152. VIDEO: Walking in circles

A large circle, marked by eight traffic cones, has been a popular arena installation lately.  Sometimes wooden mats are set just outside the cones.  It’s an easy way to help horses practice things like bending their bodies on an arc and matching paces with their humans.  As soon as Gus sees it, he's intrigued.

First we walk around it, me just inside the cones and him just outside them.  He already knows — and loves — stopping with his front feet on a mat.  As always, he gets a click and treat for each mat stop.  After one complete round, I begin to hang behind him just a bit and send him on ahead to each mat.  At first, he turns toward me and waits for me to catch up, but by adding a little finger-wave behind and a maitre d’ arm ahead, I can usher him to the mat pretty easily.  A few more clicks, and he’s got it down pat.

A couple of sessions later, I begin to sink away toward the center of the circle and hang back.  Now his concern about my distance from him actually trumps his supermagnet attraction to the mat:  he slows, he bumbles, he misses the mat.  I simply go back to him, start him off again toward the next mat, and shrink away a teeny bit less far.  When he does it well a few times, I try shrinking away a bit more again.  Cueing him with a verbal “mat” helps him remember that the goal is to reach the mat regardless of my location.

At this point, we reduce the number of mats, so they’re now several paces apart.  As I recede more toward the center of the circle, I resort to a tai chi-ish energy move, as suggested by Alex Kurland the clicker guru, to keep Gus from drifting inward with me.  It’s a slow pushing gesture, with my arms but also with my brains and bowels, to project outward energy and keep him on the perimeter.  

At first, I’m astounded that it actually works, as a midair energy transfer sounds like it’s straight from a kids’ comic book.  But then, Sharon Wilsie and other animal-whisperer types all agree that horses routinely communicate among themselves using, as it were, energy fields.  Minuscule changes in their posture or balance or breathing are enough to speak volumes, from invitations to requests to objections.  So, a little body English, some close observation, an assertive thought . . . and you’re talking right from the horse’s mouth.

It’d be fun someday to remove all the mats, stand in the very center of the circle, and just send Gus strolling around on his own.  For now, it’s all about how much he dotes on this exercise.  He wants to keep walking around and around and around.  When I switch to a pedestal game or some cha-cha, he often blows it off and returns to the cone circle.  Whatev:  it’s always donkey’s choice.

151. Silvery screen

As the temperatures spike into the 90s, nobody on two or four feet wants to move a muscle.  Instead I go to the movies with a great friend I met nearly 30 years ago, when I first  moved to Saratoga and shared her horse for awhile.  We opt for a frothy and charming little French confection about a wise and stoic donkey who helps to ground a quirky, lovelorn young woman.

Even more charming: because it has subtitles and lacks monsters or explosions, and because we choose a weekday matinee, we find only one other person in the cinema. 

My Donkey, My Lover, and I is the English title, but the original Antoinette dans les Cevennes is far better, because Antoinette rents Patrick the donkey from a trail-hiking outfitter in the Cevennes mountains.  She’s a schoolteacher who’s having an affair with the father of one of her pupils; when her lover has to leave town because his wife has booked them on a mountain donkey-pack tour, Antoinette rashly decides to crash their family vacation.  Of course she has no experience with equids, and of course Patrick refuses to budge for much of the early part of the trek.  She pulls, she pushes.  She begs, she curses.  But soon she learns about him and talks to him — he’s a good listener — so they come to an understanding and develop a sweet companionship.  The scenery is absolutely gorgeous, Patrick and another donkey named Lapin (or Rabbit) are excellent performers, and the human characters are delightful.

It’s no more than one inch deep, but it’s a blissful 90-minute escape from the blistering suns of August.  And it’s donkeys on the big screen, so . . . opposable thumbs up.