Tell me about your favorite horse

[aoconnor]

i was just reading the angry horse thread in a different section, and was reminded of my beloved horse, Paco. I told a story of his bravery and love toward me, and thought it would be nice to read about your own brave, lovely horses🙂 Tell is about them!

[gracielagata]

I can't say she was necessarily being brave, but it is a funny story. When we moved to WA from SC, we brought my mare Snoty (short for Sonata, like the music word) with us. She was an only horse at the time and we just left all of our inner gates open so she could come and go as she pleased. She usually slept in the yard, and greeted me at the door every morning when I went out to feed or check on her.

One day not too long after we first moved here, I was in the computer room working, and could hear stomping and galloping sounds outside and wondered what the heck was going on, so I went out to check on her. She was out there galloping circles around the house! As she came around the side of the house to me, she put on the brakes with an upset huff.

I asked her what was up and put on my boots to go out and see what was bothering her. She chuffs and huffs some more, and walks with me, sort of directing me with body language to where she wants me to go. I start hearing a weird noise in the bottom of the back part of the pasture, a sound I've never heard before. As I hear it, she chuffs again, and looks towards the sound, then back at me. So we keep walking to check it out. I might add, she made sure to put me between her and the noise. I'm 5-5, 130, she is 14.11hh and 900, and she is very obviously hiding behind the comparatively tiny little human for protection.

We keep going, with her hiding behind me as we walk, and I keep hearing the noise I can't identify. I get closer, and she chuffs and dances a bit in place, snaking her head at the noise to get my attention.

I finally get to where I can see through the trees--- it's a flock of turkeys! The 900 pound horse was afraid of some itty bitty little turkeys!
I explained to her that turkeys are fine and not a threat. And while I am sure she couldn't truly understand me, she did actually relax and never had an issue with turkeys again after that, the poor girl had just never seen one before in SC, I don't think!

Anyhoo, definitely not a feat of bravery on her part, but one of my favorite memories of her.
That, and when we were playing netless badminton in the yard and she came over and laid at my feet like a dog. I even bounced the birdie off of her a few times and she just looked at me and went to sleep. I am fairly certain I lost after that, considering the horse sized boulder I had to watch out for!

[here to stay]

Tessie of course. She is one of those rare combinations of cooperative and independent beings. I didn't always treasure that quality as I should have, having favored looks over brains in purchasing horses all my life.

But I was on a group ride with about 200 people. I had brought both Tess and my green youngster. A friend wanted to have her 15 year old, almost never been on a horse relative come with so, of course, Tess was picked.

On the 4 hour ride, there was one massive, steep slope, hundreds of yards down, of dry  grass that the horses needed to navigate. If you can imagine 200 riders of various experience spread out, trying to keep their horses from sliding out of control on the slick grass, as the trail boss lead us straight down, you would have appreciated that Tess, with essentially no one to guide her, immediately started a series of small switch back maneuvers to keep from skidding, while never pausing to snatch at the grass and keep going at the same pace in the right direction. I of course was busy keeping my greenie from deciding that alternately scooting off straight down hill and stopping was not the best way.

I will always have the picture in my head of a hundred excited horses scattering all around, mostly scooting off their butts, and one Tess calmly taking care of business as her rider was sightseeing without a care.

[aoconnor]

Great stories:-). I remember a good one about one of my geldings....

When Cider was a yearling I had him boarded at a friends while we looked for a home with horse property. I was walking Cider across the front yard area of the boarding ladies home, and along the front of her house were beautiful flower beds. I had Cider on my right, and I was between him and the house, walking along peacefully. About half way across the yard a vicious horse eating butterfly arose from a flower petal on my left side about ten feet away, at which point Cider leapt upon me, having to jump TOWARD the offending threat to get to me rather than away from the threat to get away from it😜 Cider landed squarely on my right ankle and leg, but thankfully did little damage. Goofball wanted his mommy to protect him and thought nothing of leaping into my arms, except he was already at about 800lbs as a yearling and catching him in my arms wasn’t happening:-)

[here to stay]

I've only had one horse who was truly frightened easily. I mean any horse can shy if startled but really afraid? Almost never.

The rest were looking for a good excuse to express the exuberance they felt.

The same gelding I mentioned as a lady's man was the one who taught me that. Every winter he would build up an impulse to behave like a fool. Usually only once a year and it never snuck up on me. He let me know he was shopping for the perfect excuse by little twitches or sudden small head raises.

Once we were doing dressagy things in a big arena. He gave a little start over someone walking through or a person standing there in a big fluffy coat. A whole bunch of things were tested and rejected as not quite sufficient for a good blow out.

I think he was getting frustrated with the lack of the right excuse because after awhile he finally settled on the sound of a car door slamming out in the parking lot 100 feet away to launch a string of running bucks the length of the arena.

Then it was over until next year. Gee. I really enjoyed that horse.

[countrymom22]

I just saw this post and tonight's snowy weather brought back this memory. While I was still living at home, we had a bad snowstorm and the roads were icy and treacherous. Our farm sat up on a large hill, with no way to get to the place without going up hill. My brother had been at work and couldn't leave early, so when he finally tried the hill on his way home, it was no good, even in his 4 wheel drive pickup, with weight in the back. This was pre cell phone days, so he slid back to the diner at the end of the road and called home. He was going to sleep in his truck in the parking lot, but I wasn't having that. So I went to the barn and saddled up my 2 quarter horse mares. One was a well trained show horse, but the other was a brood mare that had just had a foal weaned off her. Now my show horse, Oona, didn't care for trail work, but I wasn't sure if the other mare, Dee, would allow my brother to ride her. He had never been on a horse and Dee wasn't always the most agreeable.

So I headed out on Oona and ponied Dee to the end of the hill, about 4 miles. We had to avoid the roads as they were to slippery and dangerous, so through the fields we went. Oona just put her head down and went right into that storm, slipping and sliding all the way. When we made it to the bottom of the 4 mile long hill, I switched horses and put my brother on Oona, figuring she was the better broke horse. Thankfully, Dee decided that bucking me off wasn't in her best interest and both the girls just scrambled back home as best they could. It took us a few hours as the footing was so bad, and since it was after dark we were navigating by whatever light shown from the various farms we passed. We had to trust the mares sense of direction for quite a bit of the trip and neither of them let us down.

Oona was terrific with my terrified brother, who just hung on to the horn and let her do her job. Obviously, we all made it home safely, although cold and wet. After that night, Oona lost her dislike of the trail and actually ended up being a great trail horse and loved team penning as well! We couldn't have made it through that night without the two horses I would trust my life to. They are both long since gone to the pasture in the sky, but I think of them often, especially on cold, snowy nights like tonight.

[mogal]

I've owned 3 horses in my life. The last was a starving colt I bought to save. Gave $25 for him, wormed him, fed him, gentled him and sold him a few months later without really establishing a rapport with him. The second horse was a 3/4 QH 1/4 TW that had belonged to my younger brother but brother gave him to me when I moved out of state. The real horse of my heart was a 3 y/o Arab/TW stallion the first time I saw him being ridden by a little boy and really behaving himself despite a trailer load of mares brought on site. He was gelded the afternoon I got him which I guess was the better choice but with his brains and temperament, he could have sired some kind babies. I was 19 and for the next years, I took guys out to ride my brother's horse while I rode Windy. Not one of those guys was comfortable with Windy nor he with them. He was never aggressive but he did his best to avoid them. In April of '74, I took a new guy with me out to feed the horses. Windy wouldn't come to me but he made a beeline to that man to sniff him and make friends. I'd never seen Windy take to a strange man before. Actually, since Windy had been abused by men before I got him, he much preferred women. For Windy to react so positively to this new guy was reason enough for me to think he might be "The One." As it turned out, Windy was right. That guy and I have been married since Sept of that year. DH could do whatever Windy needed as long as he was with us. Windy was foaled in '65 and required euthanasia from metastatic liver cancer in '90. I cried for weeks and even now, sometimes I can't talk about him without crying.

The rest of the story was that when DH and I became engaged, someone asked him if he'd spoken to my father. DH laughed and told the questioner that I'd told him I wouldn't marry him if he did "ask for my hand" but that he'd had to pass muster with my horse. The family dog also liked him and she'd bitten one guy's trousers leg. The dog was spot on in both cases.

[Deleted]

My Last One

He'd go about 17 hands I think, he wasn’t round fat but he weren’t poor neither. When I’d go to the barn at night he’d let out a low muffled blow in warning. In the dim illumination of lantern-light, his head reminded me of a picture I’d seen of some artist’s rendition of such. At the time I don’t recall being that fond of him, and don’t think he was of me. But we got along, and there were a couple of times he could have run off and left me in a bind, but he didn’t.
He was a strange mixed breed, a grade horse that was half thoroughbred and half appaloosa. He had the confirmation of the thoroughbred half, and the coloration, and sometimes the disposition of the Appaloosa half. That was the part of him other than his speed that I really liked.
He was ornery too. He hated the cold snaffle bit in his mouth and I always had to jam my thumb in and pry down a little, while he used the moment to try and step on my foot, with a newfound interest in star gazing. His next thing was to expand the size of his body by inhaling a big bunch of air so that no matter how tight I pulled the girt, it was always loose by the time I went to mount up, so I would pull on the girt and knee him in the rib cage, pull a little more and knee him again until he finally let the air out. This was especially hard to do when out in the open where I didn’t have him jammed up against the wall of the barn. That’s when he loved to play ring around the rosy or “I can circle away faster than you can cinch up the girt”.
Then the fun started as he was a cold-backed son of a gun and I often told him so. Before I could catch my boot in the off side stirrup, he would blow sky high, and I’d better not reach down to try to get my boot in it because he had a move saved up and waiting to catch me off center. But he would always crow hop about 3 times, then straight-away buck that was easy to ride as a rocking chair, then it was over and after that, there would be no more bad behaviors. In fact he was as calm as a plow horse after that.
If he threw me, no matter where, he stopped and waited for me to gather myself up and get back on. If I got off and left him he would stay. Once while hunting I had to leave him for a long while. When I found him he was within 20 yards of where I had left him. He hated the smell of blood and a deer on his back scared him silly, but he stood for it. After a few years I had to shoot him after an accident broke his front leg up high. His name was Amos Moses.