My husband had/has a friend that owned a nice, well bred stallion that was just a peach. His little girl (about 4) would be riding him around bareback with a halter when it came time for him to cover a mare. The owner put the stud chain on and he was all business doing his business. Afterwards, he put the halter back on and the little girl hopped on and continued riding him around. Crazy stallion that one for sure.
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Perhaps the handlers causing disasters are mainly self taught or taught badly. It seems that stallion handling is a learned skill which is acquired from working long term with an experienced, competent stallion handler in a variety of situations. Those opportunities are probably not widely available.
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Sister-in-law was a pony jumper kid till high school and we were talking horses at dinner one night. I was talking about my experience working at a big performance barn and I mentioned that there was a stallion barn there. I was about to start talking about how I learned so much about managing stallions and how to keep them happy and sane while I was there - because they were all happy and sane horses that got turnout and socialization.
She gasped and interrupted with the statement that all stallions were crazy. I asked her why she thought that, and how many stallions she had ever handled or known in her lifetime.
Crickets.
shrug
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I have handled multiple stallions, both for riding and breeding, that were perfect gentleman, and some that deserve the bad reputation. In one case, the same breeding farm had a perfect gentleman and a juvenile deliquent. I believe the problem there was that the owner thought the deliquent was too pretty and too well bred to cut.
Also, I think the “all stallions are crazy and barely managable” BS is self-reinforcing. If you believe that, you treat stallions differently and overlook a lot of bad behavior. If you expect a stallion to have good ground manners, be polite and mannerly, respect human personal space, and keep their brain in their heads except in the breeding shed when their brain can travel south briefly, they act just like a mannerly gelding or mare.
I’m trying to remember all the great jumper stallions who often did the hunters as warm ups - Good Twist, Gem Twist, Abdullah, Starman - I’m sure there are lots of others.
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People who are scared of stallions have no business being around them. I see more issues with people who think it will be like “The Black Stallion” and they can be friends with their stallion with just a glance.
A stallion that acts like anything other than a gelding shouldn’t be a stallion.
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So much of this is true and sadly so. I grew up on a farm - dairy and horses (breeding). We learned early on what the dangers were and how to not only behave around all animals but also how to manage them. It was matter of fact, on the job training called growing up and being part of the family with expected age appropriate duties/chores. Consistency, fairness and always thinking ahead so that you stay safe and give everyone the best chance for success (in other words don’t put an animal in a bad situation) were the keys to survival - your own and the animal’s. First-calf heifers no matter how good their genetics and milk production, if they kicked at the milker while being milked (ie, continued to do so after their first or second milking) were culled and sold to slaughter, end of story. Stallions that were ill-tempered were gelded and if not improved with their disposition in a reasonable time-frame were sold. RESPONSIBLE breeders cull their live stock. RESPONSIBLE stallion owners make sure they are well trained, well handled and do their best not to let their stallion be put in a situation that can get out of control. This, however, doesn’t negate third party responsibility or at least their obligation to exercise common sense when in the same location as a stallion or breeding animal and that includes mares, mares with foals etc. Unfortunately it’s that part of the human genome that seems extinct these days, not just the reduced opportunities to learn stallion handling skills.
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THIS^^^^
You don’t need to grow up on a working farm to learn to handle stallions…but you definitely need to go thru the apprenticeship from good stallion handlers. I had the opportunity to learn from some of the best. That apprenticeship establishes what is expected of the human.
As far as third-party responsibility…YUP.
I was at a George Williams clinic. It was held in a large indoor with auditor seating along the short end and the entry to the indoor was at the corner of the short side, to the right of where auditors were seated. I was on my horse, standing about 15 feet from the auditor section, in a corner of the indoor waiting for the rider before me to finish. This rider was a “name” (judge that everyone would know) riding a mare in raging heat. That mare took the rider to my horse…and kept getting closer and closer as we kept backing up into the corner. Fortunately the lesson ended. My horse never put a foot wrong.
As my mentors made clear to me, you need to be able to control YOUR horse because other people may not have control over theirs.
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i have owned and shown a stallion for the last 5+ years. He is saintly but I never forget that he is intact. Last winter at a show down here in Fla, he was tied in the wash rack. Normally stands quite still but the water was chilly and he took ONE step back. And poof, the halter broke. :eek: My absolute worst mightmare! In the end I was very lucky. He took advantage of his freedom to go on a tour, up and down barn aisles around a couple of fields, mostly trotting, stopping for a bite of grass or two, and never even looked at the other horses:confused: Finally came back towards four of us who were hoping to aim him into a round pen; he stopped, reared and stood like a statue while we rigged up his halter then strolled back to his stall like nothing had happened. I lost 5 yrs off my life,lol. And never again a breakaway halter…
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I had a paint pony stallion that was a complete saint. A trainer that I know was putting on a swim clinic and I said to my friend “I really want to take Ace to this” She wanted to take her mare. I called the person putting on the clinic and made sure that it was okay to bring him and was told as long as he was well behaved then there were no issues but that he was not going to broadcast to the other people riding that he was a stallion. Well my friend and I get there and he is his normal self. Standing quietly tied to the trailer while my friend’s TB mare was a total nut job (she had come in season that morning and was seriously flirting with my guy having ridden beside him the whole way. My guy swam and we had a blast! even leading a couple of the other horses into the water. There were a couple women that had chickened out on the clinic but were there watching while my guy stood napping with his girlfriend leaning on him just hanging out while I was on him. They started pointing and whispering. At this time my friend leans over and says " I think the just noticed that he is a stallion." Sure enough they approached like they were approaching a fire breathing dragon and asked if he was a stallion. I said yes then they were like “that is a mare ans she is in season and he doesn’t care! He must have never been bred.” I proceeded to show them pictures on my phone of his first foal crop that had been born that spring.
If you don’t get them out and train them then they never learn how to be good citizens. I don’t want to breed to something that isn’t a good citizen so I have no issues with having stallions out as long as their handlers are actually handling them properly.
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I have a friend with two young, green TBs. One was a stallion (he was later gelded because she had no plans to ever breed him) and a gelding. No one ever believed her when she explained that the chestnut was the stallion and the bay was the gelding. The stallion, despite being four, was the quietest, chillest, best behaved, least spooky horse I have ever met. He just puttered along doing whatever she asked whenever she asked not giving any other horses, mares or geldings another glance.
Meanwhile, the gelding was a rescue and could be a little wild and studdy- she really worked with him and he’s a solid citizen now but at the start everyone always assume he was her stallion since he was the wild one!
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Arab people would laugh at the idea that stallions don’t belong at a horse show. They are everywhere at shows. Arabs are also the only breed, I believe, that allows junior exhibitors to show stallions. Yah, there might be a crazy one here or there, but the vast majority are good citizens.
I had the privilege of visiting Marbach in Germany a few times. At the time we visited, all of the warmblood stallions were stabled in the same barn, next to each other, in stalls with partitions that let them see and touch each other. The Arab stallions are in another barn, stabled next to each other. Never saw a bad actor in the bunch.
And, of course, the Lippizan stallions in Vienna are stabled and worked together. Was pretty darn peaceful when we saw them there.
On the other hand, there have been some legendary bad bad bad TB and Standardbred stallions, but they are handled by experts and are valued for something other than their temperament, eh?
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I agree that handling, and management play a role in successful ‘gentlemen’ stallions. As a teen I worked at a small Arabian farm that had 2 awful stallions. One was downright MEAN and a biter. No wonder since he was kept in total isolation and worked irregularly. Their other stallion (while being ridden by his AA owner in a bosal) mounted a GELDING in a warm-up at an Arab breed show. That clueless woman had no business owning stallions, much less trying to breed or show them. Neither of her stallions had successful foal crops.
The other bad stallion owner situation is when a machismo man gets a horse and decides that as a manly man, he must ride a stallion. I see this with dog owners too for some reason - as if removing the gonads of their male animals also impacts their own personal gonads? Makes zero sense to me. Anyway, these guys don’t care if their horse has poor ground manners or is difficult to handle, they like having something to fight with - it makes them feel more manly. These inexperienced idiots are usually responsible for some weird backyard breeding choices and their poorly trained horses are the ones that give stallions a bad name.
I’ve also seen stallions who had no idea the wedding tackle they had dangling between their legs. One was an Andalusian who was just never gelded, but never bred and was a super great jr/ammy horse. Just an all-around sweetheart and successful dressage horse.
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For some reason this is making me sing the old Confederate Railroad song in my head…
Yeah, and I like my women just a little on the trashy side.
When they wear their clothes too tight and their hair is dyed.
Too much lipstick and, ah, too much rouge
Gets me excited, leaves me feeling confused
And I like my women just a little on the trashy side.
Your stallion sounds like a character – in a good way. 
And I agree, it’s the people you have to watch out for. They can make some bad decisions.
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I always said that he preferred coloured women. What can I say… the first love of his life was an appaloosa LOL.
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I had to laugh. You are so right. We had some fool of a man come out to ride the school horses at the local barn and asked for a stallion and announced he would ONLY ride a stallion. He was politely persuaded to leave. And not come back. face palm face palm…
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My Fjord stallion can be ridden by anyone; man, woman or child. He has been showing since he was 4 and is going strong at age 19. There is no fighting with him; he has a job and he knows what it is. I give a great deal of credit to letting him live as a horse his entire life. He has always lived in a field with mares and foals. He does a good bit of babysitting as the weanlings stay with him at weaning time. He could care less about mares at the horse show. Half the time people don’t even notice he is a stallion, much less a regular breeding stallion with 50 foals on the ground.
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Our last stallion preferred to be turned out with the geldings.
We hand bred early, then turned him out with them later in case some may not have caught earlier.
The mares were mean to him and, once they were all settled, he would stand by the fence, wanting back with his geldings.
He then spent the rest of the year with them, including while hand breeding.
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One of our Thoroughbred stallions had been going to Pony Club lessons for months with our 14 year old daughter…not a peep or an issue… EVER…until a PC mother noticed his “equipment”…fuzzy balls…and had a fit!! “you never said he was a stallion”!! No… and no one ever noticed or asked!! After siring some really nice “sport” foals, we gelded him and sold him as an “A” show hunter!! “Some” stallions are like that…and those should be breeding…not the raving maniac ones that are dangerous!!
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BO hired an “instructor” who fudged her background. She moved her gelding to the farm. BO put him out with the geldings. My horse has always been the alpha. They got organized and ran him out of the field though electric fence in less than an hour. He wasn’t an actual gelding, he was an actual cryptorchid. She knew he needed surgery and refused it because it cost the same as dealing with complications in the future. She insisted he had to be turned out with other horses. They left.
BO bred Gypsies for a few years. She had a terrific stallion. She moved him from his own paddock and turned out with his harem. He was quiet and easy to work with and never showed an inclination to escape.
Trainer John Lyons said the only difference in training stallions is that it takes about 10 times the number of repetitions.
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We do arabians, and there are junior to ride stallion classes and nobody even thinks about it. My dear friend used to take 2 mares and a stallion to all day tie to your trailer shows. She’d tie the mares on one side, the stud on the other, and there they stayed for 12 hours of showing.
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