"They all look the same to me . . . "

PolarSkye

PolarSkye

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At new yard, Kal is in a herd of three - all three greys.

Bobs is 15.2hh, very fleabitten, growing out hogged mane, very round/compact - a proper little rubber ball of a showjumper - real pony-type features, lots of grey in his tail

J is approx 17/17.1hh - almost snow white (just a teensy bit of dappling on his hocks - pure white everywhere else - Warmblood so very WB-y head and big chunky boy

Kali is 16.2hh - sporthorse - fleabitten and dappled - still got dappled legs, bum and underside of neck - mostly white face, very dark muzzle, grey in his mane and forelock but snow white tail - rather more range-y in his build than either of the other two, a rather dainty/girl-y head

Not to mention that all three have/wear different colour rugs.

Still, I can't count the number of times people have said "which one is which - I really can't tell the difference - they all look so alike" . . . :confused:

The only thing they have in common is that they are all grey (and all geldings). I don't hear people saying this about the three bays in a field together . . .

. . . I have only been on yard for two months but can identify every horse up there - even the identikit chestnuts and the three inter-changeable bays. They all have their distinguishing features, surely?

Is it just me who finds this odd?

P
 
See - I'd be able to tell those apart.

For a while though my (very distinctive) cob was in what I called the ex-racer field. The other 4 were all bay, about the same size/shape/weight, and pretty much interchangeable. It probably doesn't help that I don't wear my glasses at the yard, but I never knew which was which. Luckily I was never asked to bring one or other in! :eek:
 
I once took an ex boyfriend to the yard to help bring in my 4 year old appaloosa called Spots. Go out to the field where there's mine and a bay, he says "which one is he?" Er, the one with the spots????

Honestly!
 
We have a field of grey geldings on our yard. It is easy to confuse them at a distance although in the stable or at close quarters it is easy as pie, they have different face shapes, builds, amounts of flecks, shade of mane etc.

Two were confused by the staff at the weekend, one was turned out in the school and they thought it was another.

They have different rugs but unless it is your horse you probably don't remember which has a navy rug and which has a green one, especially not with the changeable weather we have at the moment.

I have a plain bay with no white, there is another plain bay with no white in the field, both WB. If they are both unrugged in the field at a distance unless I can see them both then I can't always tell you which horse I am looking at. Closer to it is easy.

We also have two black with a white sock and star cob mares in the same field, one has a snip is chunkier but again at a bit of a distance it can be hard to tell them apart.
 
My new boy is a bay TB with no distinguishing features, and I confess to having a moment of panic when I went to get him in yesterday as I didn't know which field he was in and I was worried I'd end up with the wrong bay TB as they all look very similar! Oops....
 
LOL, when I was looking for my new horse, we were joking about all of the horses at our yard are a slightly different colour, and I did end up with a bright chestnut, which we didn't have.... so now we have 10, and none are the same colour! :)
 
Haha! It's the same at my yard XD there's a group of small, bay ponies and so many people have issue telling them apart! When I have more time, I'll have to get pictures of them all and show you :P
 
Had someone panic once that my pony was in the wrong field. He's a dark bay New Forest. The offending animal was a Friesan cow :confused::confused:
 
Crazydancer said:
LOL, when I was looking for my new horse, we were joking about all of the horses at our yard are a slightly different colour, and I did end up with a bright chestnut, which we didn't have.... so now we have 10, and none are the same colour! :)
Click to expand...

When I bought my first horse, a friend and I went to collect him, and got there before the owner. There was a man on the yard, who said "oh yes, the chesnut, he's in that stable over there". We went in, and I said "oh, he seems a bit bigger than I remember" but we started bandaging his legs to get him ready for travel.

Yes, you guessed it....the owner of the horse I was buying turned up & thought it was hilariously funny as Red was still out in the field :o :o :D
 
I used to work at a racing yard, one field had 6 bay geldings in. facial markings were sort of the same, same, same shade of bay, same height etc. Took me a while to find out who was who! once I got to know their temperaments it was easy!
 
My best friend came with me to see my filly. She isn't horsey, but I've dragged her to see my horse/to the yard a million and one times.
She still stands by her opinion that my filly (the one on the right) and my friend's filly of the same age (the one on the left) are "exactly the same"...

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At the first yard I was at (riding school so they used the kids to handle the sensible liveries) I would fairly often arrive in the afternoon to find the wrong chestnut horse standing in my stable (used to come in off the grass for a few hours) :D :D They were a similarish height and chestnuts but different markings etc!
 
I think the funniest instance of this happening for me had to be years ago when I was on a riding school, an owner who had loaned her piebald cob mare to the school went out to the field to get her in and came back with a piebald cob gelding, complaining that they'd hogged her mare without asking her!

Honestly, how could you not notice the extra bits? :confused: Mare was only in the field next door too! :eek:
 
My hubby often has to bring in my boy out of the field if I am working late, and on more than one occasion he has brought my friends horse in by mistake. Both chunky Piebalds and luckily both really placid!
 
I once had to attend an enormous recumbent horse - owner away on holiday, wife looking after the horse - the animal had been found on its side in the field first thing in the morning and despite hours of trying, no-one could get it up. Wife called me out to put the horse down - old mare they'd had for over 20yrs. Did some quick basic checks; couldn't find any obvious reason for the beast's recumbent position but discussed with the lady what we could do, what we might find and the likely poor prognosis given the animal was enormous, unable to get up and had been down for a significant period of time. I gave the horse some strong painkillers and with the help of two neighbours, the four of us tried to roll the horse onto its sternum. Not a chance. I noticed there were nearby scuff marks on the ground and guessed that the horse must have gone down sometime during the night, tried to get up and couldn't. There was another horse stood in the field of similar size and colour - teenage offspring of the unfortunate, apparently.
Ended up euthanasing the horse, whilst the other one watched quietly.

Found out somewhat later that the horse I euthanased wasn't the old mare at all, but the younger one :o Wife of owner couldn't tell the difference between the two but had assumed it was the older one that had gone down and couldn't get up. The owner was notified by telephone, but he must have had quite a shock when he got home to find his dead mare resurrected and then had to come to terms with the loss of the younger one instead. Had I been a good detective, I'd have picked up on the fact that the lady "found it quite hard to tell the two apart". Plus, lots of things could have told me the lady had got the wrong horse - the dentition, the quality of the coat and condition, bodyweight comparisons etc - but it just never occurred to me that the owner's wife didn't actually know which horse was which and I just took her word for it (as you do in a veterinary situation).

It's not just casual observers that can't tell some horses apart...
 
Ollie's Mum said:
Had someone panic once that my pony was in the wrong field. He's a dark bay New Forest. The offending animal was a Friesan cow :confused::confused:
Click to expand...

:D There is now tea all over my keyboard!!
When I was younger I used to find it really difficult to tell apart all the bays at the riding school I went to. They are so different it makes me laugh now but to the untrained eye I'm sure it's very easy to do.
 
I now have 3 related bays that take a second glance at a distance sometimes D

And I dropped 2 chestnut mares off at stud, both with one white sock and star and a snip. MAKE SURE you get the right one to the right stallion I said :D
 
Many years ago I owned two chestnut mares with a right hind sock, one was over 20 and used for gentle hacks for beginners, the other was an unbroken 3 year old with a very nice temperament. I was away from the farm and when I returned I noticed what looked like a saddle sweat mark on the 3 year old (unbroken, remember), couldn't be I thought. When I got in young son of owner told me he'd been for a ride on the 20 year old and "she was very hard to steer" - he'd been riding the 3 year old!!! And she was apparently fine, except for the steering issue!!
 
At my old work we headed out into the middle of nowhere to go and catch some horses. There was about 15 horses out together most of them were 3 and 4 yo's, some broken some not. There was also a 10 yo who had been thrown out with them due to doing a leg. Anyway the track down to the field was about 2 miles so the head lad decided that he would take the 10 yo and get on him and ride him back. He pointed at one horse and said to me I broke him last year he's quiet as an ass, you can ride him back. So off I jumped on it, no hat and just a headcollar and lead rope and this thing then decided to explode so I rammed it up the other horses backside and then by the time we got back to the yard it was fine. My boss was in the yard and he took one look at me and wen't mad. Turns out the horse I was on had never been broken. My head lad thought this was hillarious!! The horse which I "broke" that day went on to win a few races and wasn't too bad so I didn't traumatise it that much!!! There was also another time when we wen't to feed a field full of youngsters. My old handicapper was out with them on a break and my boss turned round and said "look at that horse he's some fine big horse for a 3yo" I turned round and said erm that's Dan .... he'd only had him in training for 10 years and still didn't recognise him!
 
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