During the earthquake Wednesday we were privileged to have Pierre, a drummer, come to Winsong Farm to play with the horses. Two other people, Ann and Gabby, were here to help. We began the session with Zelador.
We weren’t exactly sure how the day would evolve. I do know that horses are musical and figured they would enjoy drums.
At one point Zelador walked onto the teeter-totter. I asked him to stop in the middle and demonstrate how taking a step backwards, then forwards created the up and down effect. Surprisingly, Zelador pawed at the wood. He’s never done that before. We decided to have the drummer answer the sounds Zelador made. I also played the game. Sometimes I created a sound on the wood and the drummer answered. Other times the drummer initiated the sequence and I answered. Zelador was definitely intrigued and I’m guessing that after a GAP the next time Pierre comes here Zelador will be playing the game.
Zeloso joined his brother and instantly you could see Zeloso’s delight in the rhythm. For the first time ever the boys did one changed direction again and again. Usually Zeloso’s desire to keep me in his left eye prevents a change of direction from left to right. But not Earthquake Day. The drum rhythm helped Zeloso maintain his trot and change direction with his brother. It was beautiful to watch! One horse flowing across the diagonal, followed fluidly by the other.
The boys returned to their paddock and we fetched Kye. He’s our great pawer and we totally forgot to practice mimicking sounds with pawing… wouldn’t you know!
Kye turned out to be the most in-tune to the rhythms of walk/trot/canter. While he was cantering at liberty I signaled for Pierre to change from the three-beat rhythm to the two-beat. Almost instantly Kye went from the canter to the trot.
The final horse was Pax. A lady saw him the other day and said, “That horse is massive.” Yep, that pretty much describes Pax!
Well, Pax was incredibly curious about Pierre and the drum. It took a bit of encouragement to get him to leave this novelty and come with me. I called him to a low platform and Mr. Massive stepped up on it. While I was asking him to turn a few steps on the platform I heard Pierre, Ann and Gabby calling excitedly to me. They were at the tall pedestal, about ten metres away. “Did you feel that! I think it was an earthquake!!!” I hadn’t felt anything. I looked in their direction and noticed that the horizontal mirror behind them was moving…for quite a few minutes.
I laughed and said to them, “When I’m working with Pax, I’m focused on him. An earthquake would have to be significant for me to notice it.”
Yesterday’s mere 5.0 hardly registered on the Pax-Scale.
