159. VIDEO: Face first

We humans get haptic cues about the shapes and textures of objects by feeling with our hands, but equids have only one big, thick fingernail at the end of each limb.  For dexterous perception, they use their sensitive, whiskered, almost prehensile lips and muzzles.  Instead of staying at arm’s length, it’s risky putting one’s face and head next to something unknown that needs exploring.  Yet even spooky horses can steel their nerves to do it.  

Gus rarely gives it a second thought.  He’s so outgoing and confident that he doesn’t hesitate to shove his face into the unfamiliar.  And chew it up and spit it out.  Manipulating an object into and out of a mailbox?  Bring it on.  [With apologies for the undersea arena lighting.] 

I start him with a cardboard eggcrate because it’s light and grippable, plus nobody cares that it will get destroyed.  I’m not sure Gus has ever tasted an eggcrate before, but he seizes on it right away.  I click and he relinquishes it, only slightly maimed.  When I hand it back to him, he grabs it and waves it toward the mailbox that’s tucked under my arm.  In fact, he drops the eggcrate onto the mailbox.  As if he's guessing what the game might be?  !?!?!!

Next I slip the crate into the mailbox and see if he’ll retrieve it.  He noses and nudges, but then I help him out with a familiar verbal cue:  “Pick it up!”  Before the first ampere could arrive at a lightbulb, he’s got it:  he authoritatively extricates the eggcrate from the mailbox.  This entails reaching for it, finding it with his lips, getting his teeth around it before it gets bumped backward by those lips, pulling it out, and presenting it like a trophy.  Okay, it’s not neurosurgery, but I’m mighty impressed.   

One more practice session with object removal, and I bet we can move on to object insertion.  The eggcrate is dead — in his zeal, Gus actually chews pieces off it, reducing it by two-thirds and mangling the remainder — but a plastic dog toy shaped like a rolled newspaper should be a handy, and relatively durable, prop from now on.