142. Gotta dance

With Gus feeling so good and the weather feeling so wintry, he’s still amped up each time we enter the arena and I remove his blanket.  By trial and error, though, I’ve landed on a routine that mostly obviates obstreperous, obnoxious obloquy and opprobrium (see above).

The reason Gus was yawing off in all directions and flinging his head and being a general ass is that he’s brimming with energy:  boy’s just gotta boogie and warm up.  

And the reason he refused to do so on the lunge line is that he hates the lunge whip that I brandish to get him going forward:  I must’ve used it too agressively with him in the past, and now he won’t tolerate it.  Luckily, Sandy shows me that he’s a perfectly good lunger with no whip at all.  Just by twirling the end of the long lunge rope, or even just raising my arm, I can send him around in a nice, bouncy donkeytrot.

If I lay a pole on the ground and include it in our circle, Gus happily trots over it; sometimes, he’s so up that he bounds over it as if it were two feet high.  If I want to give him a wider circle, I can just walk a circle myself — or even better, I can trot my inner circle in pace with him, which makes him practically grin.

Full disclosure:  what helps us succeed with our new lungeing protocol is a major barricade at the arena gate.  First, I not only sling the tarp over the gate, but I also line up four plastic chairs in front of it, and I post friend Barbara there.  When Gus yanks the lunge line out of my hand and rushes at the gate, she meets him with her fiercest glare and a big X of raised arms.  Seeing the tangle of chairs and the shooing of Barbara, he veers and comes back to me.  After that, I get him lungeing again (pausing for a click-and-treat the first time he passes near the gate and doesn’t consider charging it), and we end up trotting many circles in both directions with nary another glance at the exit.  The next time, I line up the chairs but do not employ a border guard, and again Gus pulls away and barges toward the door, again realizes the chairs look too troublesome to breach, and again soon forgets all about trying to break out.

At last, we have a sane and safe method for warming up and getting some good exercise when cold weather makes Gus hot to trot.

113. VIDEO: Circle game

After our successful free-lungeing exercise, I’m emboldened to retry regular lungeing, on a long line in a circle.  I’d given it up last year, when Gus and I just couldn’t get on the same wavelength:  he was objecting and/or I was screwing up my cues.  But again today in the very chilly arena Gus seems eager for some high-energy work, so I hook the lunge line to his halter and send him out away from me.  He trots in a perfect circle around me, several laps, with no problem.  The instant I click, he leaves the circle by executing a crisp 90-degree turn and trots directly to me for his treat.  Then I send him around in the other direction, and he’s a veritable trotting machine.  (Sorry about the video quality:  the arena's chemical-vapor lighting is both insufficient and sickly green.)

If I accidentally walk a bit too far forward as Gus moves around me, seemingly blocking his forward path, he stops or veers farther out.  If I forget to point the whip at his shoulder at the right moments, and only keep it swinging behind him to drive him forward, he leans into the circle and gets too close to me.  But mostly I must be doing it right, because mostly he keeps up a rhythmic trot on a consistent circle.  I’m not sure if I’ve somehow improved at lungeing or if he’s just more willing and eager to do it.  But I ain’t looking that gift-donkey in the mouth — I’m delighted we’re sympatico.  Warming him up on the lunge line is much easier for me than having to run alongside him until my lungs burn. And watching a donkey trip the light fantastic — a pudgy performer on tiptoes, like Jackie Gleason dancing for joy — is worth the price of admission.

112. Behavior mod

I’m not sure if it’s the constant blanket-wearing that makes him itchy, or the lack of grass to nibble that makes him twitchy, but Gus has been a big, hairy pill of late.  He’s happy to come out of his paddock and into the arena, and he barely waits for me to remove his blanket before he crumples down and rolls luxuriantly in the nice, scritchy arena dirt.  Then he comes along willingly for a trot.  But within a few steps, I realize the lead line is behind me and Gus is back there tossing his head around, pulling on the line, and hauling me in any direction other than where we’d been heading.  What the . . . ?

I figure he wants to roll again, so I let him sniff and wander and scrape the ground with his front hoof.  But instead of collapsing his knees, he stiffens up and flings his head violently straight upward.  Wherefore?   Then he pulls me hither and yon, and when I resist, he surfs the ground for dropped treats.  I give him a minute or two of that, and when I lift his head and bring him along with me, he insists on going only to a wooden mat that I’ve set on the ground.  I allow that and dutifully click and treat him for standing on it.  After that, he agrees to trot with me — but yanks really hard and, almost while still trotting, throws himself down to roll again.  Fine.  I wait for him to stand back up.  Again I get him to walk along . . . and again he abruptly refuses and marches off on a hard tangent.  Why, oh, why?  I explain to him just how much I’d like to punch his lights out.

I unclip the lead rope, fetch a lunge whip, wave it and crack it behind him, and send him off at a canter.  Each time Gus comes around toward the arena gate, I take the whip in my other hand, stretch out my arm, and send him back the other way.  This is the I-am-the-boss-of-you exercise that Sandy showed me on an earlier occasion of donkey misbehavior.  After less than five minutes of trotting him around and changing directions, I lower the whip and Gus walks right to me for a treat and patpat.

Now when I rehook the lead line, isn’t he the perfect gentleman?  We walk and trot nicely, practice our tricks, earn our treats . . .  Whether Gus simply needed to engage in a little wilding to warm himself up, or he indeed needed to be reminded that obedience is the price of this game, the lunge-whip exercise gives me a perfect reset switch — another tool for staying, just barely, one step ahead of Superdonkey.

68. VIDEO: Partnering

Thanks to an impromptu lesson from barn-manager Sandy (a natural expert at human-horse body communication) and some diligent concentration on my positioning, Gus and I are already doing better at lungeing.  Today, we get some really good walk and trot in both directions — and with less futzing and kerfuffle, as I’m able to send him, and mostly keep him, both far enough away from me and traveling forward around the circle.  The key is to aim the lunge whip toward his hip to encourage forward movement and toward his shoulder to encourage distance from me.  But the trick is to notice when he’s just even thinking about slowing or drifting inward, and to adjust the whip position that very instant.  By moving the whip early and often, I keep him circling fairly consistently.

And by clicking for just a half-circle or so of good work, I can reinforce the correct lungeing and — just as importantly — I can forestall our slipping into ugly, confused, lurching, insistent, discombobulated, half-assed lungeing.

After our modest success on the lunge line, I unclip the lead and let Gus work at liberty.  From last month’s dressage-clicker lesson with Alex Kurland, a square of PVC pipes and traffic cones is set up in the arena.  At each corner, just outside the structure, a wooden mat beckons.  Gus remembers the lesson, and anyway he loves the interesting impedimenta (which he only bops and topples a tiny bit), so we play with it.  I walk just inside the pipes, and he walks alongside me but just outside them.  I do the maitre d’ hand gesture — and lately Alex has us using more of the hand that’s near the equine’s hip than the hand near his head, so as to drive him from behind rather than only luring him from in front — and Gus eagerly walks to the mat and plants his front feet.  At the corners where a turn will follow, my arms continue to direct for a moment, until he pivots in place.  He gets a click and treat for stopping on the mat, for pivoting, and for staying patiently on the mat when I fold my hands to cue "the-grownups-are-talking(-so-just-wait-politely)."  Then, from my rear arm, a subtle traffic-cop hand wave suffices to send him forward, while my maitre d’ arm indicates the way ahead. 

The dance-partnering quality of the exercise kinda grows on both of us.  Soon Gus is striding energetically from mat to mat, and before I know it he’s trotting — and eating it up with a spoon.  He tosses his head high as he trots off, then lowers it to his knees and tosses it again as he approaches the next mat, where he slams on the brakes with a glinty eye.  If donkeys could grin from ear to ear, he’d be doing it.  I let him trot and stop, trot and stop, a few times around the square.  Then I try changing our direction of travel, but that seems to ruin the mood.  He won’t trot, even if I ask and urge.  He does walk purposefully from mat to mat, but the game has lost its goofiness and glee.  I move him over to the pedestal for some pirouettes, and I run out of treats.  

As I lead him from the arena, he balks and won’t come along toward his stall.  The barn doors are closed, and grazing is out of the question in the snow-covered outdoors; there’s no place to go.  Except back to the arena, which is clearly Gus’s vote.  But without more treats, that’s a nonstarter.  So I ask and cajole and prod and pull, all in vain.  Luckily, our shared bucket of autumn apples still has a few little seconds in it, and when I offer one to Gus, he follows me for it.  Sour and hard and rusty it may be, but he seems to savor each mouthful.  I know it’s a piss-poor substitute for more game-playing and apron treats, but he makes do.  Like the loyal partner that he is.

67. The line on lungeing

In the unprecedented cold of this early November, Gus gets mighty frisky when I take his blanket off.  I unclip his lead line and let him roll, but he wants to trot and trot and trot, so I jog alongside him.  About halfway around the arena is enough for my old lungs, so each time I reach the brink of syncope, I click and we stop for a treat (and a gasp).  For self-preservation, I pick up a lunge whip and hold it straight out behind him, like a long extension of my arm, and with the other arm I give a maitre d’ this-way-sir gesture to invite him forward.  Remembering the good lungeing training that Sandy had given him years ago, he trots around me in a circle.  Every half lap or so, I click, causing him to turn on a dime toward the circle’s center and trot right up to me for his treat.

I’m so unused to lungeing that it makes me dizzy to step around in a small circle and watch Gus moving around me.  Again for abject self-preservation, with each click I spin quickly in the opposite direction to unwind my balance.  And as soon as I’ve completed my tight, fast turn, there he is, in my face, eagerly waiting for his treat.  But the counterspin does do the trick, keeping me on my feet and able to resume the circling for another few moments.  If my long-ago experience is any guide, I know that the more I practice, the less the twirling will unseat my otoliths and set me reeling.

In the past when trying to lunge Gus, I failed at keeping him far enough away from me or keeping him moving.  But I’ve studied the “horse speak” book’s excellent chapter on lungeing, and the dressagey walking-alongside exercises of recent months have helped hone my body language.  Now, by carefully keeping myself even with his hip, and by opening my maitre d’ leading arm nice and wide, I’m able to keep sending him around.  When I drift too far ahead — across from his shoulder or neck, say — he feels my body position blocking his forward motion and he immediately slows.   Between the two of us, we manage corporeally to signal and adjust and resignal to each other, and we achieve some good lungeing.

After a particularly steady lap, I click and treat with a peppermint.  Oh, baby, oh, baby!  Then when I step to his other side and send him around in the other direction, we achieve even more good lungeing.  Yay!  This means that this winter he can get warmed up without my running myself ragged.

Next we play some less active games, like basketball and pedestal and standing on the mat.  After half an hour, my feet and fingers are starting to freeze, so I end the session and lead Gus to the arena gate.  But Caesar does not wish to leave.  We debate the options with equal conviction.  I try luring him with an apple, but he backs up.  Since the barn doors are closed, I drape his lead-rope over his back and walk away.  I busy myself in his stall — including a very audible toss of treats into his feed bucket.  When I peek at him from his stall door, he hasn’t budged from standing in the middle of the barn aisle, but he's gazing hard at me.  I repeat the apple lure, to no avail, and again I retreat into his stall.  Finally I hear his little hooves slowly clop-clopping, and he walks into the stall with me.

He gets a nice rub-down, cooperates beautifully with hoof picking and re-blanketing, and just as I head for my car, Sandy arrives to serve dinner.  Da life of Riley.