In a traditional Tibetan house, livestock animals often live on the ground floor. As such, compost piles outside of house doors consist primarily of dung from a variety of animals. Due to the blend of dung, the piles tend to be dark black in color, and the number of animals in one house often results in a pile quite large. This riddle highlights these characteristics of color and shape, analogizing a compost pile to a nomad's black yak hair tent. The dung at the top, produced most recently, would retain some of the body heat of the animal that produced it. As such, in the frigid winter, dogs might lie in the fresh dung to stay warm. As dogs often curl up when lying down, the dog himself is compared to a bent horn atop the tent.