You humans are an odd bunch and with your mad actions sometimes get us animals into a lot of trouble, my subject to illustrate this is what you humans do and indeed don’t do when feeding Horses.
It’s a little known fact that’s only common knowledge in the equine community that horses really like Polos Mints which are small round mint flavoured boiled sweets with a hole in them but sadly very few people feed Horses Polos, instead they give them handfuls of grass, carrots and anything else they have to hand and that includes fingers.
When a human gives a Horse a finger or two to eat it isn’t always clear to the Horse or indeed the investigating authorities that the human intended the Horse to have a finger buffet. In fact some humans after feeding a finger or two to an innocent Horse and become really rather too irate about the whole matter and like their fingers the matter can get out of hand if you see what I mean!
There is some good news for humans who want to feed the odd Horse who they see standing alone in a field looking rather forlorn. Horses love treats and there is no real reason why you shouldn’t give them one but it has to be stressed do please only give a Horse one treat because Horses can unfortunately be described as greedy and will literarily eat themselves sick and if you can find out if the Horse can eat what you want to feed it.
In general when you give a Horse a treat it can be almost anything fruity or veggie, Oranges, Carrots, Apples or even a Banana but never ever give a Horse the tops (green bits) of Carrots or the peel from a Banana. In addition do ensure that you cut up what you feed a Horse into small cubes because Horses can have digestion problems and as I mentioned above it’s always best, if possible, ask the Horses owner what the Horse likes to eat and more importantly what the Horse can eat.
Asking the Horse’s owner will ensure that you feed the Horse what he or she can eat a lot of Horse can develop nasty diseases such as Colic which can be a dangerous, even life threatening, illness for Horses.
When you want to feed a Horse or give them a treat the best way to do this is to hold the treat out to the Horse in the palm of your hand, making sure that your fingers are completely extended and your hand is as flat as you possibly can make it.
Lastly don’t go into the fields with a handful, armful, or bucketful of treats, thinking the Horses on the other side of the field won’t notice. Because before you realise it, you will be in the middle of a number of Horses all competing rather too boisterously for treats, unfortunately hungry Horses can get a little pushy and as they are almost always ten times bigger and heavier than the average human, humans tend to get hurt by ‘enthusiastic’ Horses.
Just for your information the wonderful illustration of ‘Two Horses at a gate waiting for treats’ is kindly provided by Mr John Woodcock (my translator) from his book ‘Tram No 6 the Naughtiest of Trams’ which is the first in a series of books from the series ‘Trams of Prague’
You can purchase an ebook of this excellent beautifully illustrated book here at www.amazon.com Trams of Prague ebook for use on Kindle Fire, iPod Touch, iPad and all other great colour eReaders. Or of course you can get it on my www.wickedlywonderfulwebsite the www.thecatsdiary.com. It will make a great Christmas stocking filler.
And the good news is that a picture book edition will be available next year.
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