Meet Buckwheat

Buckwheat the clown
Now when you meet Buckwheat you’ll see a totally different kind of "horsonality" than Buck. For starters, Buckwheat has the most number of nicknames (a sure indicator of a horse who’s kind of different). So far we’ve called him BW, Boy Toy, B Boy, Buck Boy, Buttwheat, Bun Boy, Face, Toy, Wheaties, B, Boinkwheat, B-Wheat, Toad-muffin and Doofus. It really gives me a great deal of pleasure when I think of the changes that have happened to BW since we first got him in 1996 as a 3 year old. He gave the impression he was laid back but as I grew to know him he showed me that he had lots of “don’t touch me” spots. Touching his ears was definitely out, and he wasn’t even happy about having his neck scratched. If I tried to pet his forehead he would allow about 2 strokes before he pulled his head away. After my experiences with Buck, who loved to be brushed and petted, I was a bit surprised by BW’s reluctance to have any more than limited human contact.

After a year or two he finally decided being scratched was a really good thing, and now he initiates “scratch-me-all-over” sessions. In fact we had a session just today. It was fun as usual. BW started out by lining up to me with his head extended. It looked like he was saying, “OK, you can start here.” I started scratching whatever he presented, in this case it was his neck. From there he moved and situated his body so that he could get me to scratch new places every couple of minutes. He worked his whole body around 360 degrees so that I finally scratched everywhere.

During another fun “scratch-me-all-over” session, I decided to see if he was really trying to direct what was happening to him. I scratched for a couple of minutes and then I stepped away. He looked at me, and then made the necessary steps to close the gap and once again presented the part that wanted to be scratched. So again, I stepped away, maybe 6 feet. Sure enough, he looked over with that “why are you there” look, and side passed over towards me to get scratched. We must have played this game for 20 minutes. It was wonderful watching how he repositioned his body. Sometimes he did a side pass, sometimes he even backed up several feet to get his tail and hind end within the scratching zone. What an amazing thing that this horse knew so clearly what he wanted, and was so willing to communicate with his body language. He was very careful too, never bumping me out of position, but getting VERY close so I could continue the scratching session. And this is a typical "Buckwheat type of behavior" full of smart, thoughtful and clearly communicated wishes.