Horse people of Lemmy- how easily can someone steal a random horse? (several questions)

Mothra@mander.xyz to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 122 points –

I'm not experienced with horses. I know many are trained to work for just about anyone. They were used in wars and police still use horses this day and age for crowd control, so I guess they can stomach a bit of violence and chaos. But most domestic animals behave differently with people they're familiar with vs random strangers, so I presume horses would follow suit?

My question is inspired by countless movie/videogame scenarios in which there are a bunch of random horses tied, and a character just picks any, hops on and rides away.

Or, there's a fight, horse owner gets killed and the thief rides away on the horse.

Regarding horse behaviour only, are these realistic scenarios?

How likely is that a horse would resist being mounted by a random?

Wouldn't they be scared or angry if their previous rider just got killed right there?

Is it possible for an experienced person to tell at a glance how obedient a horse is? (How?)

These are my sudden horse questions. TIA

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Disclaimer, I had horses in my youth, however I am not an adult horse person.

The answer to a lot of your questions is that a reasonably well trained (and well tempered) horse should let most anyone ride it. Horses are pretty smart and can definitely get some anxiety if someone completely new just shows up and tries to ride them, but again, if they are well trained they know that they have a job to do and they do it.

I can't speak specifically about if a horse watched its owner die how it would react, so I'll lean into your western scenario. If someone walked up to me and shot me with a gun in front of my horse, and my horse was not familiar with gun shots, then the horse would probably get spooked and run away. Horses are flight animals and once they're spooked every instinct they have tells them to run.

As for telling at a glance how "obedient" a horse is, I can only say that I personally am not so skilled with horses that I could tell that. I can get a read on a horse's current mood based on how it reacts to me, but that involves interacting with the horse a bit and I can't say I'm perfect at it. Every horse has a different personality, similar to people.

Hope that at least gives you some answers!

Thanks! Yes, that helps. So basically it depends on the horse but it's not too far fetched. I'm more surprised at how trainable these animals are now!