Thought I would share this H&H thread here. Warning for the queasy: graphic description and images. Seems as if this lady may need some help getting through the winter.
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The pictures look awful, but some parts of the story give me pause- there’s a little black stallion syndrome at play I feel with the mare jumping several fences to gallop to the rescue, and of course always the vague racist undertones…
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I might agree with you if it hadn’t been posted by a well known poster on the H&H forum.
Horses are capable of loyalty, arabians are for sure. I don’t find the story too hard to believe. I had a gelding that was very protective and fearless in his home space and across fence lines.
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I did let that OP know that I was posting the thread here. I hope I won’t regret it.
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Thank you for letting us know! She has certainly been through a lot and deserves our prayers and well wishes.
My mare is fairly protective of me, and as long as she was able to clear the fence in question, I think she might do the same. (She also has a bit of Arab in her.)
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What is a traveler? I’m not sure I understand how they could make a horse disappear like that??
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Yikes. That stallion should be pushing up daisies pronto. I don’t know if it’s like this everywhere, but here (NC) if you go to the hospital with bites from a domestic animal, that animal has to be quarantined and tested for rabies. I would think the extent of this attack would justify some sort of animal control intervention to have the stallion euthanized.
The part about the mare jumping several fences to come to the rescue seems unbelievable to my rational brain, but if she DID do that, she’s worth her weight in gold.
I’ve seen some horses attack people first hand. Two were geldings. One threw his owner (my friend) to the ground in his stall at a show. She probably still has the scar on the back of her shoulder where he grabbed her and threw her. He spun around when she was down and was lining up his hind feet to kick when I jumped in with a stall rake and interrupted him while my friend got up and out. The other was out in a pasture and his owner’s young son had gone out to visit him. When the boy didn’t come back for a while, they went to find him and he was laying in the pasture with blood on him and the gelding nibbling at him. The last was a young stallion that grabbed my Mom by the back of her shoulder. She had just fed him and was leaving his stall and he left his feed, walked over his hay, and grabbed her just as she was walking out of the door. The barn had one of those fat, hollow wiffle ball bats that lived outside this horse’s stall because he could get ornery (as 2yo stud colts that spend 24/7 in stalls tend to do…poor guy). I picked it up and went to work on him (he was wearing his winter blanket, so he was getting a lot of loud WHOPS and some choice words from me…not getting hurt). It scared him enough he was crawling up the back wall with an “Oh Sh!t!” expression. Only for a few choice seconds to let him know he’d screwed up royally. He was actually pretty sweet most of the time, which is why my Mom wasn’t worried about him. We fed him every night with no issues before that…but stallions are what they are. I actually started him under saddle and he was always a good boy for that. He wound up gelded a few years later and I bet made someone a nice little riding partner. He was pretty as a picture too…a Tobiano Paint built like a brick house.
Anyway, I hope something can be done about the stallion in this case. He sounds too dangerous for his own good. Either geld him and try to get his brain back, or put him down. He’s not a happy horse if he’s savagely attacking people for no reason. And for heaven’s sake, he doesn’t need to procreate!
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A Traveller is one of the group who prefer not to live in static homes, but to move around. There are Romany’s, the traditional Gypsies, who used to do seasonal work on farms, and sell stuff to make a living, not sure if they still exist.
Travellers are often seen as slightly less honest, live on the edge, different rules.
They can make anything disappear, moving it in the night, keep things moving on. The horse could be looking a lot different once moved 
gaining or losing white markings, changing colour etc.
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A “Traveller” is a collective name given to a range of people, otherwise “Gypsy”, “Tinker”, “Didicoy” and now various souls living off-grid, that travel/used to travel around the country in caravans, a few wagons still being pulled by the famous “gypsy cobs” but the rest have gone full-on internal combustion engine. They are still marginal peoples in modern society even as many families have become sedentary and send their kids to school and hold down normal job. Often they live on the road over the summer months and go back to base in the winter. As nomads and travellers, they are habitually treated with intense suspicion by local residents who blame all manner of low levels of criminality and anti-social behaviour on them - and many travellers do engage in criminality and anti-social activities: it is definitely a two way street. Living on the edge means they need some imaginative ways to scrape a living and the traditional agricultural roles, such a fruit picking and harvesting, have disappeared with mechanisation. The various groups have different origins and cultures but horses and horse trading is often a key element.
Traditionally, Travellers’ wealth was counted in the number of horses owned. Unfortunately, putting those many horses on to someone else’s pastures or a patch of scrub or industrial waste ground is habitual. “Fly grazing” is an issue because it can be exceptionally difficult to identify the owner, who may be several counties away or even back in Ireland for the winter. Probably the majority of the horses are adequately looked after (though not as pampered leisure animals) but welfare issues remain a problem if they are on waste ground with multiple hazards and poor graze or are kept tethered without adequate water and little shelter. If a complaint is made, or an attempt is made to remove horses from private land or horses are about to be seized on welfare grounds, by some magic means the animals can just vanish. Other times, the complaining owner of a nice green pasture may find other parts of their property vandalised… Odd, that.
So one might say that the Travellers are at one end of the social spectrum of Horse Culture in the British Isles and the Monarch at the other extreme. They meet full circle because conversations about horses flow easily at race meetings and shows.
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OMG. I couldn’t even imagine.
Jungles for her & her wonderful little mare.
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Good lord. She was savaged, and so was that mare. That was a prolonged and vicious attack. That horse needs to be dead. He grabbed her from over the fence?! From the thread it appears that the stallion was maybe fly grazing and not in a typical boarding situation. I got taken out by a stallion at one of my early jobs. He was very aggressive, and really should have been gelded and removed from public view. I let my guard down for one second and he latched onto my shoulder and took me down. I still have the scar.
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Wow… those pictures were something. I can’t imagine being dragged through barbed wire. The stallion needs put to sleep if he’s that aggressive.
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The picture of the Arab mare who saved her, one of the lady’s endurance horses.
The look in that mare’s eyes, I have no problems seeing that mare going out of her way to save her friend.
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Poor woman obviously had an accident of some kind but I am skeptical that it was at the jaws of a dangerous/ outraged stallion??
I would expect much worse damage with her being dragged by that arm? The mare coming to the rescue and jumping 2 fences just has me doubting even more.
I wish her a speedy recovery .
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As the former owner of an Arab mare, I’m on board with the mare rescuing the woman. My late horse wasn’t particularly affectionate, but so many times she sacrificed herself to protect me (everything from taking bee stings vs. bolting, to guarding my safety when she slipped on ice and went down one time, and jumping to put her body between me and the indoor ring one time when all the snow slid off the roof in a big block toward us). Never doubt the superpowers of an Arab mare. 
They are magic.
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Sounds bad enough damage in this update
Bumping up as just received the devastating news from T at the hospital. Had a surgeon come in from London hospital to assess next step forwards and there’s no good outcome.
They are taking the bar out today, casting and what will be, will be.
They can’t put metal work in due to the infection risk as it will almost certainly lead to full amputation Flushed face
she can just about wiggle two fingers, but this is likely to be the most use she will get back of her hand. Her wrist is bent at an angle and there will likely be further ops down the line to salvage what they can.
She’s going in for the op now, and is talking about riding one handed Woman facepalming: medium-light skin tone :woman_facepalming_tone2:she’s absolutely devastated but still trying to sort everything moving forward bless her.
If this was a new poster coming to a board I would share your scepticism, but this appears to be a established person, talking about a known other person, so probably credible.
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The damage is quite severe. She’s lost much function of that limb. What kind of damage do you want that would make the sorry more valid? I mean really.
It is a credible poster reporting about the incident and there are photos.
I do believe the mare part, because I never underestimate a good mare.
Only on COTH, I swear 
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I have apologized to the H&H poster for the response from a poster here who accused her of lying.
Thankfully she understands that people on the internet are often unkind.
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