33. Spring steps

Today I bring Gus’s surcingle and driving reins to the outdoor arena.  It’s warm and he’s half-suffocating under his long, thick winter coat, but he’s a trouper.  He marches off along the arena fence — that is, until he’s unable to resist dropping his head to inhale the information trove of a fresh pile of manure.  I give him a few seconds and then jiggle the reins and tell him to walk on.

On our second circuit around the arena, I aim him (still zigzaggedly, but my steering skills are improving under his tutelage) at the wooden bridge, and he steps onto it, walks its length, and trots off it.  Click! and a big treat-fest.  Only problem is, because he’s short, his first step onto the bridge puts his hoof at an angle that can make it skid forward, and he hates that. The next couple of times I try to send him over the bridge, he veers around it instead.  So I gather up the long reins to lead him in hand, and luckily his hoof doesn’t slide this time.  I let him stand on the bridge while I blitz-click and treat six or eight times, trying to impress upon him what a grand and glorious place this bridge is. Next try, I succeed in driving him over it again.

I also send him through the arch of tarp strips, and he barely hesitates — except one time when the breeze goes calm and the strips hang vertical and together.  Good to know:  he prefers erratic flapping that puts daylight between the strips, rather than stillness that presents them as more solid.

Some friends stop by, and we unclip the reins to showcase our cone-fetching trick. Once Gus picks up the cone, I run backward and in circles to make him follow me all over, his teeth staying firmly clamped for as long as it takes to catch up to me and flop the cone into my hand.  When we stop for a minute while the humans chat, Gus nudges the cone and looks for a treat.  So my friends take turns tossing it for him, and he promptly fetches it and delivers it to whichever of us holds out a hand.  They’re enchanted to take the deliveries and to dispense the treats.  Gus gets high marks for “plays well with others.”

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For a reward, I take him outside the ring to graze on the fast-sprouting spring grass.  Standing next to him, I fall into almost as deep a zone of relaxation as he’s in.  He occasionally takes one or two steps forward — never lifting his muzzle from the ground, lest he miss a morsel on the way — to reach another patch of lawn.

When Gus finds some very lush, wide-bladed grasses, I remember that too much rich grass can be harmful to horses if they aren’t used to it after the winter.  I give him only a minute or two of chomping the big blades before I take up the lead line and ask him to come along.  He does briefly, but then YANK! goes his head, I have to let go of the rope and fling it over his back so he won’t step on it, and he canters away, looking for more good eats behind a barn.  Sigh . . .  

I walk around and meet him, gather the rope again, and cross my fingers.  I swivel and lift the rope near his halter to raise his head, and I use my maitre d’ arm gestures to invite him forward with me.  And along he comes like such a good boy!  I click and treat a couple of times as we make our way back to his paddock, and he walks right in.

25. VIDEO: Better 'n' better

Today Gus and I try leather reins that Sandy provided for our long-lining.  They feel more substantive, as if they make my cues on his halter much crisper and clearer.  Also I take Sandy’s advice to thread the reins through rings that sit higher on his surcingle, running them almost over his shoulders rather than along his flanks.  Thanks to these equipment upgrades, we redeem ourselves after our semi-disastrous driving last time. 

We do have a momentary balk, and later, on video, I watch myself creeping up on Gus’s heinie; the reins are loopy and I'm crowding him. Not in driving a car, but in driving a donkey I have a habit of tail-gating unawares.  And nobody likes being tailgated.  At another point — and this time it's for reasons beyond my ken even when I watch the video — Gus is a big hairy fussbudget about halting.  He jigs and backs and wheels, as if he’s standing on fire ants.  I repeat “whoa” and just wait.  At last he achieves a nanosecond of stasis, whereupon I click and treat.  

Aside from these brief glitches, our 15-minute Sunday drive goes really well.  I manage to walk upright like a normal hominid, with almost no contortions for body-Englishing him around the turns.  And we’re able once again to execute some tight maneuvers, such as marching between the big pedestal and the nearby doors.

To celebrate, we expand on the pompom pick-up that we debuted last time: now he carries it to the pedestal and holds it high.  Rah!

22. Soggy and groggy

Spring has sprung a screw loose in early March, and for one rainy day the thermometer tops 60 degrees.  The farm entrance is under six or eight inches of standing water, so I leave my car on the road, climb between fence boards, and wend my way over slushy lawns and ponded pastures to get to the barn.  When the ice was treacherous, Sandy had flung shavings and manure and old hay (excellent traction materials) along paths and around paddock gates, and now that’s all soppingly disintegrating, greatly enriching the yuck factor of the squelching, sucking mud.  

Wellies on the job

(Still, the yuck factor is small for me.  I learned to ride when I was 10 and we were living in England, which is pretty much all damp all the time; it's home to the Wellington boot for good reason.  Every weekend I went with a neighbor girl to Umberslade Stables for a one-hour ride, at a cost of 12 shillings, which was my weekly allowance.  Umberslade's ramshackle stableyard was always a mire.  And as our rides took us over hill and dale through farm fields and country lanes, horses and humans usually came home well spattered. That was fine with me, because it meant access to gee-gees ranging from Big Jane the huge chestnut hunter, to Popcorn the piebald school horse of mongrel provenance, to Merrybell the tiny, shaggy Shetland pony with a fondness for fruit-flavored ice lollies.  Mud and horses simply belong together when all’s right with the world.)

Gus and Henry are loafing up on the little knob of hill in their paddock, and although Gus is eager to be delivered, he’s loath to dip his delicate hooflets in the low-lying slough.  Better him than me, so I wait with his halter and make him walk down to the gate.  From there we have to mince and slog to the arena, with Gus sidling onto the remnant snowbank whenever he can.  We find the far end of the arena also floody-muddy, which strikes him as even more hideous than rattly doors; he avoids the area assiduously.  Of course his couth stops at his ankles: he rolls in the dry dirt until he’s well and truly caked.

It’s so warm, and Gus is still so furry, that today he does seem to be operating underwater on Valium.  After a long hiatus, I decide to return to long-lining, and between his low energy and my complete atrophy of any skills built up in the fall, we stink up the joint.  Luckily Sandy is on hand, and (gallantly suppressing any apparent horror at Gus’s mistreatment or my idiocy) she offers me a few tips; plus, the long-suffering Gus cuts me a very deep break, working patiently despite my blundering.  When I remove the surcingle to let him roll again, he grabs a quick snooze with his chin resting on the ground, ears airplaned out to the sides, and eyes sagging closed.  I let him lie for a couple of minutes.

We do some desultory walk-trot and tilt-a-chair and cone-fetch, and then I figure he’s had enough.  But he balks at the arena gate and positions himself by my shoulder:  he wants more walk-trot.  Since I’ve been getting better at matching paces with him, he seems to enjoy it — either it’s just easier without the distraction of syncopated human steps alongside, or he does welcome the pace-matching as a buddying-up activity.  Either way, I’m glad of it, so we jog over the ground poles a few more times.  We do some walking in the “dancer’s arms” frame, at which we’re both improving.  And we play a little I-step-you-step back and forth.  Now he’s content to leave the arena, and he even cooperates, after some delaying tactics, in the gloppy march back to the gloppy paddock.

8. Driven

No, this is totally not us.  But this is!

Sandy has brought out her long lines and showed me briefly how to walk behind Gus and steer him.  She doesn’t say “gee” or “haw,” but I’m starting to say them (that is, in the very few, sporadic moments when I know my left from my right) as I practice stepping wide or straight, and pulling or giving on the reins.  I’ve never done this before, and I’m terrible at it.  I keep losing contact with one or the other rein, letting it go floppy while the other has probably too much tension.  On a straightaway beside the arena wall, we do OK, but down the middle of the open arena, I drive poor Gus in a zigzag [to witness the ineptitude, click link in caption above].

With long-lining, more than with other activities, he’s polite and patient, and he’s a gifted teacher.  When he veers off erratically or stops or circles, I only have to look to my weight and hands to realize that I’m screwing up.  When I can keep all my parts steady and subtle, he rewards my correctness by marching ahead like a good soldier.  In fact, for the first time since I’ve been working with him, he looks businesslike, as if proud to be doing a job that he regards as meaningful.  His ears aim forward, his feet move rhythmically, his rump engages, his mind focuses, and he doesn’t stop until I say “whoa.”  He’d look good in a necktie.

(Of course, having a job is what donkeys were bred for, lo, these many centuries.  They’re tough and hardy beasts of burden.  I’m sad that in the developed, mechanized world, donkeys are no longer needed.  Their only role may in fact be as novelties for nativity scenes.  All I can do for Gus is keep him busy with stupid pet tricks — and try my best to become a better driver, so that he can experience some job satisfaction.)

A couple of weeks later, Sandy unearths Gus’s surcingle.  It straddles his shoulders and straps under his belly, and, because he has such a fat, flat barrel, it also has a crupper, which loops under his tail to keep it centered on his back.  Threading the long reins from his halter through the rings on the surcingle keeps them up along his flanks so they don’t droop under his feet by accident.  

Nevertheless, clicker training while driving is a tad awkward.  When I click, Gus stops and I have to walk forward to feed him, which means I coil one rein on his back and flop the other ahead of me so it’s not under my feet or his.  To resume, I have to pick up the rested rein and step back behind him.  By which time, he’s usually begun walking forward again with great purpose.  Memo to self: teach him to remain halted until I give him the go-ahead.