@fortheloveofsidesaddle - Tumblr Blog

katestewartt

#THE TWIRL™

smallfireball

HONESTLY DOES HE NEED TO DO IT EVERY TIME?

No.

But he’s so perfect for doing it!

imsayak

People aren't homes, they never will be. People are rivers, always changing, forever flowing. They will disappear with everything you put inside them.

~ Nikita Gill

ohyeah

Reblog this to prove your blog was made before the February 2022 tumblr resurgence

dectech

i am terrified about what apollo may do with this post

tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors

banallequinesports

Human depravity. Putting a load of stallions together and watching them fight!. I can only assume that this is some sort of “entertainment” for the people watching. Horrible and very stressful, unnatural situation for the horses.

equine-dreams

Stallions can be put together. I know someone who keeps all 5 of his breeding studs in a field together. Very little fighting as mares are pastured at other side of property. This is crazy to have a competition but nothing more than horses sorting out who’s boss. I see geldings act like this too, maybe not as extreme, but the same behaviour for sure.

banallequinesports

Are you mad? How can you possibly defend this atrocity in the name of horses?!!!!!

the-golden-paw

I doubt any of you guys speaks Austrian dialect/German, so let me just clear this up for you: These stallions are about to be brought to an alm where they will spend the entire summer in an endless pasture lost in the mountains, living the best possible life really. To prevent any harm, the stallions are brought to this enclosure to meet eachother and fight out their ranks while being supervised by experienced people.

This is literally perfectly normal horse behavior, they’re just fighting over their ranks and eventually they will settle down completely, grazing up there in the mountains like a bunch of 28-year-old geldings.

Don’t just call something “animal cruelty” because you don’t understand what the flying f*ck is going on there, while neither knowing the language of the video nor being a horse behaviorist.

sanddancingwithanxiety

I’m crying

equikage

Anyone who thinks these stallions are hurting each other have never seen an actual horse fight. There’s a lot of squealing, posturing, and kicking out, but nobody is getting hurt, and the horses have plenty of room to move away.

And stallions living together in bands is a million times more ‘natural’ than stallions being isolated in stalls or individual pastures. Google ‘bachelor herds’ and learn something about real feral horses before jumping to conclusions about something which is virtually harmless.

app-uh-latch-un

imagine how much good you could do if you actually bothered to research what youre bitching about and find actual cruelty to take a stand against.

switching-reins

eruditionanimaladoration

@why-animals-do-the-thing

why-animals-do-the-thing

Yep. The above commentary is correct. These stallions are only squealing, roaring and posturing at one another. It escalates into physical contact sometimes but really it’s mostly bluffing and testing out each other’s strength, rather than a full scale fight. I suppose you could call it sparring.

Like most animals, horses (even stallions!) often use a set of behaviours to avoid conflict and prevent injury to both parties. This is what you can see here. A real fight is nothing like this.

Also you’ll notice that a lot of these horses are not overly stressed about the situation. Some even settle down and ignore the others to graze.

- Moose.

roboticmoose

I’m probably repeating what every one else is commenting above but I have the need to make some comments about the video also as understanding natural horse behaviour is the first step in making sure that we can ensure the best possible conditions for horses to live according to their natural needs.

It is extremely important for stallions to learn how to socialize with other horses. Young stallions are put together during the summers when they are 1 to 2 years old (at least this is the custom in Finland). During the summer they will form a hierarchy inside the herd, socialize with each other and develop their physique with play-fighting. The fights shown on the video are exactly those, the horses are not harming each other as any prey animals will avoid actual fighting as it endangers themselves to injuries. Instead they decide the hierarchy with a kind off showing off -fighting where animals very seldom actually hurt each other. Looking at the horses body language you can see that they are not actually aggressive and read each others very precisely to avoid actual fights. The less dominant horses evade from the more dominant ones. This is all normal herd behaviour. After the hierarchy is settled the horses normally end up living together very peacefully and these sort of fights happen again very rarely. This is not stallion-only kind of behaviour as any horses will settle their hierarchy on a new herd very quickly.

Stallions are often kept alone and in solitary because they are thought to be solitary animals. In fact they are like every other horses, herd animals that need the company of other horses. During the summers on the pastures the stallions will learn socializing amongst other horses. Only way to socialize stallions or any other horses (actually any other animals, including us!) is to have them learn their natural behaviour amongst their own species. All in all, this is probably the best way to make sure that the stallions will grow up to be healthy adults, both mentally and physically.

banallequinesports

roboticmoose tumblr has photographic evidence of “wild stallions” all penned in together and displaying this behavior “in the wild” - not.

equine-dreams

I’m pretty sure stallions fight just like this in the wild… It’s called competition.

banallequinesports

equine-dreams also has the photos to prove this.

thisishowyoufightawar

@banallequinesports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_q4NnXIh8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_cA9RT_AV4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZdgsNW2mBk

Most animals have a form of sparring that doesn’t actually hurt anyone, this is the stallion version. Can you stop whining now?

banallequinesports

thisishowyoufightawar you have just served to further prove my point.

sanddancingwithanxiety

holy shit do you ever admit you’re wrong?????

look at these group of stallions casually walking around and not killing each other [LINK]

oh and look at these young ones again who are not competing for mares but yanno, playing [LINK]

or just read the body language in the horses from the original video? if you have spent much time with horses at all i’m sure that won’t be a problem for you :)

thesorrowfulknight-blog

@banallequinesports If you wanna see an actual horse fight, look up the ones staged in China. They pit two stallions against each other, after riling them up with a tease mare, and make them go at it until one is dead. Sometimes if the stallion isn’t aroused by the mare, they’ll thrash him. If you want something actually harmful to the animals to fight against, go fight that.

Otherwise, stop spreading bullshit and go find a real hobby. Maybe knitting or something will do you some good. I hear embroidery is nice.

passthependleton-deactivated201

INCREDIBLY fascinating!!!! Wow. This is really awesome to watch- I tell my students all the time about the importance with body language and this video is an excellent example. Many of those horses are moving each other without any physical contact. Incredible to watch. I’m floored. Love to see this in person one day

banallequinesports

Incredibly fascinating just how flippant humans can be. Excellent example of body language? Students? Perhaps dog or cock fighting are other excellent examples of “body language”.

Whilst it is true that horses, stallions, do have a way of avoiding serious injury whilst expressing dominance - in a natural situation, it must be remembered that putting so many stallions together is not normal and entirely stressful.

Anyone that really loves and cares about horses will be very uncomfortable to watch this video. The rest just see as fun/entertainment, par for the course in the equestrian world.

passthependleton-deactivated201

Not quite sure how you are confused about the term “students”? Yes. I would use this video to demonstrate dominance in herd behavior to my students. Many of these horses are using cues that do not require physical contact to move the animals around them.

Now according to this fascinating article by a rather well known veterinary institution, stallion bachelor herds can comprise of 5-20 different animals of mature age. They exhibit signs of aggression, yes, but also instances of mutual grooming and quiet grazing side by side. Please refer to http://research.vet.upenn.edu/Portals/49/95BachelU.pdf

This requires a herd hierarchy. Someone has to be the boss. So there is, in fact, something very natural about shows of dominance. What you see here is just it happening all at once. These horses will exhibit fewer signs of stress and lower testosterone levels than stallions at the head of their harems (again If you don’t believe me please reference the article) and I think lower stress levels are what we horse lovers want to see, right?

It’s never “fun” to watch horses fight. I break them up all the time (from a distance) I wouldn’t consider any of these horses to be in any danger- so I wouldn’t break up any of these fights. They’re raising hell and makin a racket and being typical teenaged boys in my opinion. Please go and study wild equine behaviors. Horses are a rough and tumble species, have you ever seen a mare with her foal? Or a bunch of babies out at pasture? They get nasty one minute but the next they’re happy and content. This is a snapshot in the life of these horses. You don’t see what happens after- them being released into a giant pasture with plenty of acreage to roam. They’re just getting the kinks out before they go off unsupervised.

So yes. I think this is incredible. I am in awe. My breath would be taken away if I saw this in person- and I would be impressed with the owners of these stallions to have the wherewithal to do this under their watchful eyes instead of letting them loose and potentially seeing an accident occur.

banallequinesports

Interesting. You obviously are some sort of highly spoilt rich brat, much like the spectators in the video. You did not clarify the type of “students” that this is such a good example for.

Horses are a “rough and tumble species”?

You break up horse fights “from a distance?” (lol have you got the video for this?)

Your bachelor stallion reference was a good try, did someone round up loads of them, double them and penn them in all together to fight? No. This was a reference to stallions in the wild..

horsblr

I was waiting for elitism to play its card… @banallequinesports, I did tag you in multiple studies surrounding behavior of horse herds - have you seen them? I can reblog them back to the top of my blog if you haven’t. I’d also like to point out that most of the time you can break up a horse fight just by causing a distraction. I’ve seen two geldings go at it and just making the kissing sound at them (from across an arena) got them to stop. You’ll also notice at no point does any stallion “hug” the fence of the pastured area. If any stallions truly felt threatened to the point of extreme stress and fear, they’d be breaking out of that simple wooden fence in an instant. You tend to see this in feral horse roundups as the horses are put under too much stress in a too small area. Stress in and of itself is not a bad thing (go take a simple online psychology course), but it’s something that needs to be monitored and controlled. These stallions have no signs of extreme stress or true anxiety.

sanddancingwithanxiety

It’s funny because they asked for sources to prove that this happens in the wild.. and now they are saying ‘that’s in the wild, it doesn’t count!’

lu-dressage

I am not sure I want to join in on this, but we have two geldings and they do this to each other out of play, sometimes not, but this is how they act pretty much.

sanddancingwithanxiety

So let’s just go through this for you, piece by piece, @banallequinesports :

At first you claimed this was people putting these groups of stallions together was them watching them fight, which has been disproved. you know that this is people watching these horses so that they can intervene at any given moment. They are in a large area which gives the horse plenty of room to move away if they are uncomfortable. As an early person said, this is to prevent harm.

You said that this grouping of stallions together was ‘unnatural’ which has then been disproved - I linked you to videos of bachelor herds, and others have linked you to studies concerning bachelor herds. This disproves your assumption that stallions can’t interact without aggression (which is actually the assumption that underlies a lot of practises which i don’t agree with, like stallions kept in isolation, stalled 24/7, treated nastily as a ‘preventative measure’ etc - because they believe you can’t trust stallions. despite many stallions, such as in icelandic horses, pulling carts alongside mares and other stallions, and generally being beautifully mannered horses). I linked you to several videos of stallions interacting calmly with each other, and play fighting with no harm.

You claim these horses are ‘penned in’ - they are in a large enclosure with people there to diffuse the situation and remove the horses when and if necessary.

You then didn’t believe that stallions would fight in the wild and that this was some forced, aggravated behaviour due to the humans present, to which you were supplied videos. When given the video you claimed that ‘further proved [your] point’ - which was? (that stallions don’t fight in the wild was the last one i heard - and this video was literally showing you that they do) every problem you have had with this video has thus far been disproved.

You then compared this video to dog or cock fighting which are completely different - those are a) aggressive animals whose aggression has been encouraged (b) kept in a small enclosure © humans are there watching for entertainment, not to intervene, as the entire purpose of this is to make sure these interactions occur under supervision for safety, rather than away from human contact where no one is able to diffuse the situation or get the horse out of there.

You said that ‘it must be remembered that putting this many stallions together in the wild is not natural’ which the multiple bachelor herd videos i gave you, showed is untrue. (It also happens within and between mares, geldings, stallions etc [X] [X] [X] [X] [X])

While the stallions could have all been housed in adjoining paddocks first (though then you have issues of if they put their foot through the fence which can be super dangerous), since they were doing it this way, this is probably safer than introducing each one individually and just adding a new horse each 10 minutes - or else by the 8th horse you have 7 all bounding over to HIM only which can put him in a compromised situation where he can’t escape as well as he’s the centre of attention.

So I’m not entirely sure if your issue is still that you don’t believe horses can play fight the way several other species do, and humans do, or you just insist that this is cruel because you said so at first so now you have to change your story to find new reasons to back you up (i mean at first it was ‘this doesn’t happen in the wild’ and then it was ‘yeah but that’s in the wild, not captivity’ so..), or maybe you just refuse to believe that stallions can ever be friends because they’re ‘uncontrollable hormonal beasties’. who knows.

Basically, your experience with horses appears limited to a couple of shetland ponies of your friends in a paddock, with jack shit understanding of body language, sparring, or animal behaviour in general. Bye.

sanddancingwithanxiety

@banallequinesports I’m still waiting 😊

rowanskye-deactivated20170427

Frankly I love reading debates like this. They’re a great learning experience. And this post in particular really reinforces my opinions on stallion treatment. Just because they have balls doesn’t make them a different species! It’s amazing how differently people treat stallions compared to mares and geldings.

banallequinesports

In response to ‘classicaldreaming’ mainly rambling essay which as usual ends with an insulting remark to myself I would like to state (again) that the purpose of this gross and unnatural exercise of putting stallions together was for human “entertainment” only.

Anyone who truly loves horses would feel very uncomfortable watching this “unnecessary” spectacle.

sanddancingwithanxiety

Saying you don’t understand body language based off of this is fact though. You’ve had several animal behaviourists comment on this post, yet argue against them.

You claim my essay is rambling, but I see 8 paragraphs, each with a point of their own waiting for your response. Please respond to these 8 points, which higlights how your argument against this video has been inconsistent. I am still waiting for an intellectual argument, not a 60 word response.

fortheloveofsidesaddle

Oh this resurfaced again. Always a fascinating video to watch, and an even more fascinating comment thread.

Anyone interested in horse behaviour, definitely give this video a watch through: it is very educational.

fortheloveofsidesaddle

Does anyone know if this video still exists anywhere?