10. Donkeys vs dogs

We’re making quick work of the toy traffic cone.  Gus now lifts it off the ground a few inches and holds it long enough for me to reach down and take it.  Each day, I hold my hand higher — and no click unless he touches it with the cone.  Like many cone-carrying horses I’ve seen, Gus likes to nod his head to flap the cone up and down, so the instant it flops onto my hand, I click.  

I’ve trained dogs to pick up, hold, and bring a dumbbell, which, for reasons passing understanding, is one of the hardest obedience exercises to teach.  Dogs will grab and run with a stick, but tell them to take a dumbbell, and go even more insane by asking them to walk even one step while holding it, and they’re thunderstruck.  “That’s totally impossible!  I’d be glad, however, to offer you a sit-stay.”  Training it forcibly with an ear-pinch or solely positively with a clicker, or by any method in between, the dumbbell retrieve typically takes weeks and weeks.  For horses, which possess no natural instinct for retrieving, it usually takes many months of inch-by-inch progress.

Gus makes gains with every session, and he rarely takes any backward steps — once he learns it, he’s got it.  We spend two or three sessions raising my hand until it’s at my waist and also a bit ahead of his nose.  He stretches his neck to hand it to me; when he opens his teeth to let the cone go, he gets the treat.  If I stand farther than a neck’s length away, though, he won’t move his feet toward me.  Then one day, as I lay down the wooden mat, Gus veers off and picks up a cone.  I didn’t cue him to the cone, so I ignore him.  (We’re working on “leave it” for just such an occasion, but he hasn’t quite cottoned on yet.)  I show him the mat, but he won’t leave the cone.  So I try calling him away from it:  “Come to me!”  And damned if he doesn’t walk three or four paces over to me, holding the cone the whole way.  Click!  He’s never done anything like this before, but he repeats the feat a few times on cue.  Click! and a whole jackpot of treats.  Not to mention ear-scritches and hosannas.

The next session, when I back away as Gus picks up the cone, he just stands there in a funk, then spits out the cone.  I’m not surprised, and I go back to him, letting him hand it to me while stationary.  We only do that a couple of times and then play with other toys for the rest of the session.  Next visit, the magic returns: he doesn’t hesitate one instant but strides over to me with the cone, first time, every time.  Show me a dog who can learn that fast, and I’ll show you a donkey wearing a dog suit.

Lately our favorite cone trick — a chain of “pick it up,” “come to me,” and “step up” — has him fetching the cone and carrying it to me across a long distance to the pedestal, where he steps up and presents it aloft like a trophy.

9. VIDEO: Trick trappings

We’re adding toys and tricks regularly, which is easy because Gus is so fearless; horses might spook at an unfamiliar item, but I’ve yet to see Gus even mildly concerned. If I roll the big beachball away from us, the chase game brings out his inner predator:  his ears flatten back, his eyes flash, and his head lowers as he trots after the escaping ball.  He has tried to bite it, but it’s way too big, so he knows the game is to bop it with the top of his nose and send it rolling again.  A small plastic tarp is fun too.  He gamely places his front feet on it — that is, when he doesn’t reach down and grab it in his teeth.  As with the wooden mat, I hope to teach him to keep his front feet on it and pirouette with his hind.  Or maybe vice versa. 

One day, we find an empty 50-gallon barrel standing about five feet from the wall.  Gus immediately introduces himself to it, and then uses his nose to push it over.  As it falls with a clang, he gazes placidly at it.  (Part donkey, part cat.)  I set it upright and we walk some figure-eights around it.  At one point, Gus hesitates between the barrel and the wall; with me at his side, it’s a narrow passage.  I wait and beckon with just my eyes, and he takes a forward step — click!  The next step is easy, and after that he’s a trouper, getting clicked the moment he’s next to the barrel, and then not until after he’s passed by it.  With the surcingle and long lines attached, I even drive him through the gap.  Who’s a good boy?! 

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.

7. VIDEO: Progress

When I pat my belly and say “come to me” as sweetly as possible, Gus cold-shoulders me as hard as he can.  He might surf the ground for tidbits, or go to the far corner to inhale important information from the manure bucket, or stand on his pedestal with his back to me. Eventually he does come, because he wants to get clicks and treats; and as soon as he takes two steps toward me, that’s what he gets.  He’s also surrendering to the lead rope more often:  when he starts to crane his neck and yank away, I dig my feet in and make like a tree, he leans on the line but doesn’t increase the pull, and at that point a soft kissy noise and a pat on my front will often get him to relent and return of his own accord.  That wins him a big click every time.

In cold weather, Gus likes to trot, and I encourage it by trotting alongside him.  Walking over a ground pole particularly inspires trotting.  He clearly finds it a hoot — he puts his ears back, gets a merry gleam (or evil glint?) in his eye, and throws his head around as his little hooves twinkle over the ground.  I love his delight, but sometimes he crowds me with that thrashing head, so I stiff-arm him at his neck or face.  Once he trots a few paces in proper position, aligned with my shoulder and not too close or too wide, I click, which stops him and he gets his treat.  Then he decides if he’d like to trot more or just walk.

On the pedestal, I’m getting several steps of his hind feet before I click.  A full 360 pirouette is a crowd pleaser for anybody passing by the arena door.   It’s a donkey pleaser too, as he seems to really enjoy the opportunity to be taller than me.  I still repeat the verbal cue ”over” for each side-step, but I hope I can fade that to just one cue at the beginning.

`

6. VIDEO: Rolling along

Our sessions are now 40 minutes or so — the time it takes us to work through two carrots and half an apple, chopped into tidbits no bigger than the end of my thumb.  I stuff them into a cheap canvas carpenter’s apron that ties behind my back.  Gus is a gourmand, but I think he’s reaching the point where he finds the activity just as rewarding as the food treats.

Some days he doesn’t want to stop, and I have to coax him out of the arena.  And some days he begins by barging into the arena without first going into his stall for hoof-picking or blanket removal.  At first, I tried to insist he go where I choose, but his manners evaporate when his wishes are thwarted — he’ll not scruple to push past and bowl me over.  So I began asking/observing to see if I could divine his preferred destination at any particular time, and occasionally I think I can.  To avoid any suggestion of forcing him into his stall, I usually plant his brush and hoofpick in the arena first, then go fetch him from the paddock and lead him straight into the Fun Zone.  Grooming and de-blanketing still strike him as annoying delays, but at least in this venue he seems reassured that fun will follow.

Nine-point-nine days out of ten, Gus’s first order of business is to roll in the loose dirt of the arena floor.  He relishes rolling.  After I snap off his lead rope, he’s free to wander around, nose to the ground, seeking the right spot.  He snorts and snuffles.  He paws and re-sniffs.  He walks tight circles.  Then his knees tremble, buckle, bend — and he groans out loud as he rolls over, legs in the air.  Flat-backed and virtually witherless, he easily turns over and back to rub both sides into the dust.  Resting on his belly and folded legs, he pauses and grunts.  He rests his chin on the ground and contemplates.  He presses the side of his face into the dirt, and then rolls a few more times on both sides.  More grunting.  At last he heaves his front half up onto his forefeet and hauls his back end up behind him.  He shakes his head, spewing a fine brown aerosol, but doesn’t shake his body.  When I pat him, clouds of dirt puff out like tiny explosions.  The very definition of donkey delight.

Soon, I’m using a verbal cue —“go roll” — as soon has his knees begin to give way.  Maybe that cue will someday encourage him to shorten the preliminaries and get the deed done more promptly.  Or maybe not.

5. Gimme some lip

Session 6.  Undeterred, I return the very next day.  This time, Gus cooperates throughout.  Why??  I can discern nothing about the vagaries of location or animal biology to explain his mercurial moods.  Sometimes he’s mellow when it’s brisk and breezy or feisty when it’s hot and humid.  Being an independent agent, the sole proprietor and CEO of his autonomy, he plays the precocious enfant terrible to the hilt.

Today, I withhold any clicking for touching the toy traffic cone on the ground.  He touches; I wait.  He knows from his previous training that if you don’t get a click as expected, you need to do something more or different.  He wiggles his ever-so-nimble muzzle against the cone and it falls over.  Click!  Within a minute, he’s consistently nudging the cone.  Now I wait again.  Trying to earn a treat, he wibbles his lips with extra energy, until they open a bit — click!  Soon he’s pretty consistently opening his mouth on the cone.  That’s enough for today, and we switch to heeling along like a dog, standing on the wooden mat, and other games.  Good session.

_________________________

             

It’s been ten visits.  How’s it going so far?  I’d say “adorable” and “abominable” are still the operative descriptors, in approximately equal proportions.  I think Gus has accepted that I’ll be there regularly and that I’ll be decent to him.  When I bring him in from the paddock and a horse comes too near us, he does emit a stifled little squeal and pin his ears at him: “My Pez dispenser!”  But that may be as far as the loyalty goes.  Will he warm up to me?  Do donkeys warm up to anybody?  I’m getting enough fun and fascination from the work that I don’t much care for now.  Anyway, it’s early days yet.

4. AWOL

Session 5.  Gus saunters across the paddock to meet me, stands for haltering, walks along toward the arena . . . and whips his head to the side, yanking the rope out of my hand.  He trots defiantly, head high, down the path to a small paddock.  He visits the horses there and lips a few wisps of hay off the ground.  After I walk over and gather his rope, I suggest cheerily that we might consider going to the arena for some Big Fun.  Ya wanna?  His feet say yes and take enough steps to get a click, but he snatches the treat aggressively from my hand and pulls away again.  Now he munches grass idly, sneaking a sidelong peek at me as I re-approach.  I lead him in some tight circles, with clicks and treats, as we work our way nearer the arena.  He walks nicely to the door.  And plants his feet.  Grrr . . .  I wait.  He waits.  Then he “sets his neck” and peels away down the path again.  And again I watch his ornery little rump and that lead rope trailing in the dirt.  

Fine, I say.  You can skip your arena fun and go back to your damn paddock.  Fine, he says, let’s go.  But as I lead him there and put my hand on the paddock gate, doesn’t he wheel away and run off again.  His stall is in the same barn as the arena, so I know I can’t get him to go in there.  It’s getting dark and I need to head home.  Sandy isn’t due for another hour.  Where can I stash this turbulent donkey?  

I lead him into the other barn, where he never gets to go except on his illicit escapades.  He’s so surprised to be invited there that he strolls right in, follows me into the nearest empty horse stall, and I’ve got him!  He revels in victory, scarfing some of the hay meant for the rightful occupant, but only for a moment, until he realizes the dutch-door is latched and he’s trapped.  He tries to ram his head out above the door in righteous indignation, but being so much shorter than the resident horse, he has to tilt his head up and push just his nose out in feeble protest.  Pitiful, but hilarious.  And serves him right.

Before I drive away, I text an apology and warning to Sandy. She won’t be able to bring the horses in from pasture for their dinners until she manages to move Gus into his own stall.  Sometimes, she confides, she has to let him run loose while she completes her appointed rounds; by the time only his stall door is still open, and there’s food in his bucket, he’ll go in voluntarily.

3. Adorably abominable

Session 2. Two days later, I return.  This time, as I walk across the big pasture to fetch Gus, I whistle a little five-note phrase that I use to bring my dogs back when they’re off-leash in the woods.  He pointedly ignores me.  When I reach him, though, he doesn’t pull away from the halter at all.  We have another good session in the indoor arena, though he does plant his feet in sudden, temporary refusal a couple times and pulls the rope out of my hand once.  I even try lunging him — sending him in a circle around me on a long lead line — but I’ve never been good at lunging, and now I’m rusty.  He moves around me if I beat the whip onto the ground behind his heels, but then he slows and turns in toward me.  I can’t get him to return out to the end of the line even if I press on his ribs with the flexible tip of the whip.  We barely get a few circles of walk or trot in each direction, and I give up.  He figures I’m some fly-by-night know-nothing as it is; I don’t need to prove that he’s right.

Session 3.  A couple days later, I’m back.  As I enter Gus’s pasture, I whistle my little tune and he looks up.  I only take a step or two, when he begins walking toward me.  (!)  And he keeps walking the whole distance to reach me.  (!!!)  In the arena he presents his signature mix of adorable and abominable, obedient and obstreperous.  As Sandy says, “Gus is Gus.”

Isadora meets Bugatti

Session 4.  In the paddock, Gus lets me approach though he doesn’t meet me halfway.  As I just begin to get his halter on, he jumps sideways, which slips the halter down around his neck, and he takes off, giving a little kick behind.  It’s naughty, and it’s cute, but it’s also risky to be trailing that big lead rope off his neck. I’m calling “whoa” and trying to recatch him, but now he’s cantering toward his horse buddies and tossing his head mischievously to get them to join him.  As they all pick up and prance around together, I wring my brain in fear, thinking of Isadora Duncan, her trailing scarf, and the wheel of her convertible.  Pleeeeze don’t anybody step on that lead rope!  All I can do is wait for those four or five powerbodies, with their 16 or 20 hooves, to slow down. Luckily, the afternoon is hot and the horses lose interest.  I round up Gus and get the halter off his neck and onto his head where it belongs.  He’s perfectly happy and has a fine time doing his tricks in the arena.

2. Don't risk getting hurt

Session 1.  Sandy hands me Gus’s halter and lead rope, and I enter the grassy, sun-soaked pasture he shares with several gelding horses.  He’s loafing at the far, far end, so I walk and walk.  As he notices me approaching, he glances my way but keeps his head down and his mouth munching.  I offer him my fist to sniff and greet him by name.  I feed him a little hay pellet, and slowly slip the halter over his nose.  He suddenly jerks back and trots a few paces away.  I wait a beat, follow slowly, and try again.  This time he accedes, and we take the long walk back to the pasture gate.  He’s pretty gentlemanly.  So far, so good.

In the dim, cool indoor arena, Sandy offers me two important tips:  Reward him often, and if he “sets his neck,” resist the instinct to pull back on the rope but simply drop it and let him run off.  “Don’t risk getting hurt,” she says.   

As with any clicker training, the procedure is to make a click (like most horsepeople, I use my tongue rather than encumbering a hand with a mechanical clicker) to mark the instant we see a desired behavior, follow each click promptly with a treat, and ignore any unwanted behaviors.  

Me and Gus (not from left to right)

We start with some tricks that Sandy taught Gus in years past.  He eagerly drags me to the big pedestal and pops his front feet up on it.  I click and treat.  After a few seconds, I ask him to back up and step down, but he refuses.  I step up onto the pedestal too, so I’m up on his level and close to his chest, which I poke firmly as I say “ba-a-a-ck” right into his face.  Nothing.  Harrumph, we agree. 

I drape the lead rope over Gus’s shoulders, step off the pedestal, and wander halfway across the arena.  I make a show of relacing my boots, I paw through my carpenter’s apron of hay pellets and other treats, I clear my throat, I sigh.  He affects grandiose indifference.  Finally, I sit down in the dirt, and he can’t resist his own curiosity:  he steps down and strolls toward me.  He gets a click just before he reaches me and the treat follows as he arrives in front of me.  Now he’s away from the pedestal, and I’ve regained his attention and his lead rope.  He seems pretty content, despite his evident doubts about who the hell I am or what I think I’m doing there.

Next we walk some circles and figure-eights, and I click and treat every moment he’s in a good position right next to my shoulder.  We’re not great at staying aligned during the turns, but he’s making good-faith efforts.  After a few minutes, I lead him to a stack of miniature orange traffic cones.  I hold one out to him, and he duly touches it with his nose.  Click!  We do that several more times.  Sometimes he drops his head and sniffs the arena floor — horses are in here all the time, and their humans sometimes fumble bits of treat.  I let him explore the aromas awhile and then make kissy noises to coax him back to focusing on me. 

Sandy brings us a thin piece of plywood maybe two feet square, and the minute she lays it on the ground Gus plants his front feet on it.  Click!  From this mat, he’s willing to back away when asked, so we’re able to walk around it and step on it again.  

After a half-hour or so, we end.  As it’s nearly time for evening grain, Gus comes along into his stall without demur.  Sandy tells me that he always likes being groomed, so I brush him all over, pick out the bottoms of his hooves (gingerly, since he doesn’t always like letting a human lift and hold a foot), and then rub his ears — his improbable, balletic, autonomously automated ears [see below] -- until his eyes glaze and his bottom lip dangles in blissful relaxation. 

1. Augustus Caesar on the hoof

Gus, his imperial majesty

“Gus is loose!”  The donkey is being a consummate ass, trotting down the barn aisle, checking each stall for horse treats or human treats to pillage.  For the umpteenth time, he has worked his way around his pasture fence until he found a loose or weak spot, then craned his thick neck between the boards, pushed up with the back of his head until the board broke free, and squeezed under or through.  His pasturemates, being horses, are too big to fit, and are also more content with their lot in life; they barely look up from grazing to witness his escape.

Buckets and wheelbarrows are set down and chores put on hold while a roundup is organized.  Where did he go?  Grab his halter!  Who has some treats?  Everybody, hoofed and human, knows the routine: feed him a little grain or hay pellets or horse cookies while strapping a halter onto his head, and hope to lead him into an unbreached paddock or lock him in his stall.  Then re-repair the goddamn fence board.

He’s so friendly and so eager for interaction that he’ll take the goodies and allow himself to be haltered.  His shoulder about waist-high to a human, his fuzzy face just about level with ours, his ludicrously long ears pricked forward or swinging hither and fro, he walks along amenably.  Until.  Until at some unpredictable point, for no discernible cause, he’ll suddenly turn his head hard, stretching the lead rope flat across his bowed neck, and march off on a stiff tangent.  Weighing in at probably 800 pounds, and with a stubborn streak a mile wide, Gus in this gear is unstoppable by mere mortals.  The only solution is to drop the lead rope and let him stomp away.  Then the game begins again, with the treats and the leading and the hoping.  Sometimes it’s more waiting and watching, since he never seems to get into danger.  He’s just not ready to be confined at this particular moment.  Eventually he consents to be walked toward his barn, into his barn, over his stall threshold, and SLAM! the door is shut.  As people return to their chores and their horses, a bagpipe bellows begins faintly huffing, then some croaks and groans ensue, and finally a loud, full-bodied, multisyllabic, honking hee-haw thunders across the farm.

  ——————————-

Gus the gelding donkey had been acquired by a couple in upstate New York who later put him on the market, free to a good home, when he was just a few years old.  A longtime horse trainer and barn manager in Saratoga Springs, NY, Sandy A. inquired about him.   She had long been using click-and-treat training with her horses and found it amazingly effective and fun.  Knowing how well it works with zoo animals, performing dolphins, dogs and cats, even goldfish, she was game to try it with a donkey.

To explain his availability, the owners said they’d hoped to place him in a Christmas nativity scene at their church, but he refused to get into the transport trailer.  “Seriously?!  You wanted a sensitive living creature for a cardboard cutout?  And now he’s being evicted from his home?” Sandy refrained from saying.  She tranquilized him, and she and three friends each took a leg to hoist him into her trailer so he could join her equine charges at a large, lovely farm on the edge of Saratoga.  He arrived staggering drunkenly and drenched with flop-sweat, little realizing he’d fetched up in a far, far better place.

Sandy clicker-trained Gus extensively, teaching him to tolerate the farrier (after he bashed her and him against the wall in his panic at being restrained and manipulated), to walk and halt and turn politely alongside her, and to touch any object with his nose.  He especially loved to step his front feet onto a large pedestal (a tractor tire laid flat and topped with a thick circle of plywood) and stand there tall and regal. She also long-lined him and then put him in harness to pull a little cart.  

In the past couple of years, though, Sandy took on some new horses, and her few available hours at the barn shifted more to them and less to Gus.  Hence his ennui and antsiness; after a couple of hours in a paddock, he just couldn’t contain himself, and neither could the paddock fences.  

I’d visited Gus a few times, just to say hi and scritch his forehead, over the past 10 years, as my friend and colleague Barbara M. always boarded her horses with Sandy.  For many years, I’d borrowed horses and taken dressage lessons, until my bad back got too bad for all the core-muscle flexion required in the saddle.

I was sorry to stop riding, and I kept pining for it — and for the entire equine ambience.  First, that intoxicating, delicious fragrance: cured hay and sweetened grains, both raw and in the barely digested form of horse manure, blended with fresh wood shavings, old leather, and the umami of horse sweat.  Then the unhurried pace set by large grazing animals and by the physical labor of stall mucking or hay stacking or saddling up: everything takes as long as it takes, and that’s . . . ju-u-ust . . . fi-i-i-i-ine.  Plus the quiet, broken only by snuffling horse nostrils, fluttering barn birds, wind, and maybe a squeaky wheelbarrow trundling back from the manure pile.  Nothing so thoroughly quells the technological and verbal clatter of the “real” world.  Plans, worries, the noise of news — they all evanesce in the serene, languidly unfolding Now of a stable full of horses.

Tales of Gus’s escapades always intrigued and tickled me.  He’s irresistibly cute, with rounded facial features, a cushion of thick fuzz on his forehead, and the classic donkey markings of a dark body with white belly, white muzzle, and white around his eyes.  He looks like a baby musk ox crossed with a sock monkey.  I sympathized with the exasperation of his keepers, but also with the burden of his boredom.  A few times, when someone brought a horse into the arena for training, Gus broke out of his paddock and ran to the arena gate, where he watched the horse and human, his face essentially pressed to the window of the candy store.  Or he’d squeeze under the gate and sidle up to the human — “Can I come to school too?”  When shooed away, he’d yield ground but remain in the arena, nosing around the edges in hopes that the teacher might call on him.  He’s not just a hooligan: he’s depraved on account-a he’s deprived.

In September of 2018, I retired from my job and promptly offered to give Gus some occasional clicker-training, to which Sandy gratefully and generously agreed.  I’ve clicker-trained all my dogs, dabbled in it with a horse or two, and watched a lot of it with my horse-owning friends; now I’d give it a whirl with a new species.  

A zedonk/zonkey (I am not making this up)

And Gus is a very new species.  I soon learned that donkeys are remarkably less horselike than they appear.  They have 62 chromosomes, to a horse’s 64. Their ribs and backs are  a bit different, their legs are shorter, and their heads are heavier.  Crucially, donkeys aren’t as herd-oriented as horses, so they’re more independent and outgoing; they’re valiant and vicious guard animals who’ve been known to kill coyotes and cougars.  Some say donkeys are closely related to zebras, and some zookeepers say the least tameable of all their animals are zebras.  OK, then, Gus ain’t no Dobbin.