Do horses 'know'?

after reading a few posts its reminded me!

my horse is mental if you try and hack out with other horse, bolts, jogs the whole time, generally gets really stressed out by the whole situation.

one summer a friend went to oz and left me to look after her horse, who was also a bit mental, 16'2 and a vertical rearer! so one day I got my friend to ride the rearer and we hacked out together. for the first time in her life my horse was well behaved, the rearer decided to rear up 4 times in a row, vertical, on a really steep hill. my friend ended up having to get off. And i had to lead the horse back to the yard, for about a mile! this horse was going mental, head butting me chucking herself about like a loon! when the whole time my mare walked like a little star, didn't get wound up by the actions of the other horse!

there wasn't any particular problem with the other mare, she was just pure mental! she was sold after that to another friend but she never got over the rearing so she was retired at about 10!
 
I dont believe in any of this stuff, I do think their sense of smell, hearing etc is much better than ours. The dog probably felt the vibrations from the quake before the humans or the camera felt it.

However there is one incident I have never explained. About 25 years ago I rode my oldie over the moors just before dusk one night, it was foggy and the visibity was bad. He is never spooky and very forward going so we cantered a lot of the way out, he was calm and enjoying himself.

We came to the first gate and I couldn't be bothered to go any further so we stopped for a short rest (ciggie break :D) I got off and sat on a stone while he ate some grass, completely chilled.

I decided to get back on and go home. He suddenly stuck his head in the air and went nuts. I struggled to hold onto him, he was running in circles.

I managed to get him home, as soon as he got to our field he calmed down, I actually got on him and went down into the estate in the dark to check he was OK.

Every time we rode that route afterwards he was fine going out but coming back he would keep looking round as if something was following him. This is not something he does anywhere else.

Have never been able to come up with a logical reason, he is well used to turn round and coming home as many of our routes were not circular.
 
My farrier once told me about the time his horse....which basically loads itself into the wagon, wouldnt load this one occasion, made a song and dance about going into the box for a good 10 minutes then finally went in. On his journey, he came across a a horrendous pile up.....which had happened just prior to him getting there! He got out to help and one of the ladys involved in the crash died in his arms :( Now he insists that the horse knew because if the horse had boxed straight away as per usual, they would have been on that part of the road at the time of the crash and possibly killed.

This is slightly different but my horse has been unusually quiet over the past few days, nothing alarming, just quiet in herself....i found out yesterday that the horse in the next field to us had had a heart attack in his stable few days before....does she know hes gone? I think she does :(
 
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Don't think I've had anything like this happen but am finding this thread v interesting as find psychology etc interesting.

The cats do seem to get v mad if there is bad weather on the way though.
 
I once had a dream about my horse escaping from her stall and we had to go to the bottom of this huge, slightly surreal cliff to find her. The next morning, the yard owner phoned me to say my horse had escaped from her stall in the middle of the night and spent the rest of the night, until she was found in the morning, cuddled up with the round bale that lived in the barn. Weird! Cue X-Files music.
 
When I was 12 my best friend and I hacked our ponies at a place we often frequented. It was remote but a great hack This one time the girls were going crazy and refused to pass this certain place on this hack. Now they were great sensible ponies and this was totally out of character. They just would not budge. We had to turnaround and go home. It never happened before and never happened again.
Anyways...the next day a dog walker found the dumped body of a woman who had been murdered. She had not been there at the time we were there but left there a few hours after.
It was very spooky and both my bf and I still talk about it. We hacked it a few weeks later and the girls were great.
After that I have always listened to my horse when they have done something out of character.
I only lost my ancient old pony a few years ago and there were many occasions that I could not explain.
I would also say I always take a scientific approach with things but when it comes to horses.......
 
Really enjoying reading this thread. My daughter's pony definitely knew when she was pregnant. He was totally different to her. He was a colt at the time and around her became the perfect gentleman, very caring and protective of her, very gentle. When she wasn't pregnant - both before and after the birth he's very different.
 
I have a theory that horses do not experience time in the same linear manner as humans do! This might explain some of the stuff that people have been talking about. I am not good at understanding higher physics, but I think that there is some theory that time is actually not a linear dimension? I may of course be talking utter rot :D
 
I think I know what you mean YorksG. I think animals are tuned in to a sixth sense more than we are. Definitely think we can all learn to tune in too and speak the same language... some are more attuned than others.
 
Earlier this year when our boy was PTS our mare whinnied in the most weird way as we lead him up the yard. Afterwards she refused to come and talk to us, it really was like she knew what had happened :(
 
I really believe they do "know" I have a lot of experiences with ours:-
Our sister a mum of four was killed in a car accident at the age of 36 and the following morning I couldn't sleep so went outside in to the field and two of our horses Charlie and Copper who were 26 and 32 at the time and were like an old married couple they loved each other but both pulled faces and bickered with each other all the time in the 20 years we had them but they both came over to me one either side and put their heads on my shoulders and seemed to be holding me, I was sobbing my heart out and when I looked at Charlie he had tears rolling down his face and Copper who was never very affectionate had a tear in her eye too I don't know how long I stood there it seemed ages but they just held me and know one can tell me they didn't know. For a full week after Jenny died the horses were so quiet, Dutchman who was Coppers son and was a real "doorbanger" never made a sound.
Another time when I was still living at home I was going to go over to my brothers house he lived next door to us but further up the lane so I decided to go across the field to save time, it was a winters night and it was raining and windy, I put the outside lights on and the stable lights but every time I went to climb over the fence Charlie started to go mad, he was neighing and hammering on the door which was totally out of character for him so I went in and got my dad to come out to see if he would calm down with someone else there and again went to climb over the fence, he started going mad again and we couldn't work out what was wrong with him but then there was a crashing sound and a huge branch came down off an oak tree that I would have walked under so I believe he was trying to warn me of the danger needless to say I didn't go across the field and Charlie immediately calmed down.
Yet another example was when Molly one of our mares refused to load on the morning of a show, again totally out of character and when we eventually got her to load and set off we were shocked to come across a fully loaded silage trailer which had somehow become detached from the tractor that was towing it and as the road was narrow had we been a few minutes earlier it could well have hit us head on, coincidence or did Molly "know".

Just one more example was when we lost Leonie in 2010 we bred her and had her for all her life, nearly 37 years. She started to go downhill over a couple of days and the vet had come out and decided to take bloods to see if he could find out what was going on, he went back to his surgery about 30 minutes away and was on his way back to see if he could help her, she went down when he was there but she had got up again and my sister and daughter who were with her as I was at work thought she was improving she was walking around the stable and then stopped and let out a really loud neigh as though she had seen another horse, they said she looked out of the window as she did it and all our others were in their stables so she wasn't neighing at them, she then lay down but not flat out just sitting up and she passed away, the vet arrived 10 minutes later and couldn't believe what had happened, he said the tests showed kidney failure he couldn't explain the neighing but said maybe it was distress but we wondered if she saw something we couldn't see, maybe her mum or one or all of our others came to take her over rainbow bridge. When I got home she was still in her stable and just looked as though she was dozing not distressed at all. I hope I am right.
I don't have any explanations these are just some of my experiences with our beautiful four legged friends.
 
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ElaineD, the story of Leonies' passing sent shivers down my spine, it would be wonderful to think her family came to meet her.

My mares, big warmblood gelding field buddy was being moved to another yard. They both watched from their field as his owner packed up their things and ferried them up the road all day in her trailer.

That dark winter evening his owner walked him past my girls stable on her way to load him for the last time, just as she had done a thousand times before. My mare then went absolutely balistic and she was as I had never seen her before!!
No-one could console her and I feared that she was going to damage herself with the power that she was using throwing herself around. The sweat poured off of her and she steamed in the cold night air and screamed. I had to walk away.

Later that same evening, after the boy had been settled into his new stable on his new yard, his owner returned to pick up the last remaining few bits. She told me that Elz was standing quietly, as if nothing had happened?

I was worried for the boy going as he had only just got over a very bad bout of Lami and I had this feeling in my gut that if he went would be lost. I said so. I'm certain Elz knew and felt it too.

Sadly he was lost just a few weeks later to colic.

RIP boy xx
 
Horses are intelligent my mare on Monday night helped me decide that her foal she had just given birth to needed to be Pts she accepted it before I did so proud of her.
 
Thanks, Leonie was a real character all her life, her mum Copper was a Welsh Cob x Exmoor and her dad was a TB and she looked like a minature thoroughbred as she was only 13-2 but with a much bigger horses attitude with a mind of her own, she didn't mind injections but I think she decided to go on her own before Mark came back to give her the final one. She left a massive hole in our lives and it seemed a lot quieter without her because if you heard her neigh you would have thought it was a massive horse not a 13-2 pony it really was that loud. Just a few days before we lost her I chased her off apples that had fallen in the field and she cantered off and bucked at me so we havn't got any memories of her going downhill over months it was just a couple of days. There really are too many things that have happened to all the people who have posted on here for it to be coincidence I am sure there is more to it than that.
 
No direct experiences but I find if I'm ever sad or in a troubled mood then my dog will purposely come and find me and stick her head on my lap looking up at me (she never does this otherwise) and my horse will put his head on my shoulder and let me give him cuddles when he can otherwise be a bit all over the place.

I have had an experience with what I suppose can only be called fate - driving home after work one night (3am) in the middle of winter in really cold conditions when I noticed my windscreen somehow getting dirtier and dirtier despite there being no rain etc. In a moment of stupidity (which I'm now thankful for!) I tried to clean my windscreen and of course all the water that came out froze. I got out of the car and quickly scraped it off and carried back on my journey, the whole process only took me about a minute. Carried on driving home and had to do an emergency stop when a stolen car raced out of a road from the right hand side of the road I was on straight across it down the road opposite without a thought or care for anyone who may have been in the way - no headlights no indicators no warning and at about 80 miles an hour, immediately followed by a police car. Had I not gotten out of my car to fix my windscreen I would have been a minute ahead of myself and been exactly where the car had come out from - it would have crashed straight into me and I can say with reasonable certainty that I wouldn't be here today. I'm a bright person and cannot for the life of me figure out why my windscreen got dirty in the first place and why I decided to spray it with water in minus celcius conditions - fortunately my stupidity saved my life.
 
I'm sure they know. Absolutely positive.

when my mum's old Dales was pts - he'd not been off our land in 5 years, he'd been a retired field ornament and companion, and often led the others into trouble, like letting them all out and going for a stroll into the village, or breaking a fence down and going for a wander in the woods behind the house. On the day he went, Dad took him in the trailer to the kennels whilst the others were all out on a hack (so as not to upset them). I still am sure I 'felt' him go - a sort of lurch, a brief pause in my heart or something, I don't know. I glanced at my watch (11.30), and Dad said later that it had been half 11 as he drove away from the kennels, unable to stay and be there in those final moments.

Later that evening Dad and I went to check on the other 3. No sign. no where. Panicked, called for them, rattled buckets of feed, shouted. Nothing.

after nearly an hour of calling and carrying on, searching the fields and woods in the dark, with torches, all 3 suddenly appeared, galloping through the woods, lathered, upset, blowing hard, and came up to me, whickering and calling out. They settled pretty quickly, and after a drink and some feed they went back to grazing calmly.

We still maintain they were looking for him, or holding their own little wake for him. They never did this before without him, and never did it again.


When I was a teenager I had a welsh cob (who was part of the gang above), who had been abused at some point and was terrified of men, especially vets. It was a year before he'd let dad catch him, but Mum, or my sister or I was fine. I bust my knee ligaments and spent nearly 6 months on crutches, and was told not to ride until I could walk unaided. I used to sit in his stable with him, and he'd curl up with me and nuzzle my knee, massaging it with his nose. One day I decided I'd had enough and just climbed on from the fence, with just a headcollar on him. He took a moment, then just walked a circle round the edge of the field, and came back to where I'd got on. then refused to move further, however much I'd badger him. I got off, but tried again the next day.

Each day he'd go a little further, and eventually I persuaded him to go faster, but he wouldn't trot, just the smoothest walk-canter-walk transitions you've ever seen. My mum was furious when she found out, but eventually accepted that Bobbie wouldn't do more than he felt I could cope with. It kept me sane, and I'm certain helped me to keep going, keep trying to improve the knee.

When, some 10 years later, Bobbie was out on loan and we went to visit him he called out and came over to see me. We had a cuddle and a snog, and he then went and nuzzled my knee again, I'm sure he was asking how it was. It's still not right, and at that time was really quite sore from me pushing it too hard. That was the last time I would see him. :(

About 6 months later my heart lurched again, and (unbeknownst to me until 2 days later) he'd been pts at about the same time as I felt it, after suddenly deteriorating. PM showed he'd had a strangulating tumour in his gut, and it was causing him colic. It would have starved him to the death in a matter of days as he was never a good doer.

and recently, when OH and I were having a bad patch. Ron, who is the least affectionate horse I know, came up to me in the field, and put his nose up to my face, nudged me gently then rested his head on my chest. :) made me smile, and once he realised I was smiling, he walked off! :rolleyes:
 
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A person I know in the US had two horses, her mare and the children's pony. The pony was put down due to old age and buried in the field. Twelve months later she found her mare in considerable distress and the attending vet diagnosed major heart problems (never showed any sign up until then) and would be lucky to survive the night. Her owner went to the stable the next morning and the mare walked out, went to the spot where the pony was buried and collapsed and died on top of it.

Another friend had an elderly pony and a very neurotic horse which had neighbouring stables. The pony was put down and the horse, having been removed for the procedure refused to go back into its own stable, but moved straight in to the pony's stable and has been there since.

My own mare, on the day her little companion was put down, went and stood on the spot which the pony always ate her feeds on. Her head went down and she looked so sad. I said, yes, I miss her too, and my mare walked off and back to the field. She never looked or called for the pony because I am sure she knew what had happened.
 
I was out hacking on Lucy when the sky suddenly turned black and it started pouring with rain. I took shelter under a tree and waited for the rain to pass. We had probably been there for about 5 mins when Lucy suddenly bolted. She galloped as fast as she could across the field in the pouring rain. I was trying to stop her and pull her round to get back under the tree but Lucy was having non of it and just kept running. we got to the other side of the field, suddenly she stopped, turned round and suddenly the tree got struck by lightning. :eek: There hadn't even been a rumble of thunder till that strike. Some how Lucy knew it was going to happen and she saved my life that day. :)
 
My boy of 9 years got PTS 5 weeks ago. He shared the field with my young Fell pony for the last 3 years. They were great buddies, little and large the Fell being 13.hh and my boy was 18.hh. When he got PTS in the morning i went to get my two oldies and the Fell in. The Fell pony was just stood in the middle of the field staring at the gate like he was waiting. When he came in he used to kick his door but he was very quiet and never kicked his door for over two weeks! On my horse last day i left him alone in a paddock for 2 hrs before he was PTS with the Fell. I took my boy out of the paddock to by his stable and my friend walked the Fell pony down to the big field so he couldnot see Cali being PTS. Cali always shouted after my Fell but he was silent and so was the Fell which was very strange. The morning after he was PTS i woke up and for about 2 seconds in my pillow i could smell Cali. This has never happened before or since it was very strange, i think he came to say good bye and to comfort me.
 
my boy would load no bother, didnt even have to be led on, the day we moved yards it took us two hours to get him into the trailer, he had an injury in the field at the new yard and was PTS 8 weeks later, i dont know if he knew but it does make you think
for weeks after i would wake up and be able to smell hot leather and sweaty horse, and we have no horsey things in the bedroom at all
 
This thread is fascinating. I really do think that we under estimate the animal kingdom.

A friend of mine had an elderly mare in her 30's. Her arthritis had gradually been getting worse and despite being on bute, she was obviously struggling. The owner decided to let her enjoy her summer out in the field with her buddies, and then put her to sleep before the horses came in for the winter.

The date had been booked in with the vet for months, and the owner promised herself that she would never cry or be upset around the horse in the months leading up to the date so the mare didn't sense anything.

On the morning of the date, the owner arrived at the yard to find the other 8 horses in her field completely surrounding her mare. They weren't just grazing around her, they were crowding her so much that the owner found it difficult to get to her mare. They must have sensed something as they had never been seen doing this before.
 
I think they do know :-(
On Monday the time had come for our old SI pony to be pts as the psychological need to scratch had been getting worse even though she had been on steroids (which had triggered lammy). This pony had previously been abused and was rescued by us 9 year ago so she had lots of issues with trust and handling, often refusing to be caught to the extent of running through or jumping fences if she felt trapped. She was always extremely alert to tension, upset or nerves and any of htem made her much worse. The only one who could always guarantee to put a headcollar and lead on was my 10 year old daughter.
However, we couldn't put the pressure on daughter to be the one to bring her in for the vet so I planned that I would get down to the field very early and get her in by driving her to the yard if she didnt follow the others (her normal method of being caught). Well on Monday morning I parked up and could see her standing dejected in the field. I walked down to the field gate and hadn't even opened it when she whickered and came straight over to me. I was hysterical but she just let me clip her up and walked straight back to the yard with me. While we waited for the vet she stayed cuddling up with her chin on my shoulder and just sighed and she'd not been like this before,always aloof.
The vet hadnt even finished putting the dose in and she just dropped her head and lied down, and whickered her last breath. They think she must have been starting with heart problems, and I think she knew and accepted that it was the right thing to do. At least I really hope so.
 
Quoting everyone that has posted on this thread..just been having a read thru..and from nowhere, there seems to have been a visit. A visit infact from an onion chopping ninja...my eyes are raining!:o Very moving reading all of these lovely posts, but I'm still convinced its the ninja...

Hugs to all of you & all your horses/animals..the ones with us now..and the ones with us but whom we miss x
 
SaharaS said:
Quoting everyone that has posted on this thread..just been having a read thru..and from nowhere, there seems to have been a visit. A visit infact from an onion chopping ninja...my eyes are raining!:o Very moving reading all of these lovely posts, but I'm still convinced its the ninja...

Hugs to all of you & all your horses/animals..the ones with us now..and the ones with us but whom we miss x
Click to expand...

Now you have set me off!!
 
My story is the other way round but maybe my boy was telling me. My old boy was a poor doer so in the summer my yard would rent a feild across the road and my boy would go down there with some of the other horses. I took him down one morning and he went off munching quite happily. As I walked away I found myself feeling extremely upset at leaving him there , I told my self not to be so silly and I would check on him in the evening. Evening came and I said to my then boyfriend I couldn't leave him there and ended up in tears at the thought . We brought him back to the yard that night. The next day the farmer moved the horses to a new field and the day after they all came back to the yard along the main road by themselves!!luckly none of them where hurt but I can't help but think if he had been there he might of been!
 
I definitely think they know when something is wrong. My old gelding had taken my friends foal under his wing - foal was only a few months old when she got him and immediately my gelding looked after him. We used to call him grandad. He wouldn't let anyone he didn't know near the foal. A few months later, the foal went for an operation to have bone chips removed from his hocks and sadly had to be PTS as a result of complications from the general anaesthetic. My gelding never seemed to get over this and over the next few months went downhill and ended up being PTS as he lost his mobility seriously. But up until the foal died he had been an active, reasonably healthy horse. But at least they're back together now.
 
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My friend and her mum had their 4 horses on what we call our top yard. There was 6 stables so they just rented the lot but still used the bottom yard facilities etc.

Anyway my friends mum lost her fight to cancer about 2 months ago. All horses were moved onto one of the fields on the bottom yard so we could all keep an eye on them while the family grieved and made funeral arrangements.

All horses were fine for a few weeks until the day of the funeral, my friends mums horses went mad!!! He was galloping round the field and jumped out twice trying to get back to the top yard. He literally would not settle all day and our YO was getting increasingly worried.

Next day he settled and has been fine ever since. I'm sure he knew that the family were saying their final goodbyes
 
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