Food-Motivated

While Eli still nips at me a bit, he is mostly just shoving his nose into me and licking me in a teeth-free manner.

Is he finally cuddly? Eh, maybe most of the time. He gets a ton of treats and always takes them very politely. He’s generally good about me messing around with his mouth in general … I regularly stick my fingers in his mouth to feel if his cheek teeth are getting points and he doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps because I am shoving a cookie in his mouth next?

I know some people discourage hand-feeding treats or using cookies or grain to incentivize the correct behavior from a horse. I am not one of those people. Obviously if Eli were rude about it or still biting me, I’d take a different approach. He’s food-motivated, though. He makes friends with people who feed him stuff. And he won’t try to bite your hand off.

He cannot possibly ever get enough of the German Horse Muffins (that name will crack me up every time … are they muffins made OF horses?). After getting one he just sort of zones out sucking his own tongue and licking his teeth and lips.

Oh, and I STILL have not body clipped him. It’s much cooler outside today so I am not super motivated to spend 2-3 hours covering myself with horse hair …