Highly strung Welsh mares… tell me your tales!

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maya2008

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So today I had the pleasure of being ‘emotional support human’ for a certain Welsh mare when she got herself in a pickle. Now what was the pickle?

Jealousy.

Her boy rode his other pony first. So Welsh madam had a big old meltdown about the fact that he had not followed the routine and he didn’t value her and she wasn’t his friend anymore (she usually objects but decided that this was two days in a row and she’d completely lost her patience!). I left them to it for a bit but she managed to upset him after a while and then couldn’t cope with the fact that she had successfully upset him and was winding herself up more and more… Rational thought had long since left the building (field?).

So along I came, endured five more minutes of drama and then stood there with her favourite treat and waited… She did finally accept that she trusts me and I could catch her and act as go between to sort it all out. So in the end all was well. She got her boy back, he brushed her mane and made her look pretty, she relaxed. The aftermath was her being stuck like glue to her emotional support pony (my mare) for the whole ride though!

We’ve had her meltdowns over physical things before, but this is the first time she has truly lost all emotional control over her own feelings. She’s threatened a bit every time he’s ridden someone else first but always been mollified by a treat. Two days in a row was apparently her breaking point. Such a special cookie!
 
Got to love a welsh pony! 🤣

How very dare your son ride any other pony - she is clearly all he should ever want or need!

Is she in season by any chance? I've had a few that can't deal with 'life' for a few days every month through summer unless they were on regumate or a least some sort of hormone balancing supplement. I only have geldings now 🤣
 
Very Welsh! 😂
My Welsh gelding used to do exactly that if we ever did anything with Saus first! He also bolted directly towards his emotional support pony (Saus) if he spooked which just lead to two freaked out horses 🤦‍♀️. Gotta love them!
 
My Welsh is very much a drama queen. He’s very sensitive and gets himself in such a tizz sometimes. Got to love a welshie 🤣
 
The first time I rode our 3/4 Section D home bred filly out with a strange horse she marched up to him, then wheeled around and gave him both barrels, three times, she was absolutely livid that there was another horse she’d never met in the world! If she’d been a human she would have been Kat Slater, all the drama but hugely insecure!
 
My childhood pony was a Welsh part bred and was very prone to jealousy. She had a ‘boyfriend’ an Arab gelding who was basically her adoring fan, but if I was getting her from the field and he got a fuss from me she would be livid. He tried to follow us through the gate once and she aimed a kick at him that almost got me and it was the most contrite I had ever seen her look, I swear she knew what she had done and me and her conspired to keep it from my mum!
 
Mine does the weirdest thing. If she is having a stressy moment and you ask her to stand still, she bows down with her front end and crosses her front legs over. It feels very weird and earns her very odd looks from people.
 
Mine are half Welsh d/arab, mare and gelding, and normally she tells the gelding what to do and leads their life, which he is fine with, except he will bite her bum at gates as soon as the gate opens, never before while they’re waiting at the gate, which gives her a habit of storming through gates, as she MUST go first.
She has manners to die for and a stranger would think her gate storming bad manners without knowing the reason why she does it! She avoids humans and doesn’t storm through us, because she has inherent manners, thankfully.
His solution over winter now he’s more mature, when I told him to get back from her bum….was to stand behind a massive boulder we have to the side of the gate set back 5 metres, so she can be at the gate, unharrassed, safe in the knowledge there’s a 5 metre gap AND a boulder between his teeth and her bum!
He continued from that day on to stand behind the boulder at the gate, and she has stopped storming the gate.
I only told him to get back once, not meaning that far back, but he took it upon himself to get FAR back behind a massive boulder 😂
It’s funny to go get them in and see him position himself behind this massive rock, which happens to be perched on a bit higher ground next to the fenceline, like he’s in the ‘naughty corner’!

The boulder is sooo huge, we’ve had diggers here but only seriously huge machinery could move the boulder, hence why it’s there, likely been there for centuries!
 
Usually with mine, Diva is the one with the welsh attitude (she didn’t get her name for nothing🤣), but Lily is so jealous over me! If i’m in the field she won’t let Diva come over to me for a scratch, she has to get in there first and remind Diva i was her mum first. If i go in the stables and do something with Diva without acknowledging Lily, she has a strop and a half next door! Yesterday when the vet came i could hear her pawing her bed up, stomping about, and she kept hanging over the wall to see what i was doing - annoying Diva no end😂

She’s not a kissy cuddly kinda gal, but i’m HER mum and that means i shouldn’t be snuggling Diva either (who likes a fuss, and puts up with me smooching her)
 
Ah I do love a good Welshie! 🤣

When I was at a riding school, I did my first trot, canter and small jump on a lovely Welsh section C chestnut mare who decided that from the first time I rode her, I was her human and no other living thing was allowed near me. She'd follow me like a lost puppy anywhere and everywhere - she taught me so much in and out of the saddle.

One day I made the mistake of saying hello to her friend next door first rather than her first - oh the look I got! If looks could disintegrate, I'd have been a pile of ash on the floor in a nanosecond!!! 🤣🤣🤣

When I then went over to her, despite giving her extra cookies, spending time making sure her mane was plaited (she had the most gloriously long mane and I'd spend hours brushing it out, plaiting it up and trying new designs) and she was shining like a glass bottle - she still was having a minor meltdown and ignored any of my feeble attempts to reconcile our relationship 😆

In our lesson, she behaved impeccably as usual, but even my instructor asked if I'd committed the crime of going to another horse before her as she didn't seem her sparky self 😅

Needless to say - from that day forwards, I always made sure to say hi and fuss her first, then make sure she couldn't see me making a fuss of the other riding school horses.

I broke my heart the day she sold - she went to a lovely home with a few small children, each who could take over the reins after the prior child outgrew her - so she was going to a home for life, which did make it easier as she wouldn't be sold every few years (she detested change in any format, even if slowly introduced to her). Last I heard she was in her late 20's, still teaching kids to ride and still as opinionated as she was when I knew her ❤️
 
We have a 24 year old section A mare who is 11.1 on her tippy toes, cheeky on the ground but completely bombproof when ridden by tiny tots on or just off the lead rein. She loves to hack and does the whole route like she is marching in to battle. If she is made to go anywhere but the front she has a personality transplant and starts dragging the person leading her to anything she can eat whether that is grass or farmers crops as well as barging them out of her way.
 
My Welshie has just, at the age of 18, discovered the pleasures of a good scratch on the withers. She was always pretty aloof, now she won't leave us alone! If only she was as fond of a good groom from her field companion!
 
Thanks for your stories everyone - you have reminded me that the Welsh A gelding that came prior to this mare was also fairly dramatic 🤣!

Tonight boy and mare are both in a mild snit with each other. He feels she is over reacting and he should be allowed to ride his other pony first. She destroyed the fence to get more attention when he turned up and didn’t immediately fawn all over her. So I sent my daughter over with brushes and treats and the Welsh Dragon was mollified by the fact that at least one of the children was treating her like a princess 🙄.

Let’s see what tomorrow holds 🤦‍♀️🤣!
 
smiggy said:
Mine does the weirdest thing. If she is having a stressy moment and you ask her to stand still, she bows down with her front end and crosses her front legs over. It feels very weird and earns her very odd looks from people.
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My gelding does this! It looks like he is doing yoga
 
My gelding wasn’t really fussed about me talking to other horses but he did have other ways to express himself…

When I took him to TREC competitions he’d be corralled & obv the grass would get eaten quite quickly. Due to him being grass sensitive I wouldn’t tend to move the fence and instead would feed plenty of hay. Sometimes this would lead to the “I’m a poor starving pony and everything is terrible” performance. This performance only occurred if I was in his eyeline. Apparently as soon as he couldn’t see me to complain to he would quite happily settle and go back to munching hay!

When I first got him he also used to be a very irritating travel companion and would regularly prod & poke at the horse next to him like an annoying child & would constantly paw / weave if stood on the box (but be totally settled off it). He did grow out of this when I got him his own set of wheels thank god!

He also used to get very irritated if the winter field was shut off at the track I moved him to after he stopped coping with spring/ summer grass. They had a big barn, some stables with courtyard and some hardstanding to wander about on but he classed all of this as basically a massive stable and used to stand and rattle the gate / attempt to open it.

At a yard previous to that if they’d closed off an area him & his friends wanted to be in he’d simply break in if he could (or stand at the gate making pointed glares to any passing human)

He also used to regularly let himself out onto the grass outside the field gate at that yard as well (this the horse with awful separation anxiety who normally couldn’t bear to be apart from his chosen friends 🙄)

So yeah he used to make it very clear which areas he felt he should have access to & used to get very annoyed if you ignored his hints about where he felt shouldn’t be closed off.
 
Mare thing isn't it? Not a hint of Welsh in my big Appy but she does jealousy so well her eyes glow green. When the microcob was having her airway scoped there was this furious face staring at us through the grill between the stables - literally huffing & puffing. Even the vet was talking to her saying this was absolutely not favouritism. Poor microcob in the field after faced a Very Cross Appy with probably no clue why given she'd been sedated.

Although 99% of welshies I've known have had the overly dramatic gene well established!
 
I know she isn't Welsh, but when Hermosa was on box rest, and I was riding Fin, I think looks could have killed.........
 
smiggy said:
Mine does the weirdest thing. If she is having a stressy moment and you ask her to stand still, she bows down with her front end and crosses her front legs over. It feels very weird and earns her very odd looks from people.
Click to expand...

We had a B stallion do this in the line up every time he was shown - even with a rider onboard. Little bugger.
 
The young sec D has a few little strops about things, but generally takes life in her stride- albeit with a heavy dose of sass! She did, when she first arrived, decide she was going to be in with the old boy, no matter how many fences she had to break down. Originally I had planned to turn her out with mum's pony after a period over an electric fence, but she took one look at the old boy, immediately came into season and lost all interest in mum's lad. 😆 After breaking through the gateway to get in with old boy she got a pasting from him, was separated again but, undeterred, had another pop at breaking down the fence. In the end I left them in together and just shut my eyes until the chaos stopped.
The old boy (Welsh X) has many odd little foibles, for instance he won't stable, but will load, travel and stand quite happily on a trailer - but only if he's going hunting. If it's apparent we're not dressed for hunting, he will not countenance loading 😂 (I have wondered if I could trick him into it by getting us both ready as if for hunting before loading to go somewhere else, but I suspect I'd only get away with it once!)
 
I tried a Welsh mare for loan, once. Had a ride in company, all good. I hacked alone exclusively in those days, so arranged for another ride, by myself. I got about 20 minutes down the bridleway, had just limbo'd a fallen tree, when she suddenly said 'nope', span 180 and buggered off back up the bridleway. I had no time to pull her up before being confronted with the tree and did a comedy dismount, with her going under the tree and me hanging off it. I have no idea how, but I'd kept hold of her reins, so walked her back home, handed the reins to the owner and said, 'Not for me, thank you.' The real hoot is that she was called Angel... 😆
 
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