It’s a rainy day and I’m watching
my horses drink from a mud puddle in their turnout area. They actually walked
away from the fresh, clean water I gave them in order to drink from a mud
puddle. What’s going on here? Times like this are wonderful learning opportunities
if you believe, as I do, that horses are perfect just as God made them, and
that everything a horse does has meaning. So what is the meaning of their preference
for dirty water over clean water? My first thought would be that they feel the
need for more minerals. After all, horses sometimes eat dirt and chew on rocks
and that is usually seen as their way of getting minerals, the nutrients that
come directly from the earth’s crust. But my horses are fed according to the
latest scientific research on how horses should be fed: lots of forage plus a
really fine vitamin and mineral supplement. I honestly don’t believe they have a mineral deficiency. Maybe this is just a hard-wired thing,
something horses – even well-cared-for domestic horses – feel compelled to do.
That compulsion would serve them well if they were turned out for months at a
time to truly live off the land. Both of our horses have lived that way in the
past and I hope they’ll have the opportunity someday to do it again.
Horses are different from us – I would
have to be very thirsty to drink out of a dirty puddle – but they are also
different from one another. Our Icelandic mare prefers to stand out in the rain
for hours on end; our Quarter Horse mare prefers to have a roof over her head.
The challenge we face as horsemen is recognizing both the innate
characteristics of the species (its ethology) and the unique life experiences
of the individual (its psychology). Both are contributing factors in shaping horse
behavior.
