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.