Dear Honeycutt,
Now that is it cold outside and the days seem very short, I don’t see my human quite as much anymore. How can I get my person to spend more time with me?
No more pointy horses!
Your friend,
Oliver
Oh Oliver, thank you for writing me a question. This is a very hard question for me to answer, though, because although I have many friends on the Interwebs who I love from a distance, I would really prefer that everyone leave me alone most of the times. Even Mom knows that I am a horse who needs his personal space.
So I asked my friends Jay and Chance to help me answer this question. Jay and Chance are both Thoroughbred horses who used to be racehorses and they have been around humans since they were little babies. As a result, they both seem to enjoy peoples and even seek out their company. If Mom walks outside her little house, they will usually stop what they are doing and go see what she is doing. So I asked them what they do to get peoples to spend more time with them.
Jay told me that in order to keep Mom in his area for a long time, he will not put all his poops in one place like I do. Instead he poops in as many different spots around his paddock and his stall as he can. That way Mom has to spend a much longer time picking up his poops. He also recommends that you walk through some of the poops to spread them out and really grind them into the dirt, so that they are harder to scoop up. This way, not only does Mom spend more time in his area, she also has a lot of choice words to say to him while she is there. Also if you can keep yourself between your Mom and her wheelbarrow at all time, she will be forced to pay more attention to you.
Chance thinks Jay is disgusting with his poop advice, and he suggests a different approach to get attention. He says that when he runs and jumps and bucks in his pasture, Mom will almost always stop and watch him, so he recommends being as entertaining as possible at all times. A few things to try: biting your friends, extending the trot, and making strange gestures with your lips and your head at feeding time. Chance is a bit of a show off, do you know that thing? Show Off means that you like peoples to watch you and tell you that you’re handsome and athletic and talented most all of the time. So if this is not the sort of attention that you crave, try the Poop thing instead.
Do you have a question for Honeycutt? Email him at honeycutt@safehorses.org and maybe he will choose your letter for a future “Ask Honeycutt” column!