Yep! Real horses, fake excitement. At least to my POV, as I love horses and despise the Bizarro World rituals of horse racing!

Donkeys are marvellous people! And they love coleslaw! I've had the pleasure of serial donkey guardianship in several countries. But more on that at some other point, as I have to go earn the proverbial crust now...

That's coleslaw without mayonnaise, of course :-)

We looked after two local donkeys for a couple of years once, a mother and daughter pair. Already knowing that donkeys liked carrots and sometimes cabbage, H2 and I used to make up huge bowls of both vegetables, roughly shredded, often with chunks of apple thrown in for good measure (handy when you have an orchard next door), and 'the girls' would go mad for it at breakfast time. And occasionally, if we'd accidentally awakened them when we came home from work at stupid o'clock, we would have to quiet them down with some leftover coleslaw :-)

I have to say that relationship was a mutually beneficial one. We had a 1.5 acre field full of horrid stinging nettles and other noxious weeds, and the donkeys ate every one and fertilised the field so well that the following spring it was a riot of buttercups and looked like a suitable place to film one of those shampoo adverts!

Glad to hear it - it just goes to show that donkeys have mysterious ways of spreading smiles :-)