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I am writing an email to my friends, about a trip. We went walking by a field
and the cows came over and were happy to be petted. I want to say "the cows
were happy and friendly" but the word I have in my notes is 親しい which seems to
be for a close friend, and the word "intimate" is used. The cows were not
_that_ friendly ;-)

Seriously, is there another word I can use? Like the equivalent of "good-
natured" perhaps?
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2014-05-28T12:24:46.907
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2014-05-29T14:53:55.923
2014-05-29T08:32:13.533
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word-usage
"the cows were happy and friendly": is "親しい" the right word?
I guess you could use the word 人{ひと}なつこい。 You can use it when referring to a
friendly dog (towards people) so I guess it could be applied to cows too.
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2014-05-28T12:30:29.490
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I realize there is already an accepted answer-- but I thought I would mention
my personal experience with this.

In March I went to a language school in Tokyo for the month and tried
something very similar to you while trying to describe my cat who is very
"friendly." I was told by my teacher that `親しい` only applies to humans, and
for animals one should use `フレンドリー` which is functionally a 形容動詞 (Na-Adj).

> ◯ 彼女は親しい友達です。
>
> × 私の猫は親しいです。  
>  ◯ 私の猫はフレンドリーです。

While this is a loan word, which I hate using, I believe it is in common use,
as it was told to me by a native Japanese person.
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2014-05-29T14:53:55.923
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