Studly Behavior

Sometimes I get amazed by natural animal behavior. Though a lot of undesirable traits can be removed from stallions simply by gelding them, (castrating), some traits never leave them.

My horse was gelded and I don’t know at what age. He is 15 now and he is pretty mellow, but he still hangs on to two studly traits. First he is very tidy and he does his business generally in one spot and one spot only. Mares will generally let go where ever they happen to be when the urge comes on, but my horse does a stud pile. I know it sounds like a porno term, but a stud pile is a pile of crap. The higher they can stack it the better. This tells other stallions that there is a horse in these parts that craps really big piles so it must be a big horse and they better leave.

For me stud piles are easier to pick up than going over every square inch that mares tend to crap over and walk through. My gelding will always go outside to go. He will never soil his stall.

The other behavior is the prance. Though, he has been snipped, if we walk by a mare that is in season he will arch his neck and start prancing proudly like a dressage horse. In dressage the movement is called a piaffe, and it is described as a movement in trot (alternate diagonals). It’s beautiful and somewhat fun to ride.

We were riding on the beach the other day when four up-wind horses approached us. He went into his stud mode and showed off until the horses passed to a down-wind position. He looked magnificent.

The thing that gets me is that no matter what training we give our horse there is always something under it all that we will never be able to extinguish. Sometimes we try enhancing what they do naturally. It's all good and it's all beautiful.