118. The big drop

After Gus and I commune so sweetly on the floor of the arena, he trots around with me in perfect partnership.  We practice our cha-cha, we walk and trot figure-eights, and we engage with the pompom.  As he stands on the pedestal, I proffer the pompom high and low and off by his side, and he never hesitates in reaching for it, bringing it back to center, then waving it up and down in cheerleader mode.  He adores playing pompom.

Suddenly I notice what I’ve never witnessed before: Gus is so mellow and happy that he’s dropped — that is, his penis is unsheathed, utterly relaxed, and dangling down to his ankles.  Geldings will sometimes drop for awhile when they’re eating really good hay, getting brushed and scratched, or otherwise transported in bliss.  It’s not sexual; it’s just another version (a much, much larger version) of a dangling lower lip.  You pretty much never see geldings drop when being traditionally trained or schooled, but we clicker-trainers find that it’s fairly common during our slow, unpressured, positive training sessions.  Still, Gus has never done it, ever.  Until today.

Its long, flaccid firehose-ness is not particularly attractive, but it’s such a sign of unguarded comfort and contentment that I nearly jump for joy.  This is even better than when he first — well over a year into our partnership — emptied his bowels in my presence.  And, yes, I do hear myself:  I’m glorying in Gus’s basest bodily functions.  It’s just that his openness with those functions clearly charts his ever-so-slow-growing trust and bonding. I wouldn’t hesitate to reveal my most indelicate bodily functions to him (I mean, who doesn’t pee in front of the dog?).  Now I know my troth-plighting isn’t unrequited.  Methinks I am enamored of an ass.

117. Nap time

Very occasionally when Gus lies down to roll, he pauses, rests his chin on the ground, and dozes.  The first time I saw this, I let him snooze for a good five minutes but then gently brandished the lunge whip to urge him back to his feet.  (I must’ve been channeling the chimneysweep in Oliver Twist who gets his child laborers unstuck from chimneys by lighting a fire, which “makes ‘em struggle to hextricate theirselves.”)  

When the paddocks are snowy and icy, lying down for a little kip just isn’t appealing; most sleeping has to be done while standing.  But when Gus is brought into the dry arena, with its floor of soft dirt and clean shavings, it must look like a gigantic fluffy bed — ju-u-ust  ri-i-ight for going horizontal and taking his ease.

Today, once again eager to get naked and luxuriate in the dirt, he can barely wait for me to unbuckle and remove his winter blanket.  He sniffs a bit, wanders a bit, circles quickly, and crumples down for a nice, scritchy roll. After scootching onto each side and scrubbing his back, he lingers on his belly, groans, and parks his chin.  He doesn’t budge.  His eyelids sag.  He looks so comfy (and reliably stationary) that I sink down beside him and rub his ears.

Equids don’t always trust humans to get too near when they’re on the ground.  It’s a vulnerable position, rising from which is a ponderous, two-part procedure:  first, they thrust their front feet forward, out from under their chests, and push up onto them, and then they lunge forward with their heads and necks to haul their rear ends up.  It’s a big effort and its footprint isn’t small — this ungainly transition for the large animal is also distinctly unsafe for any smaller creature in the vicinity.  But I’m pretty familiar with Gus’s rolling and rising, and I can tell that right now he doesn’t intend to go anywhere for awhile.  So I kneel down with him, exhaling voluptuously to mark our mutual relaxation, and we have a Special Moment. At least it’s special for me, as I feel honored by his trust and gratified to affirm a certain level of intimacy in our relationship.

After maybe ten minutes — and only after another horse and handler enter the arena — Gus decides his nap time is over.  Seeing it coming, I stand up and step aside, but not fast enough: my foot gets a glancing blow from one of his flying hooves.  It hurts a bit, but it’s worth it to have shared a little recumbent togetherness there in the dirt.

116. Long-ears in pop culture

Deep in the Internet rabbit hole recently, I’ve learned of three long-eared characters with some level of fame in the pop culture of my childhood.  They were all patently and irretrievably dopey, and during their heydey I either deliberately avoided them or happened to be spared encountering them.   But maybe I’d heard of them? and maybe they contributed to my longstanding interest in donkeys?  Gawd, I hope not . . .  

Just for the record, my discoveries began with Dominick the Italian Christmas donkey, the subject of a schlocky, third-rate kids’ song committed to vinyl by Lou Monte and released by Roulette Records in 1960.  The gist is how Dominick helps Santa deliver toys (made in Brooklyn, presumably by all the Italian-American artisans living there?) to the children of Italy, because mules are better at climbing mountains than reindeer are. [listen here, on an empty stomach] 

Mired in the gloppiness of Dominick, I slipped over into the series of 1950s movies starring Francis the talking mule.  I didn’t view any of them, but I was reminded that they starred Donald O’Connor, a genius at physical humor if not at picking scripts, and featured the old character actor Chill Wills doing the voice of the mule.  (I also read that Francis moved his lips because he’d had thread put into his mouth and was working to get rid of it — the same method used on Mr. Ed.  Not very kind or respectful, and thus fully reflecting the spirit of the 1950s and early ‘60s.)  Again, I opted not to rot any brain cells by watching it, but the plot involves an incompetent football team that recruits an equid kicking specialist, Gus the mule, who indeed saves the big game by back-kicking a 100-yard fieldgoal.  I regret and hasten to say:  I am not making this up.

I did recently watch most of Shrek, the 2001 animated movie about an adventurous green ogre, whose sidekick is a donkey voiced by the brilliant Eddie Murphy.  Now, there’s a donkey that begins to approach the social intelligence and practical self-interest of the actual species.  Still, these show-biz characters ain’t a patch on the living, breathing, adorable/abominable Gus that I get to hang out with.