Hilarious Highboy

Highboy and Garmin are mostly recovered from the big adventure that was our trip to Denver last weekend for the expo.  Highboy is back to his regular antics, anyway.  This morning a friend of mine came over with three of her kids, ages 5-11, since there was no school today for the elementary aged group for teacher development.  The kids of course wanted to see the horses, and Highboy is one of the two tallest so he makes quite an impression.  Highboy hadn't really seen kids except for last weekend at the expo, and then he wasn't really interacting with them.  Today was a different story.

My friend let her kids go up to his fence, and Highboy initially snorted and backed up, wondering what these miniature humans were all about.  The kids thought that was funny, so laughed and went on to the next paddock to see Garmin and his roommates, who of course hustled over to the fence for attention.  Highboy watched from a distance, then decided that they could be his next big adventurous partners in crime!  He pranced along the fence to get the kids' attention again.  They walked over to his fence, and pet his nose.  Highboy was of course still covered in mash from smooshing his unfinished breakfast all over his feed tub (and himself) so the kids did squeal in fun when they realized they needed to squeegee the beet pulp off of themselves.

Highboy assumed their squeals were the beginnings of WWF horse wrestling.  So he stood himself up as tall as he could, then tilted his head to the right, giving the kids a sidelong glance down the side of his face and pursing his lips.  This is Highboy's trademarked way of initiating lip wrestling with another horse.  The kids thought it was pretty funny, and began to hop up and down.  In response, Highboy tossed his head.  Then the kids tossed their heads in imitation.  Highboy paused, studying them.  He nodded his head, and the kids nodded their heads.  He tossed his head side to side, and the kids did the same.  Then Highboy shot me this look like, "Hey, Kim!  Do you see this?  I taught these small humans to shake their heads on command!"

The kids did request that Highboy be let out into the arena with them so they could all play together.   I explained that while Highboy is a lot of fun, because he is so young he doesn't really understand that he is so much bigger than them and he might run them over accidentally.  So we left Highboy in his paddock while the kids leaped over jumps on foot and built a tunnel with the plastic barrels.  Highboy laid down and took a nap, and even stayed there, giving the oldest kid a nudge with the still mash-covered nose when the kids came over to say goodbye before heading home.