Spin off of horse running away from barn - mine came to barn looking for help

[arabiansrock]

So a week ago, my barn owner added a couple of pipe panels to my boys paddock to make it roomier for him. I went to get lunch, she went in house for a few min. Apparently while we were both out of sight, my boy decided he now had room to roll and laid down and somehow got his legs trapped in a pipe panel. Panel broke, gate broke open. Buddy exited paddock and took himself to the barn. when he didn’t find help, he put himself in an empty stall to wait. Barn owner came out 45 min later to get something from barn and buddy poked his head out of the stall and whinnied at her as if it say “hey I’m over here, just to let you know”, then went back in the stall. She locked him in and went to figure out how the heck he got out of his paddock.

She deduced what happened based on broken panel, broken gate, and huge scapes all down the inside of Buddy’s right front and hind. What was so funny though was it seems very clear that he was thinking “I hurt, need to find my mom, I’ll go check the barn”. And when he didn’t find a human for help, he checking himself into the er to wait.

I got back from lunch to find my horse getting cold hosed and fed bute, and barn owner getting ready to dial me. What a fantastic barn owner!!!

Oh, and needless to say, Buddy now lives in the stall that he picked for himself instead of the paddock. And everyone says he seems so happy in there!

[Bluey]

Too bad he was scraped up, but other than watching where he rolls, he was smart to go find himself a nice place to stay until someone did show up.

[BAC]

Buddy is very smart! Glad he wasn’t seriously injured.

[WildLittleWren]

Buddy is smart! What a good boy!

[arabiansrock]

I am really loving having a horse who really tries to communicate what he wants to me. If he doesn’t want his sheet on he just walks away from me. If he is cold he stands stock still for me to put it on. When his teeth hurt, he tried his best to put his head so high I could not bridle him.

Everyone at the barn is so amused by him putting himself in a stall. Basically they all said he is telling you he wants to live in the barn not out in a paddock. And he really does seem even more mellow in the stall. Plus he is conning everyone into loving on him when they come in the barn.

[Jenerationx]

What a good boy! I think sometimes they just know when they need a human.

[NancyM]

My horses live out in huge fields, together in a herd. Especially in winter. Rocky was coming four years old, and we had not been here on this farm for very long. A lot of the land was still in pretty “rough” state at that point, there were some hazards and it took me a while to get to clear and clean up every part of the 160 acres into burn piles, and get them burned. I’m still at it actually, 12 years later.

Rocky is a smart guy. He arrived at the back gate, up at the barn, one morning in early spring. He had left the herd, who were out grazing on the big hayfield, and there he was, waiting for me, alone. I was wondering why. He had a puncture wound on his cannon bone. Nasty, swollen. I went and got a halter, and brought him in for nursing care. Did he bring himself in to me, concerned about this issue? I don’t know, but he had never done it before, when he was not injured. But he did that day. He healed up fine, it took a while for the bone bruise to fully decrease in size, but it healed up is gone entirely. He and I still have a good connection, he is always looking for me, always comes to me when I go to ride him. He’s a smart horse, I think he came looking for me that day, with his injured leg, looking for help.

[Jenerationx]

@NancyM

He’s a smart horse, I think he came looking for me that day, with his injured leg, looking for help.

I definitely think animals do that.

[JBCool]

Oh, yeah, they know.

I had one that did something very similar to NancyM’s Rocky. At the time, I lived on the farm where I boarded and would go catch my horse in the morning to groom before work and before staff got there and he was usually in the neighborhood of the gate. One morning, he wasn’t in sight, in his not huge paddock. Nowhere. I jiggled the gate latch and he whinnied (he NEVER did that) & stuck his head WAY up so I could just barely see him over the slight rise of the ground, but he didn’t move. Yup, 12 stitches in his fetlock and a month of stall rest later…

When my next horse colicked, he came straight to me when I got to the barn, buried his head in my chest and said plain as day, “Mom, it hurts! Make it go away” just like a little kid. Sigh, he was on the operating table before lunch.

[dacasodivine]

My Arabian mare did that one time. I was in the barn cleaning stalls and my 3 horses were running around the paddock being silly. We’re in SE Texas so it was one of the 3 days a year we get cold and they were feeling sassy. A few minutes later Diva came walking into the barn aisle right outside where I was and kept touching her side with her nose. This was completely unusual for her so I checked where she kept touching and found she had a small cut on her side.

Some horses are too smart for their own good. And then I have one of my other horses who I found one day walking around the pasture with his hoof/leg through a feed bucket. I have pictures of that somewhere. He was very nonchalant about the whole thing. Somehow he had nothing more than a minor scratch or two.

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

My old Arabian mare did this once - she was turned out in a largish paddock with a small barn attached. Usually she was outside grazing when I fed in the morning, but that day when I walked out to feed I heard her whinnying for me from the stall. She’d punctured her knee at some point, somehow, in the night, made it to the stall, and waited for me to show up. (Sure was smarter than my half-Arab gelding who punctured his artery and just walked up to me like “Mom, see what I did? Cool, huh?” That required an emergency farm call on a Saturday night and some heavy-duty luck.)

Of course, that became her MO, and when she colicked last year, I knew she was in trouble because she was in the stall, whinnying for me.

[Weezer]

The image of walking around with a hoof through a feed bucket is hilarious!

[sascha]

The communicators are wonderful.

My horse even has a 9yo boy trained. He came to me as soon as I arrived at the barn. "She isn’t happy tonight " Uhoh, my horse is always happy unless she’s in pain. Went to her stall and sure enough, miserable AF. Corneal ulcer. Back to happy self after the first day of treatments.

Same horse trained me to put ALL tack over her head in a bid to get more candy. She extrapolated from getting a mint for shoving her head through the neck opening of her blanket. I’ve trained a few this way because blanketing is so much easier when the horse does the lifting. But, she is the first that eyed up her own saddle pad and made “blanket face” one day. Since then, everything goes over her head - saddle pad, girth, boots, quarter sheet, sometimes saddle if I’m feeling up to it.

This past summer she had a hind foot abscess. As I took her out of her stall the 2nd day to soak it, she stopped, looked at me, I swear squinted, and then very purposely turned her neck and stared at the offending foot. “Are you stupid? I can’t move because that thing back there is busted, not working right, messed up, agonizing!”

[Jarpur]

@arabiansrock, I hope that Buddy is now doing well.

My experience along this line was back during my boarding days at a barn where the owners had day jobs, and I was frequently the only one arriving there in mid-morning after they’d left for work .

One time, I walked into the barn to find all eyes on me, as each horse snapped its head in my direction, and they all began whinnying loudly. The intensity of their gazes practically buzzed, and I wondered what in the world was going on, and knew that something must be wrong.

I walked slowly down the aisle, checking for a problem, when I got to the stall of a yearling cutting-bred filly with a somewhat difficult personality. This was a barn where most of the boarders showed their horses, so lights were on a timer and kept on until very late at night, and their horses were blanketed starting when temps were in the low 70s, with hoods added below 70 degrees. (I did not partake in the blanketing, as we have pretty mild winters, and I didn’t require a slick show coat on my horses.)

Come to find this filly, wrapped up in a heavy quilted blanket/matching hood, with the still attached hood twisted, and somehow pulled forward over her face, covering her eyes and the end of her nose! I extricated her, with her full cooperation (that right there was a bit of a pleasant surprise, considering her basic character), and she apparently never forgot, behaving nicely towards me afterwards, better than to other boarders (including her owner).

I don’t know how long she’d been like that - it could have been a few hours – but clearly the other (adult) horses were telling me that there was a problem, and that I needed to fix it asap.

[arabiansrock]

I really love reading all these stories of our smart communicative horses! They really are amazing creatures. Buddy is doing much better, just a little stiff and tender to be touched on the inside of his rt hind. He is very happy in his new living quarters in the barn though. Every day when I get there he sticks his head out his stall and whinnies at me as soon as I get out of the car. It almost makes me wonder if he spends the day looking for me to show up.

He has also learned how to play up to everyone who walks anywhere near him. Definitely a player.

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