Compatible with Stardew Valley 1.5.6 and SMAPI 3.13.2. Source available on Github: https://github.com/Goldenrevolver/Stardew-Valley-Mods

This mod aims to be the one stop place for everything you need for your horse apart from texture replacers.

It combines, balances and expands upon the features of:

• Thin Horse mods like Pony Weight Loss Program or Horse Squeeze
• Faster Horse mods like Secretariat or Faster Horse
• Horse Friendship and Feeding mods like Upgraded Horse (which is partly included, see credits)
• A menu to check on your horse (and optionally also your pet) like many information mods

And it's also completely configurable to your liking.

This also works in (local and online) multiplayer but it's required to be installed by the host and it's recommended to use the same settings for everyone who is using the mod (except visuals and keybinds of course).


FEATURE 1: Thin Horse:

Pony Weight Loss Program was a hugely successful mod, even if its bandaid fix for the horse hitbox was as flawed as the base game's one.
This feature replaces the horse hitbox with an actual 1x1 hitbox when facing in every direction without regularly glitching through chests, trees and fences.

I also made it possible for the horse to emote properly (e.g. when petted or fed) but only if this feature is enabled.

Compatible with Tractor Mod and horse reskins (personal vanilla friendly favorite: Horsemanship).




FEATURE 2: Saddle Bags:

This is a completely new addition as far as I know. This allows your horse to carry items for you, similar to how it worked in Harvest Moon FoMT. Unlike in FoMT you can take items out of the saddle bags again. Simply use the tool use key on your horse while you are not holding food (see below for why) to open it.

There is also an option for visible saddle bags on your horse, originally released as its own mod by DegenerateFreak. The color options are green and brown as well as two color options specifically for Horsemanship (horsemanship_brown and horsemanship_beige).

Compatible with Better Chests, allowing saddle bags to be tweaked separately. If you want to change their size or a bunch of other things, check it out.




FEATURE 3: Friendship:

This gives your horse a friendship stat like your pet or your coop and barn animals (0 to 5 hearts/ 0 to 1000 points like vanilla). There are various ways to increase the friendship with your horse, but don't worry, there are no ways to decrease it. There is also a new menu to check on your horse which can be opened with a configurable hotkey (default: H). This message can be translated. Let me know if you want to write a small translation and I can upload it.




FEATURE 3.1: Movement Speed:

This is the main reward for increasing friendship with your horse. The higher the friendship with your horse the higher its movement speed. The maximum value can be adjusted in the config. This of course pairs very well with the 'Thin Horse' feature.


(This is max friendship, the default max speed of 3 and a coffee speed bonus)


FEATURE 3.2: Ways of increasing friendship:

There are 4 ways of increasing friendship.

• You can pet your horse once a day (this will be done automatically when you try to ride it for the first time, compatible with Better Ranching)
• You can fill its freshly fixed water trough (similar to the pet bowl)
• You can feed it an edible item (with the tool use key)
• You can place a heater next to the stable (one tile around it) to gain a small amount of friendship every day in the winter

(if you are using Hudson Valley Buildings or Seasonal Vanilla Buildings (unofficial update), I made it so you don't have to place a heater as those stable skins already include one) 



Petting and giving water grants the default values of friendship.

You can feed your horse an item once a day (this limitation can be disabled in the config) to gain a small amount of extra friendship.




Prior to update 1.4, giving food granted a variable amount of friendship based on the health the item would recover to the player. This was unrealistic and a bit unbalanced, but if you prefer this simple approach you can enable it again in the config by disabling the "New Food System" setting.

In update 1.4 feeding an item to the horse was completely rewritten.

• every fruit, vegetable and foraging good was ranked on whether horses in real life could and should eat it and they all got a hand balanced amount of friendship to grant. This will also be reflected in the message popup by saying your horse loves/ likes/ dislikes that item.
• additionally, some non player edible items, like wheat, are now edible by the horse.
• on the downside, a lot of previously edible items that are dangerous to a horse's health can now no longer be fed to them. For those cases the mod will now tell you that this is not safe food for horses, so you can even learn a bit on the side.

On average you will get considerably more friendship for items and there are more good options to choose from. If you want to spoil the surprise you may open this spoiler card:


(With the release of update 1.4 most translations are a bit outdated)


FEATURE 4: Pet menu and pet feeding:

This simply adds the same menu and feeding mechanic I added to the horse to the pet (cat or dog). With the 1.4 update the acceptable cat and dog diet is now exclusively carnivorous to contrast the horse diet which is now exclusively herbivorous. In the base game this consists mostly of fish, but this setting is compatible with mods like Animal Husbandry that add meat items to the game (It's recommended to disable that mod's pet feeding feature in favor of this mod's one).

The pet menu has its own configurable hotkey (default: P).
Both pet feeding and the pet menu can be disabled in the config if you don't want them of course.




FEATURE 5: The horse leaves hoofsteps on snow and dust effects on dirt/ sand:

This feature may seem small, but it has an incredible effect on immersion and the feeling of impact and speed. Thank you for the suggestion and help, VonLoewe! I'll add a gif at a later point to showcase this.


Compatibility:

• Compatible with Better Chests, allowing you to tweak saddle bags separately from other chests.
• Compatible with Tractor Mod in every way I tested.
• Compatible with Better Ranching, but not with similar features of other mods (I asked the author of UI Info Suite and am waiting for a reply, but for now you can install Better Ranching and disable the equivalent feature in UI Info Suite).
• If you use Another Jump Mod and the 'Thin Horse' feature, use the following settings for the shadow in their mod config: "HorseShadowOffset": "-32, 0" (tested by MithranArkanere)
• Having multiple horses in one stable with Adopt 'n' Skin is not supported
• Having multiple pets is not supported (but it also doesn't break anything, the mod will simply ignore them)
• Medieval Buildings and Medieval Stables by Gweniaczek are supported with permission (all 4 options).
• Elle's Seasonal Buildings and Elle's Seasonal Vanilla Buildings by Elle/Junimods are supported with permission.
• Seasonal Japanese Buildings (unofficial update) by sonreirblah is supported with permission.
• Hudson Valley Buildings and Seasonal Vanilla Buildings (unofficial update) by magimatica and Clean stable are supported without using any of their assets (magimatica gave me permission regardless).
• If you want patches for any other stable texture mods, please read the sticky post.

Planned features:

• Horse race festival

Requirements:
SMAPI: I built version 1.4.1 of this mod based on version 3.13.2. It should be compatible with a few future versions. You can get the latest version of SMAPI here.


Installation:
Install SMAPI. Then extract the content of the downloaded zip file into the SMAPI mods folder and start the game via the SMAPI launcher or Steam if you have set the launch option for SMAPI in Steam. The config file will be generated inside the folder of the mod. Close the game to edit it and restart the game.

You can also optionally use Generic Mod Config Menu to change the config ingame (only on the title screen except keybindings!) without the need to close and restart (otherwise you need to restart) but it is not required to be installed.

If you are using CJB Cheats Menu please remember to rebind either the cheat menu key or the pet menu key as they are both P by default. Otherwise my mod will automatically unbind the pet menu so you can continue to use the cheat menu.


Updating: 
Simply delete the prior version, install the new one and check the updated config created after the first startup (Changes require restart to take effect if you have not made them with Generic Mod Config Menu).


Uninstallation:
Attention: Before uninstalling the mod disable the 'Saddle Bags' feature and then end the day to save. If you forgot items in your saddle bags when disabling the feature, they will be put into the lost and found chest. If you don't do this, the chests that the mod uses to save the saddle bags will remain in an inaccessible part of the upper left corner of your farm (but you can easily remove them with for example a no clip mod).