Dumbest/Smartest Thing Your Horse Has Done?

We all love horses... But if you've spent a fair bit of time with any in real life, you'll come to realize that they're not always as majestic and smart as everybody thinks. There are those times of course, where they surprise you by doing something very clever!

So, what's the dumbest or silliest thing your horse has done? Or what's the smartest, most clever thing they've ever done? I'd love to hear your stories!

To start us off, I'll tell you guys about the time the mare I ride of "stuck" on an 18" fence...

I was hacking one day on my coach's mare, Indy, and at this point I had been having lessons on her for about 3 years, so I knew her pretty well. It was a day for playing around and I had set up some low jumps for us in case I felt like popping over anything. The highest was maaaybe 2'3. This was nothing serious at all, especially not to a horse who has cleared 1.20m. So anyway, we're doing some w/t/c and at some point my friend comes in to ride her horse. She gets on and we meet in the middle of the ring because we started chatting about this and that. We're standing there and Indy starts to walk off, which isn't strange for her to do because she doesn't like to stand still very much. I don't think anything of it, turning my head to finish my sentence, when I hear Indy's hooves hit wood. Turns out that instead of deciding to walk around one of the jumps, she had decided to go over? At a walk? So random.

That's not the best part though, the best is that when she had her front end over, she stopped walking. I squeezed her on so she'd step over with her hind end, but she wouldn't walk on because she thought she was stuck. With some clucking and more leg I managed to convince her to walk off and she ended up just knocking the plank half off with her legs without going anywhere. The plank had some gaps in it (so fancy, wow ~*) and she kept putting her hoof like almost through one of the holes so my friend ended up having to dismount and come over to move it out of the way so Indy wouldn't get her foot stuck. Then I asked her to walk on and she picked up her back legs SO high, like she was stepping over the plank. I mean, why didn't you just do that in the first place?!

My former mare jumped out of her stall ... on two different occassions...

Haha oh no! Did you have trouble catching her at all?

Nope. Never sure when she did it both times, as I showed up in the morning to no horse in the stall. First she was by her pasture, the second she was back in an old pasture that wasnt even fenced. Lol. Just looked at me like "oh hi mom"

My mare used to escape from the pasture all the time when she was young. Thankfully she got big enough that she can't do it anymore.

My first horse used to like to stand around in his stall with the majority of his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth. He must have bit down on it at some point before I got him because he had a scar about halfway across his tongue mid way up.

@Cinch: Haha omg, at least she was super chill about being caught! One of the geldings at my barn has jumped out of the pasture before, and we didn't know until someone went to bring him in. They found him literally just grazing along the fence line of the same pasture lol

@Ruki: It's so funny when horses do that! I wonder if there's a reason why. I've seen horses do it while being worked but I've never heard of a horse doing it like all the time! Must've been pretty funny haha, not to mention cute

Two stories where I made an incredibly stupid mistake and my horse was smart enough to save my bacon:

Two pieces of preface
I used to drive an old standardbred named Buddy I rebroke him to drive myself 100% but he eventually became a do anything go anywhere driving horse. This unfortunately gave me an overzealous amount of confidence.
Also during the two summers these stories took place I was boarding him at a farm where the caretaker was into driving and had created a driving trail several miles into the woods. He called it an "intermediate" course (think cross country levels!) which meant it had steep hills, 90+ degree turns, three stream crossings, rocks, deep sand, and to top it all off the entire thing only had about 6" of clearance on either side of my cart(in several places I only just fit in between trees that were on either side of the track). It was a serious challenge but was the most fun I've ever had in my life.

That being said- Two times I was a dumbie and two times Buddy save me:

Story one:
It was after a long shift at work and I just wanted to go driving. It was in the later afternoon pushing evening but I thought I'd just go out on a super short jaunt. Needless to say I did NOT go on a short drive. I went all the way to the end of the track. MISTAKE. By the time I was a 1/8th of the way back it was completely black. It turns out there was, like, no moon that night either. I often joked I could do that course blindfolded and boy did I prove it that day. We had to drive at least 2 miles totally blind. He was unbelievably calm, patient and didn't move a foot unless I told him to. There were two extremely steep drops in and out of water that we pulled off without a hitch. The only time he got antsy was when he could see the barn and was 100% done with me! lol

Story two is my favorite:
I was taking my mom driving with me and it was a super nice day out. What could go wrong?? Halfway out past the largest water crossing we heard a crashing sound in the woods and just thought it was strange but no bother. Boy were we wrong!! Turns out the last and largest water crossing was only about a foot deep (despite being a fairly deep stream bed) was because a beaver dam held it back. And it had broken. What was a fun little crossing became a 3ish foot deep rushing small river. xD Not only that but the way back had an incredibly tight turn immediately followed by the very steep long bank into the water. This meant that I only saw the problem when Buddy was already descending the bank. Thankfully he truly stopped on a dime and slid to a halt right on the edge of the water.
So.. there we were standing at like a 50 degree angle trying to decide what to do while mom is fully freaking out and the entire bank is beginning to slide because it was damaged in the flood. This was also the ONLY point the trail crossed this stream meaning we HAD to cross it to get back.
I made the probably dumb decision to just try and cross it (I could have thrown the e-brake and unhitched on the fly but that might have been a mistake too lol). Buddy of course was game even though the water was almost immediately up to his belly. Everything was going fine until about halfway through Buddy stopped dead, put his ears back and started hunching back onto his hind end.
I was sure that was the end. It was time for my first carting accident and it was going to be a super bad one... but instead he just jumped forward from a standstill (while harnessed..). It became immediately clear what had happened when the front wheels of the cart ran into something when we were pulled forward. It ended up being a small log pulled in by the wash. Buddy being the superstar he was just jumped it, regained his footing, pulled both sets of wheels over it, and pulled us up the bank on the other side. All while belly deep in rushing water. He only ended up with a tiny scratch on his hind leg but it could have been much worse!!


This ended up being crazy long but I just loved that crazy horse. x3

Omg Buddy, bless him. I read that last part of the second story as "a small dog pulled in by the wash" at first, and I was like, "WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DOG?! TELL ME YOU WENT BACK FOR HIM SOMEHOW AND SAVED HIM" lolol.

He sounds like an amazing horse :) you gotta love it when they know their job and have enough trust in you to not panic haha.

RE: horses and tongues. Some like to fiddle with them (roller bits are great for those), but usually tongue chewing and lolling out the side of the mouth are signs of tension and stress in the jaw (typically due to strong hands causing improper contact), which is why you lose points in dressage if your horse flops its tongue out. One of the Andalusian stallions I rode did this every time, but his was due to an old jaw wound before he was imported from Spain.

Let's see... My stories of dumb or amazing...

There was the time a riding student grabbed Reno (big star, three white feet) out of the field instead of the lesson horse (stripe, all dark feet) and literally NOBODY noticed until he was about to start jumping 2'-3'+ fences. My horse was GREEN, hadn't been ridden in over a year, and had never seen a jump before in his life. He was almost on top of the first fence when they finally noticed he was the wrong horse and stopped the lesson... He would have done it, too...

Then there was sometime last month when he was turned in for dinner, but he decided he didn't want grain and bolted out before the stall door was closed. He ran up the neighbor's hill and bounced around like an idiot before galloping toward the street... And stopped dead at the side of the road, danced a bit, sniffed it, turned, and galloped back up the hill (cause asphalt means loud cars). Them he decided it was no fun being alone so he went back to the little barn XD

Not my horse, but a horse at the yard I go to attempted to jump a gate but got stuck. She wanted to get in with the other horses (she was sick so separated) and failed. Luckily she was absolutely fine and was incredibly calm for the entire time it took to get her out.
photo

My horse was pretty smart when a kid didn't shut her stable door properly and it fell open during the night. When I arrived in the morning, she was stood quite happily inside of her stable staring out with the door wide open. Looking at the state of the yard she hadn't attempted to get out and there was no way she could have opened the door herself. Proud owner moment ahah.

@vos: haha omg how does nobody not notice something like that. I guess the fact that they didn't also notice immediately after they got on says something about your horse too!

@autumn.: Yikes! That looks like it could have been really bad if she struggled. Its funny how they know when you're trying to get them out, and they're just kinda like, "heh, funny story..." This gelding got cast in his stall once and he stayed super calm the whole time we helped him get away from the wall so he could stand. He was 6 at the time so we were all kind of worried he'd thrash and panic. But we didn't even have any idea he was even stuck until someone happened to look in his stall because he was so quiet!

Also, that reminded me of a couple other times haha:

This barn we were at before we moved, this horse jumped out of his paddock but failed and basically crashed through the top rail of the fence. Then he proceeded to do a mad gallop up the muck pile across from the paddock, and then jump down the other side - which was a pretty big drop - into the paddock behind the pile, where the gate was open to the adjoining field. This was all at like 8-9 at night so the barn owner had to catch him in the dark because he was running around with the mares who were in the field lol. She had gone to look out the window after hearing him crash through the fence and happened to see the shape of a horse going up the muck heap lmao. He's still completely sound, he just had scratches and cuts all over his legs from hitting the fence. I think he must have stumbled when he jumped off the muck heap too because he had some scrapes on his knees D:

Another time while we were still there, the person who mucked the stalls and paddocks left the gate open to the paddock of the two mares I ride. I went to get one of them like hours later (they mucked in the morning) and the gate was visibly open but they were both still in there, thankfully. It happened another time and they both escaped and took a self-guided galloping tour of the property haha. They zoomed past the outdoor ring where people were riding and everyone was like O_O

Sorry this got kinda long...

my former horse ( i got rid of him) would used to pull the twine on the hay bails and drag the hay bails in his stall. He would somehow undo the twine and then take flakes and spread them around his stall at night. We dont know how he got them because 1. they are in the loft and 2. they are a ways away from his stall. he managed to get it though. His stomach would be so big afterwards. We had to section it off due to him doing it twice.

I think this falls under BOTH Smartest AND Dumbest...

My old draft horse, Diesel, was not the biggest fan of blankets but when a massive winter storm rolls through, you're wearing a blanket dangit!

So the next morning I come out to a soaking wet draft and a blanket half submerged in mud... He had maneged to get the blanket off by breaking all but the belling strap off... HOW!?

HOW!?!?

Idk know how he managed to get it off with the the bally strap STILL BUCKLED but... he did. And he looking mighty proud of himself...

Well..

On my first organized trail ride I've ever been on, my horse, Lucy, was okay until we found a half inch of water. Story goes- we were trying to find the trail as we were confused. But to look for where we were going, we had to cross a half inch deep creek of drainage from the neighboring farm. Out of our group of about 4 horses, one walked across all hunky-dory so I thought "Yeah, Lucy will be fine."

SHE WASN'T. She LAUNCHED herself over the creek. Like literally LAUNCHED. She jumped so high I thought it was a rear at first but nope. Luckily she hit the other side and I stayed on... But I ended up in front of my western saddle. In front. My legs were cranked back stuck in my stirrups and it took 15 minutes to get out because no one would help me.

Then, we found out the way we were going wasn't the right way. So, guess what? We had to go back over the creek. Needless to say, I was prepared this time, and Lucy wasn't as dumb to know not to seriously launch herself again. I stayed in my correct place the second time...