Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I'd like to add that some horse behaviour we have seen doesn't seem to fit the mold in terms of the accepted intelligence/reasoning abilities of horses.  We have one horse who takes branches off of trees and uses them to scratch himself where he can't reach (ie:  his back end area).  We have seen him do this many times and are always amazed at his use of a "tool" (one of these days we will catch it on camera).  Also, several years ago we had a particularly wet summer, and certain areas of our front corral were very wet and muddy.  Another of our other horses normally followed along closely to the fence line to avoid the muck.  However, one day a rail had come down and was blocking his route.  He simply reached over, picked up the rail with his teeth, moved it aside and proceeded along his normal path.  Seems like sound reasoning to me.  Now of course, these same horses are also guilty of doing some of the stupidest things imaginable!  (Mind you, who hasn't?)