Yes, in addition to what others have said here, depending on the horse’s personality (horseonality?) some go completely bonkers when kept on “stable rest,” such as you’d need to do with a sling. And by bonkers I mean throwing themselves at walls, biting themselves, and gnawing just about anything to try to escape. They’re likely to hurt themselves worse before being able to heal, and even if they do heal (I have a friend who did this against the vet’s advice), they may have become so neurotic that you can never ride them again.
It’s Far Side, but if Centaurs were IRL they’d be able to understand and obey instructing instructions and not have to be put down. With today’s technology, they might even be able to return to a mostly normal life, although modern domestic horses are remarkable fragile and we ask a lot of them given the structure we’ve bred them to for their size.
Ponies, OTOH, are tough little bastards and will fuck you up.
Ok, so get this: we had a 17 hand Percheron gelding - for those who don’t know horses, this a horse that literally weighs over a ton - and we borrowed an older pony mare from a neighbor to keep him company. I don’t know how big she was, but her head barely came up the the bottom of his belly. And she utterly dominated him. We had a barn with a single - Percheron size - run-in stall, and if it rained she’d get in there and keep him out, and we’d have to go bring him into one of the other stalls.
She was actually pretty sweet to people; not bitey like some can be. But she took no shit from our boy.
Yes, in addition to what others have said here, depending on the horse’s personality (horseonality?) some go completely bonkers when kept on “stable rest,” such as you’d need to do with a sling. And by bonkers I mean throwing themselves at walls, biting themselves, and gnawing just about anything to try to escape. They’re likely to hurt themselves worse before being able to heal, and even if they do heal (I have a friend who did this against the vet’s advice), they may have become so neurotic that you can never ride them again.
This.
It’s Far Side, but if Centaurs were IRL they’d be able to understand and obey instructing instructions and not have to be put down. With today’s technology, they might even be able to return to a mostly normal life, although modern domestic horses are remarkable fragile and we ask a lot of them given the structure we’ve bred them to for their size.
Ponies, OTOH, are tough little bastards and will fuck you up.
I used to have a barn with 6 horses and two ponies, yep, the ponies were the playground bullies!
Ok, so get this: we had a 17 hand Percheron gelding - for those who don’t know horses, this a horse that literally weighs over a ton - and we borrowed an older pony mare from a neighbor to keep him company. I don’t know how big she was, but her head barely came up the the bottom of his belly. And she utterly dominated him. We had a barn with a single - Percheron size - run-in stall, and if it rained she’d get in there and keep him out, and we’d have to go bring him into one of the other stalls.
She was actually pretty sweet to people; not bitey like some can be. But she took no shit from our boy.
Ponies are bad-ass.