137. VIDEO: Winds and percussion

Gus has taken to all his musical instruments like a duck to water, so he’s ready to tackle some combination exercises.  He’s already had a taste of this, taking turns honking the horn and tickling the ivories.  Now here’s a start with the horn and the bass drum (and that fifth leg you see? that’s him dangling with delight):

 

136. VIDEO: Crabwise

As true twinkletoes, Gus’s little donkey hooves are flittering in all directions.  His chacha alongside me continues to improve, and his back-and-forward chacha facing me is so nimble and quick that he also uses it to locate and repeat-stomp the pedals for the hi-hat cymbals and the bass drum.  Now I’m teaching him how to sidepass, and he’s picking it up with his usual handiness and talent.

In Western and trail riding, a classic way to teach the sidepass is to have the horse straddle a rail laid on the ground: forefeet on one side of it, rear feet on the other.  Along with rein and leg signals from the rider, the ground pole encourages the horse to move only sideways so as to avoid clunking its feet against the obstacle.  

With Gus, since he’s so cued in on matching my steps, I wonder if I can simply stand next to him and model a sidestep.  To help light the path, I plop down three wooden mats right next to each other.  With him standing at one end of the mat row, I stand at his side, say “mat,” and kinda nudge him sideways while taking one big, dramatic lateral step toward his feet.  At first he turns a bit to face the next mat, or he takes a step back or forward, or he stands pat and stares inquiringly at my boots.  

I keep trying slightly different body language to see what might read to him best — not the clarity and consistency you’d want for training a dog or a horse, but I hazard that Gus can handle it.  Through it all, does he object?  Does he lose his cool?  Does he give up and quit the scene?  Not a bit of it.  He keeps lining up again, he keeps trying to decipher what the hell I’m asking for, and he keeps tweezing out the key information.  He also keeps getting treats for good efforts.  He might as well wear a sandwich board: “will work for food.”

After just three or four tries, I say “mat” and he shuffles sideways toward the nextdoor mat.  Big clicks and treats.  Soon he adds another shuffle to move all the way over onto the mat.  And before I know it, he’s actually crossing his feet to perform a genuine sidestep, at least some of the time.

 

As we refine the exercise, I’ll separate the mats farther apart and then do without them altogether.  And very soon, I’ll replace “mat” with “sideways,” so that we can keep our original “go mat” cue and also have an independent and distinct sidepass cue.

What’s it all in aid of?  Not one damn practical thing.  But how fetching will those little hooves look as they cross and recross in a donkey dance?

135. Asstagram

Yep, Gus and I are now cross-platforming: check out gus_donkeytrain on Instagram here.  

 

133. VIDEO: A hop, skip, and a thump

Gus catches sight of the big bass drum and he’s nothing but curious.  At first he hopes it’s a new beach ball that he can bop and roll, but he soon takes to the pedal-stomping that makes it thump. 

With the beater attached to the pedal, and with the pedal parked right up next to the drum, it’s a little awkward for him to find and strike the footplate accurately.  Its action is also springier than the hi-hat’s pedal, so the rebound seems to toss his hoof off-kilter a bit, making it hard to keep his foot in a good place for repeated stomps.  But Gus soldiers on.  In fact, he just won’t quit.  After awhile, I have to tear him away and stash the pedal and the drum out of sight.

We’re ready to advance yet again, so our next lesson will be honking the bicycle horn while beating the drum.

132. VIDEO: Step aside, Buddy

Gus’s musical career is booming.  And jingling.  And shimmering.  Turns out he loves the hi-hat cymbals.  

To the separate, fully donkey-proofed pedal, I’ve attached a pressed-felt drum beater, but Gus doesn’t even notice.  Since I began by blitz-treating him when he stepped on the pedal once, I now need to teach him the toe-tapping technique of pressing it repeatedly.  He’s kinda made a start himself, simply because he loves doing it so much that he eagerly re-stomps after he steps back.  But today I try using our chacha cues in a smaller and quicker way:  I put my arms akimbo and instantly take them back down again, to give a go-back and come-forward signal.  And Gus freakin’ gets it.  !!!  We practice this a few times, and at each tiny gesture of my elbows he gives a slight foot-lift and rapid re-stomp.  Massive clicking and treating assure him that this is as fun and wonderful as it feels.

Next we move to the cymbals themselves, with the as-yet-unreinforced pedal attached.  He likes to nose them and get a shimmery sound, and I still click for that.  But now I ask him to find and use the pedal, even though it’s mounted so close to the central stalk of the hi-hat stand that he has to reach his foot forward and tolerate the cymbals nearly touching his chest.  To show him the idea, I lift and drop my own foot near the pedal; I step on the pedal; I tell him to “stomp it” as I did for the unattached pedal; and I give him time to cogitate.  When he lifts his foot but doesn’t quite reach the pedal, I click and treat for that good effort.  Within seconds, his foot finds the pedal and he stomps.  Now I try the minimal akimbo-chacha gesture, and again Gus freakin’ gets it.  An avid percussionist, he never flinches when I reset the cymbals farther apart for a louder crash.  He’s wailing away like Buddy Rich reincarnated as an ass.  He and I are equally transported by delight.

Gus’s new-found love of the hi-hat convinces me that he might dig the bass drum too.  Before I haul the thing to the barn, I run a little test: I move the beater-equipped pedal next to a wall, so that he can hear it bang when he activates the pedal.  The wall panel isn’t as resonant as the drum will be, but I want just a rough preview of his reaction to the sound.

Before we can try it, though, Gus informs me that this thing is scary and weird and he’s having none of it.  It’s the beater and its boingy up-and-down motion that flummoxes him.  When he’s stomping it in mid-arena, the contraption is underfoot and therefore pretty much invisible; his big head blocks his view, and he’s playing blind.  But now that it’s out in front of him, he doesn’t like what he sees.  So we spend several minutes touching the goblin, watching it move from different angles, etc., etc.  At last he believes that the menacing flapdoodle is actually safe, and he pretty readily transfers his stomping skills into this new location.  And the beater thudding the wall gives him no pause whatever.  

Next up — dare I?  — the bass drum. 

 

131. Harvest salad

Here are a few more botanical observations derived from watching Gus graze. 

The grass is surprisingly lush and tender for this time of year, and I just learned that its sugar content rises when it gets stressed by cold nights and then has warm sunny days to recover.  So autumn grasses can be as delicious as spring growth, I guess. 

 

But lately Gus is widening his selections.  There’s some lance-leaved kind of plantain, still fresh and green, that he seeks out; and the clover is still good, whether it’s the yellow-blooming hop clover that grows low in the sand or the white- and red-flowered varieties that live among the grass in richer soils.  For more roughage, Gus chooses weeds that have gone by, including dried-up Queen Anne’s lace and fading bedstraw.  

He also goes for mulberry-tree leaves and even twigs, chewing them right up as if they were as tender as grass blades (though they’re much louder as his teeth grind them).  The mulberries are long gone, eaten by birds the instant they got ripe, but evidently the leaves are a toothsome treat as well.

As much as he savors his grazing, Gus has almost totally stopped digging in his heels any more when I pick his head up and walk him off the lawn.  He may yaw or lean back, but I circle him and slacken the lead line to avoid any tug-o-war, and after just one or two of these mild objections he accedes and marches obediently all the way back to his stall. I always tell him it’s nearly dinner time, and I think he must understand the word “dinner” by now.  And I never lie:  I time our return to the barn to coincide with Sandy’s feeding schedule.  Sometimes I even wait and let him watch her pull the little wagon of feed buckets across the driveway toward his barn.  I wasn’t born yesterday, and neither was he.