I am not certain I want to preface this fact I learned with the story that led to this discovery. Both my brother John and I, at some point in our lives, 'learned' that the way to let a horse get to know you was to let it 'smell your breath'. I'm embarrassed already. Oh well. So every once and a while we both breath into our horse Duke's nose to say 'howdy'. As far as we can tell, he really likes it. Haha! For the record though, neither of us KNEW that we both did that until last night. My mom is really the horse expert and we were pretty certain we would have learned such a random piece of horse-whisperer-knowledge from her but she seemed to have no idea what we were talking about. One thing led to another and as John and I were getting laughed at while eating Sunday dinner yesterday we DID learn a little something about horses. Horses can't breath out of their mouths! ("What?? Are you Serious??" ...I know)! They eat and drink with their mouth but they actually only inhale oxygen through their giant nostrils!
John: "But I mean it makes sense because their nostrils are so huge. They are bigger than our entire nose!"
Lizzie: "Yeah, but their bodies are a lot bigger than our entire bodies as well!"
Amanda: "Yet somehow, their feet are smaller..."
What an abstract thinker, that Amanda! AND for the record, I looked up the breathing thing and just found this... "Breathing into a horse's nose with your nose is a little horse whisperer trick-of-the-trade that really melts some horses and is perceived by them as a sign of friendliness, and is what they do to each other in greeting."
Whats up now! P.S. That picture is my old horse Buddy, looks like he was pretty receptive to the idea of sniffing!!
- Lizzie