceives our switch of mental focus, so he veers off and pops his front feet onto the pedestal with a sprightly clip-clop.  Of course, for that, he earns a click and a treat and laudatory huzzahs.

We’ve seen his soreness improve and then worsen before, and this time we’re taking no chances.  We agree on at least another two foot-soakings, just to make sure the fungal/bacterial invaders inside his hooves are well and truly destroyed.  I mix up another cocktail of bleachy White Lightning and distilled vinegar, and Gus is so inured to the treatment by now that when I approach with a Ziploc bag, he starts lifting his feet without being asked.  I pour in a few tablespoons of the noxious solution, tie the bags around his ankles with baling twine, and play a Scrabble game on my smartphone while he soaks.

Compared to keeping his feet in tubs of warm water, this is a (mildly smelly) walk in the park.  Still, I’ll be glad to finished with it.  And even gladder to cope with the behavioral fallout of happy hoof health.

101. Jawbone of an ass

When I watch Gus grazing, I get where Samson was coming from: like a heavy sword or battle axe, the jawbone of an ass really could slay a thousand men.  Gus chews like there’s no tomorrow — constantly, vigorously, powerfully.  I feel a twinge of sympathetic TMJ just thinking about the daily grind on his mandible, masseter, and molars.

As high summer diversifies the plants that are growing and flowering in our main grazing pasture, I’m once again keeping a mental log of what Gus chooses to eat.  Today he rocks my world by grabbing a big mouthful of Queen Anne’s lace, a carrot-related weed that I was surprised to see him avoid entirely last summer.  This one is over two feet tall, growing rank and dense under the fence rails.  Its stems are hard and thick and tough, but Gus’s jawbone doesn’t miss a beat, grinding up stalks, leaves, and flowers.  And going back for more.  

Then, to my even greater astonishment, he goes for a nearby chicory plant.  Last summer he took pains never to touch chicory, with its bitter radicchio flavor, but now he deliberately munches up the wiry stems, tough leaves, and blue flowers.  Wherefore, Gus?

Maybe he needs the minerals or alkaloids or vitamins in certain plants at certain times, and he knows what he smells inside each plant.  His main forage preference is always grass, but the other day included a plantain binge, while today (after the tall-weed appetizers) is all about white clover.  At one point, he stops munching and rubs his muzzle back and forth against the ground: either the flowers tickle his nose, or he’s been stung by one of the many bees working the clover patch.  

But soon he resumes chowing down.  When he wanders to some tall grasses, he tilts his head and maneuvers his very maneuverable lips to gather up a neat, long sheaf, which begins by hanging out one side of his mouth but gets shorter and shorter with each chew, as he efficiently ratchets it into his mouth and down his gullet.  Before the final bit disappears, he’s already mowing up the next serving.  Throughout any grazing session, his incisors pluck and yank a fresh mouthful even while his molars are still masticating the previous plug.  Not a moment’s rest for that awesome jawsome . . .