125. VIDEO: Pedal mettle

Shopping success at last:  I score a hi-hat cymbals set at a yard sale.  I have to buy the matching snare, two toms, and bass drum as well, which I’ll give away at some point.  My plan for introducing the hi-hat to Gus was to start with just the detached foot pedal, and by luck the seller separated the bass drum’s pedal when loading it into my car.  That gives me two pedals to work with, which makes me willing to start training before trying to donkey-proof or reinforce the thing.  I was pleased to see how well it seems to be built — thick metal, a bicycle chain, a strong spring . . .   But who knows whether Gus will totally trash it, or what modifications it might need for equine-user-friendliness.

I begin, as I do for all unfamiliar items, with “touch.”  Gus is rarely spooked by any visible object, and sure enough he willingly noses the pedal, even when it moves and clicks.

Now I set it down in front of him.  Equines aren’t very good at seeing directly ahead of themselves — their long faces get in the way.  One of the many terrifying aspects of jumping horses is that, just as they launch themselves into the air, they lose sight of the obstacle they’re jumping. They need to see it in advance and then gauge their blind leap.  Likewise (but much more safely) Gus will need to know where the pedal is so that he can target his foot onto it accurately.  

To show him the basic idea, I pick up his leg and place his hoof on the pedal.  He seems clueless, but just as I reach down for his ankle again, he flops his foot up and over the pedal.  I click and treat him for that approximation.  I don’t want to keep handling his foot, though, because he’ll need to figure out the mechanics and placement for himself.  Since he knows and loves our chacha, I wonder if he might imitate me if I slowly, clearly, dramatically plop my own foot onto the pedal.  Again, clueless.  

 

Next, I play face-to-face chacha with Gus and set the pedal in his path, hoping he’ll accidentally step on it.  When any part of his hoof bumbles against any part of the pedal, I click and treat.  That keeps him playing the game, and in no time at all, he does happen to step smack onto the pedal.  I don’t just click and treat for that; before he can step off, I’m blitz-clicking:  giving him a click and treat just about every half-second.  I want him to know that foot-on-pedal is the best place to be in the world.  After six or eight clicks, I ask him to step back, and I click him for that too.  If stepping on the pedal is ab fab, he also needs to know that stepping off it again is nearly as fab.  After all, in concert (ahem), crashing the cymbals will require him to press and release the pedal repeatedly.

The next day, we play with the pedal again, and Gus blows my mind by landing on the pedal in at least 50% of our tries. He’s really digging this game, and suddenly he depresses the pedal especially deftly, with apparent purpose and confidence.  Click!  Peppermint!  (You can hear him chewing it in the last sequence here:)

 

124. VIDEO: Curtain call

As our final stupid-pet-trick update for today, we present our take-a-bow.  For some reason, the leg lifting and head lowering are taking forever to perfect.  Gus seems to enjoy doing it, often budging his foot before I even ask, yet training him to bend his knee and hold it bent is far more difficult than I expected.  I’m not sure what to do differently, and minimal advances are perceptible as the months wear on, so I’ll just keep slogging away at it.  I think it’ll eventually be pretty dang cute?

123. VIDEO: Donkey dance lessons

Here’s another project that Gus is throwing himself into with, well . . . gusto:  dancing the chacha with me.  Having learned to stop crowding him and get out of his face, I ask him to step backward by giving a cue and waiting, allowing him to respond within his own personal time-space continuum.  Arms akimbo, I tilt my elbows forward and cock my knee to ask him for a backward step with the same-side front leg; when I tilt my elbows backward and lean my body away, he’s to step forward toward me.

We also do a side-by-side chacha, which we began by exaggerated slow-walking and honed into a back-and-forth terpsichorean two-step.  So far, Gus needs the arena wall alongside him to keep him heading straight; the chances that we’ll ever progress to using the whole dance floor seem slim.  But it’s starting to look pretty good along the wall, and when we add a pole on the ground, our audiences have been known to gasp.  

It’s still extremely slow going, but the precision is improving steadily.  And Gus, for reasons passing understanding, absolutely adores this practice, offering to back up at any opportunity and practically dragging me to the ground pole to repeat the game.  So I have faith that we’re developing into a partnering powerhouse, on our way to winning Dancing With the Donkey Stars.  

122. VIDEO: Nanny redux

A lifelong learner, Gus doesn’t believe in letting old skills wane as he adds new tricks and accomplishments to his repertoire.  One example: his baby-carriage performances are more boffo than ever:

121. VIDEO: Music news

Videoworthy advances made by the doughty donkey Gus over the past few months include his musical versatility training.  He not only noses the toy keyboard without bashing its underside and flipping it over, but he now plays riffs — eclectic, atonal, postmodern riffs, like a John Cage with hooves, like a George Crumb with foot-long ears.

Lately he’s integrating the bicycle horn, for an even richer tapestry of sound: 

He had a hard time getting his muse around the innovation of going from keyboard to horn and back again, but these days he easily switches instruments without losing his virtuosity on either.  While I usually still have to redirect his attention between nuzzling the ivories and biting the horn bulb, he has begun occasionally picking up the horn On His Own after a piano riff.  His craft is developing day by day . . .

Soon he’ll be ready to add the final element of our orchestral trio:  a hi-hat cymbals set that he can play by stomping on a pedal.  It might take another few months to master and polish for prime time, but reserve your tickets now for a recorded-live concert by Gus’s Sweet-Ass One-Man Band.

120. Exit strategy

Despite Gus’s lofty level of education and acculturation and etiquette, mostly he operates on the principle that might makes right.  And when he puts his shoulder to it, he’s mightier than nearly any obstacle he encounters.

Today, for the umpteenth time, he breaks the leash-hook-style snap that secures the barrier across his stall door.  The stall guard is a thick, weighty square of rubbery plastic; at its four corners, it attaches by metal chains and snaps to heavy-duty eyelets screwed into the door jambs of his oak-plank stall.  Only it’s pretty regularly not attached, because if he wants out he has only to lean hard and either break a snap or uproot an eyelet.  His escape plan is not so much a strategy as a tactical nuclear warhead.

The snapped snap . . . and a closeup of the break

Gus’s humans have applied their best barn technology.  His is an especially heavy-duty stall guard; most of the horses are kept in by just a thick plasticized rope, like the crowd-control ropes that usher people into queues at cinemas or airports.  And he has one of those too, which we can add on top of the bigger stall guard, but it serves merely to delay him a bit when he decides to make a break for it.  The only sure way to keep Gus incarcerated is to hook up both stall guards and then shut the full, oaken door and slide home its finger-thick bolt.

Thing is, the vertically challenged Gus can’t hang his head over his door and kibbitz in the barn aisle the way the horses can:  stall doors are chest-high to horses but eye-high to a donkey.  For Gus a closed door is far more isolating than it is for his stablemates.  So we make sure to support his psychosocial well-being by giving him some time with his door open and just a stall guard to contain him.  Which is why barn-manager Sandy is shopping for yet another bulk consignment of those big leash snaps.

119. Grazing lessons

Now that snow no longer blankets the grass around Gus’s barn, we end each arena session with some grazing time.  The grass is still 95% brown, but the tiniest filaments of green are just beginning to sprout beneath the matted old turf.  Gus has to pull back his enormous lips in order to press his teeth right down to the ground where he can nip off these earliest threads of fresh grass.  These days he’s getting about two-thirds dead grass to one-third fresh with each bite, but soon it’ll be mostly green, and then it’ll be all pure, sweet, tender, green, fresh yumminess.  For now, when he occasionally pulls up an old blade that’s too tough and tasteless, he separates it with his tongue and ejects it from the side of his mouth while still tweezing and ingesting the next bites.  Equids never forget how to graze with top efficiency.

Gus also remembers how the extra-long, extra-thick lead rope works when I hook it to the far side of his halter and thread it through the near side.  How it works is like a noose, pinching all around his snout if he tries to haul his head away from me.  The first couple of snow-free days, I had to insist on a grazing end time though he wasn’t ready.  As I made to lead him off the grass, he yawed one way, and I leaned back and held on, so he yawed and tried to trot the other way, and I leaned back and ran along and held on.  Then he recalled his lessons from last summer:  there is no escape from the cinch-rope, no matter how obnoxiously he resists it.  And today he doesn’t bother to fight at all (“resistance is futile”) but immediately walks off with me like an obedient gentleman.  In his stall, I feed him the last peppermint from my treat apron.

118. The big drop

After Gus and I commune so sweetly on the floor of the arena, he trots around with me in perfect partnership.  We practice our cha-cha, we walk and trot figure-eights, and we engage with the pompom.  As he stands on the pedestal, I proffer the pompom high and low and off by his side, and he never hesitates in reaching for it, bringing it back to center, then waving it up and down in cheerleader mode.  He adores playing pompom.

Suddenly I notice what I’ve never witnessed before: Gus is so mellow and happy that he’s dropped — that is, his penis is unsheathed, utterly relaxed, and dangling down to his ankles.  Geldings will sometimes drop for awhile when they’re eating really good hay, getting brushed and scratched, or otherwise transported in bliss.  It’s not sexual; it’s just another version (a much, much larger version) of a dangling lower lip.  You pretty much never see geldings drop when being traditionally trained or schooled, but we clicker-trainers find that it’s fairly common during our slow, unpressured, positive training sessions.  Still, Gus has never done it, ever.  Until today.

Its long, flaccid firehose-ness is not particularly attractive, but it’s such a sign of unguarded comfort and contentment that I nearly jump for joy.  This is even better than when he first — well over a year into our partnership — emptied his bowels in my presence.  And, yes, I do hear myself:  I’m glorying in Gus’s basest bodily functions.  It’s just that his openness with those functions clearly charts his ever-so-slow-growing trust and bonding. I wouldn’t hesitate to reveal my most indelicate bodily functions to him (I mean, who doesn’t pee in front of the dog?).  Now I know my troth-plighting isn’t unrequited.  Methinks I am enamored of an ass.

117. Nap time

Very occasionally when Gus lies down to roll, he pauses, rests his chin on the ground, and dozes.  The first time I saw this, I let him snooze for a good five minutes but then gently brandished the lunge whip to urge him back to his feet.  (I must’ve been channeling the chimneysweep in Oliver Twist who gets his child laborers unstuck from chimneys by lighting a fire, which “makes ‘em struggle to hextricate theirselves.”)  

When the paddocks are snowy and icy, lying down for a little kip just isn’t appealing; most sleeping has to be done while standing.  But when Gus is brought into the dry arena, with its floor of soft dirt and clean shavings, it must look like a gigantic fluffy bed — ju-u-ust  ri-i-ight for going horizontal and taking his ease.

Today, once again eager to get naked and luxuriate in the dirt, he can barely wait for me to unbuckle and remove his winter blanket.  He sniffs a bit, wanders a bit, circles quickly, and crumples down for a nice, scritchy roll. After scootching onto each side and scrubbing his back, he lingers on his belly, groans, and parks his chin.  He doesn’t budge.  His eyelids sag.  He looks so comfy (and reliably stationary) that I sink down beside him and rub his ears.

Equids don’t always trust humans to get too near when they’re on the ground.  It’s a vulnerable position, rising from which is a ponderous, two-part procedure:  first, they thrust their front feet forward, out from under their chests, and push up onto them, and then they lunge forward with their heads and necks to haul their rear ends up.  It’s a big effort and its footprint isn’t small — this ungainly transition for the large animal is also distinctly unsafe for any smaller creature in the vicinity.  But I’m pretty familiar with Gus’s rolling and rising, and I can tell that right now he doesn’t intend to go anywhere for awhile.  So I kneel down with him, exhaling voluptuously to mark our mutual relaxation, and we have a Special Moment. At least it’s special for me, as I feel honored by his trust and gratified to affirm a certain level of intimacy in our relationship.

After maybe ten minutes — and only after another horse and handler enter the arena — Gus decides his nap time is over.  Seeing it coming, I stand up and step aside, but not fast enough: my foot gets a glancing blow from one of his flying hooves.  It hurts a bit, but it’s worth it to have shared a little recumbent togetherness there in the dirt.

116. Long-ears in pop culture

Deep in the Internet rabbit hole recently, I’ve learned of three long-eared characters with some level of fame in the pop culture of my childhood.  They were all patently and irretrievably dopey, and during their heydey I either deliberately avoided them or happened to be spared encountering them.   But maybe I’d heard of them? and maybe they contributed to my longstanding interest in donkeys?  Gawd, I hope not . . .  

Just for the record, my discoveries began with Dominick the Italian Christmas donkey, the subject of a schlocky, third-rate kids’ song committed to vinyl by Lou Monte and released by Roulette Records in 1960.  The gist is how Dominick helps Santa deliver toys (made in Brooklyn, presumably by all the Italian-American artisans living there?) to the children of Italy, because mules are better at climbing mountains than reindeer are. [listen here, on an empty stomach] 

Mired in the gloppiness of Dominick, I slipped over into the series of 1950s movies starring Francis the talking mule.  I didn’t view any of them, but I was reminded that they starred Donald O’Connor, a genius at physical humor if not at picking scripts, and featured the old character actor Chill Wills doing the voice of the mule.  (I also read that Francis moved his lips because he’d had thread put into his mouth and was working to get rid of it — the same method used on Mr. Ed.  Not very kind or respectful, and thus fully reflecting the spirit of the 1950s and early ‘60s.)  Again, I opted not to rot any brain cells by watching it, but the plot involves an incompetent football team that recruits an equid kicking specialist, Gus the mule, who indeed saves the big game by back-kicking a 100-yard fieldgoal.  I regret and hasten to say:  I am not making this up.

I did recently watch most of Shrek, the 2001 animated movie about an adventurous green ogre, whose sidekick is a donkey voiced by the brilliant Eddie Murphy.  Now, there’s a donkey that begins to approach the social intelligence and practical self-interest of the actual species.  Still, these show-biz characters ain’t a patch on the living, breathing, adorable/abominable Gus that I get to hang out with.