 No Tune in a Bucket
Posts: 2935
   
Location: Texas | My son bought his daughter an older horse to run barrels and poles on. She was 18 when they got her and 4 years later is still going strong after winning several pole saddles. Mainly, now she is just the pole horse. She is a royal pain. You cannot saddle her tied up, you almost have to chase her down with the saddle. You have to tightening the cinch a little at a time. She will not stand still to be mounted. She will often sit back when tied. She hates just riding in the pasture. We would like to pony her to keep her in shape, but she hates most other horses. Put a set of poles in front of her, and she is a whiz. Too old to try to retrain at this point so my granddaughter just lives with it. Hoping that she makes a couple more years until she is out of high school. |
 Veteran
Posts: 187
| Our "old" gelding (13 years old). He is just a ranch horse, as you can't pick up on him. You can carry flags and shag bulls all day long, but PETRIFIED of being in the arena with bucking broncs. When I was pregnant I would sit on him while they were bucking stock at the ranch and horses could run in front of him and hit the arena panels and he wouldn't bat an eye, but he flips a lid if he is IN the arena with one. You can't tie him hard or he will pull back. You can't lead him in a "normal" position, he has to "follow" you. You can't tug to hard on the lead or he freaks out. He puts his head up high enough that sometimes I can't get a halter on him. He sticks his nose in the halter and then lifts it to wear it is hard for me to tie it. He can't be with mares when they are in season, as he is proud cut. You can't feed him in a pan on the ground or he paws it over. Soo....why do we keep him? Cause he is "old Faithful" you can put anybody on him and he will take care of them. Our nephew who is 12 years old can ranch on him (he doesn't have horses). Oh, and he puts his head down for Tyler to halter him ;) He will be our daughter's step up horse when she's ready, as she is only 3. She can lead him anywhere, and when you put her on him weather you are on him with her, he will barely walk. |
 My Heart Be Happy
Posts: 9159
Location: Arkansas | theerebel - 2015-02-23 12:21 PM
I have had a couple quirky ones over the years, but most was behavior stuff like the above mentioned horses. Hard to warm up, etc, but the gelding I have now takes the cake as far as just weird quirks. He's also a horse with a big personality and quite the thinker. I have owned him for several years, and about the 2nd season I had been running him I was getting really frustrated as we were pretty hit or miss. When he was good he was top of the 1D, when he was bad, well 3D was more our style. Vet checked him, chiro checked him, let me tell you, I went over that horse with a fine tooth comb. He was sound in every way, but just flat inconsistent. He ate and drank well on the road, wasn't stressed, I couldn't figure it out. One day I was busy getting him saddled and the day had warmed up some so I took my big coat off that I had been wearing and laid it on the trailer fender. I got him saddled and went back into the trailer to grab my hat and change shirts. When I came back out, to my horror he had pulled my coat off and was straddling it PEEING! Yep, I seriously had a 1200lb horse peeing gallons of yellow gold onto one very expensive coat.....I was a little mad, but more in shock than anything. I picked it up, and threw it in the trailer as I didn't have time to really do anything else since we needed to warm up before our run......he warmed up great, better than he ever had, and won the 1D that day. I got to thinking about the peeing thing, so decided to load him in the trailer at the next race and see what happened. He peed again, and again he won the 1D that day....it was the answer to all our inconsistency problems, he simply had to pee. That was 3 years ago, and now he's been the most consistent horse I own. But he must be loaded before every run to pee. And I'm talking go warm up, come back, load him to pee, then head to the holding pen. Takes some timing on my end, as he's not a pop-a-squat-quick-pee-er.
Hate it about your coat, but this was funny! |
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