Children are more rewarding than horses, assuming you find children rewarding at all. If you don't, I venture that the two are not so dissimilar. I have secured a baby on loan, and I have even been granted permission to take it out of the house. This continues for some time and, as it is not exactly absorbing, gives me ample opportunity to observe Baby. Its stomach is soft, its legs are soft, the bottoms of its as yet unwalked-on feet are soft, even its skull is soft.
Baby drools copiously, even alarmingly.
This is saliva on a Rio Grande scale, a constant overflowing of the gums. Although I know babies drool, I worry that they are not supposed to drool quite so much and that perhaps Baby, lying on its stomach and wriggling cutely, is in fact suffocating or, more accurately, drowning. I sit Baby up and put the duck in its mouth, but the drool just keeps coming. Leaves, paper towels, cat fur, sand, everything moves briskly in the direction of the digestive tract. I come to believe that if Baby cannot yet walk, it is only because all neural function has been concentrated on perfecting this single motion of consumption.