114. VIDEO: Tickling those ivories

Several of the equids at Sandy’s barn get regular piano lessons — on a kids’ portable, electric keyboard.  It has lots of accompaniment settings, but mostly we keep those quiet and just ask our animals to nudge and nose the piano keys.  When I first showed it to Gus and said “Touch,” he readily bopped it with his muzzle.  But when I flipped the on-switch and it played a note under his nose, he stepped emphatically backward and gave it his signature ear-pointing glare.  There’s no volume control and it’s plenty loud, but it only took a few more encounters, with prompt and frequent click-and-treats, for Gus to become a piano aficionado.  Allegro con brio.

As with pushing the baby carriage, playing the keyboard requires an adjustment in Gus’s usual nosing technique.  For bopping the beachball, it’s all about contacting it with the top of his nose, which he then flings upward and forward.  To teach him to to push the pram, I had to focus on clicking him for setting the top of his nose against the handle but not flipping it, lest he topple the pram forward onto its prow.  And now with the piano, he also wants to get his nose under it and push upward; often he flips it in my hands, so that the blank bottom of the keyboard presents itself to him.  He gets no clicks or treats for this, or for bopping the underside, but he still seems to enjoy it. 

It didn’t take long for Gus to learn that the bulb-horn demands two honks for a click and treat, so I’m confident it’ll be no time before he understands that the piano requires not just one or two notes but a riff or phrase involving several keys.

(Thought my purchase of the baby pram was ludicrous and mildly unhinged?Well, lately I’m cruising Craigslist for a pedal-activated hi-hat cymbals set.  How can I resist promoting a one-ass band of keyboard, cymbals, and bicycle horn?)