I had an extremely hot Arabian horse many years ago. He was very, very sweet, but also very, very spooky (and he enjoyed purposely stepping on human feet!). I never let anyone into his stall except his trainer and those who knew him well. I switched to a barn closer to me, left explicit instructions that no one was to enter his stall. One day I came out to find a complete stranger in the stall with him, crooning into his ear, feeding him apples and carrots. I gently removed her from the stall (she kept asking what right I had to do so), took her outside, and unloaded on her. Told her if I ever caught her near my horse again, I’d have her arrested. She was lucky she wasn’t hurt. She looked at me with ENORMOUS eyes and said, “But he was calling to me! I could feel him talking to me in my spirit!” Yep...animal rights activist. She was really lucky she wasn’t hurt. My horse was a sweetheart (he later was gentle enough to be a school horse for kids!), but at that time in his life, he was too hot for many people to handle. I still marvel.
“left explicit instructions that no one was to enter his stall”
Oh, here’s another horse story from my days working and living at the Arabian training/breeding farm.
I sometimes groomed the horses in the stall which was just my being lazy. There were 12 stallions and about 20 mares, so rather than walking each to the cross tie area and back I’d groom in the stall. The horses like me as their carer, so I wasn’t worried.
Well, one day I was grooming Tiger. A lovely bay with a sweet disposition. There were electric wires running across the walls between the stallions in their area for obvious reason...so they wouldn’t tear the walls down and kill one another! So. I’m in there grooming Tiger and the stallion in the stall next to us was raising holy heck. Like a moron, and with Tiger’s halter in my hand, I smack the wall as if that would shut up the stallion on the other side.
Yeah, you guessed it. Shocked the crap out of myself AND out of Tiger who took to running in tight circles in a panic within that closed stall. Fortunately for me I was able to dive into the corner and didn’t get trample. when he calmed down he stood there and stared at me with the whites of his eyes showing all around. Mine were probably doing the same.
I guess you can tell that was the LAST time I ever groomed a horse in the stall :)