119. Grazing lessons

Now that snow no longer blankets the grass around Gus’s barn, we end each arena session with some grazing time.  The grass is still 95% brown, but the tiniest filaments of green are just beginning to sprout beneath the matted old turf.  Gus has to pull back his enormous lips in order to press his teeth right down to the ground where he can nip off these earliest threads of fresh grass.  These days he’s getting about two-thirds dead grass to one-third fresh with each bite, but soon it’ll be mostly green, and then it’ll be all pure, sweet, tender, green, fresh yumminess.  For now, when he occasionally pulls up an old blade that’s too tough and tasteless, he separates it with his tongue and ejects it from the side of his mouth while still tweezing and ingesting the next bites.  Equids never forget how to graze with top efficiency.

Gus also remembers how the extra-long, extra-thick lead rope works when I hook it to the far side of his halter and thread it through the near side.  How it works is like a noose, pinching all around his snout if he tries to haul his head away from me.  The first couple of snow-free days, I had to insist on a grazing end time though he wasn’t ready.  As I made to lead him off the grass, he yawed one way, and I leaned back and held on, so he yawed and tried to trot the other way, and I leaned back and ran along and held on.  Then he recalled his lessons from last summer:  there is no escape from the cinch-rope, no matter how obnoxiously he resists it.  And today he doesn’t bother to fight at all (“resistance is futile”) but immediately walks off with me like an obedient gentleman.  In his stall, I feed him the last peppermint from my treat apron.