Quirky Horses!

[Potato2001]

His quirk was he wouldn’t let men ride him. My trainer tried once and he was balky, pretended to be falling apart and was so far behind the bit he was practically going backwards. It was something to see. That horse could carry a grudge!

My newest guy is very pro-women too I’ve never had a male rider on him since I’ve owned him but his jockey at the track who was female and very familiar with him said he was a perfect gentleman for his girl exercise rider & herself but would give guy riders a hard time so he was mainly ridden by girls :lol:

[Capall]

I’ve posted this before, but I still think it’s funny.

My mare routinely ate goldfish out of water troughs. :lol: It looked like she was bobbing for apples, then I’d see her chew and there would be one less goldfish in the trough!

[Malda]

My current gelding likes to motorboat women. He’s very sneaky about it, so I’ve learned to push his nose away.

[J-Lu]

When I take my horse out of his pasture and tie him for grooming, he turns his butt to me. Then he splays his hind legs out and wheels his muzzle around to reach the top of his butt to say “scratch here”. We start out with a deep scratching of his butt from the top of the croup to the dock of his tail…while he extends his neck out and twitches his upper lip in bliss. He’ll continue to show me where he wants to be scratched by scratching the area for a few seconds himself. In the mean time, he looks crippled/neurological because his legs are totally splayed out and he’ll sometimes raise his inside leg like a dog if he wants me to scratch the medial side of the leg.

He likes to lick my hands and hair. He likes to press his upper gum into me. he needs to put his nose on everything interesting or scary.

When he’s relaxed, he can doze off. He’s done this when I’m sitting on him and when he was tacked up and I was chatting with friends. In the latter circumstance, he fell asleep and almost fell over. He seems to have an “on/off” switch.

[Zonderpaard]

J-Lu, I rode a horse like that for a while. He would do yoga poses when I curried him. Legs curled up underneath, lifted like a dog, pointed out behind him, etc. I regret not having someone take some pictures of it.

My old OTTB was quirky about having the reins put over his head. I always held the reins apart in front of him and he would drop his head and poke it forward and I would put the reins over his head (like many horses learn to ‘help’ you put the blanket over their heads). A gal who was helping me for a while had a big blow up with him when she to swing the reins over his head like a jump rope. She was short and he was tall so I get why she tried it that way . . . . . oops. I really hadn’t noticed this about him until that moment. oops on me.

But he wasn’t head shy in the least. He loved having his head handled, ears pulled, eyes rubbed. He probably had been clunked with the reins somewhere along the way. But generally he had zero tolerance for clumsy, inept people. :lol:

[kremeroyale]

My mare won’t take treats if she is mad at you (after the vet, etc)

Standing in the crossties she will always swing her butt to the left… makes me nuts when she is getting her feet done, farrier goes to get something from his truck, and then I have to push her off the wall

Grunts to express her displeasure when I won’t let her canter yet