17/07/2022
This amazing photographer observes and catches the most extraordinary and amazing insights into ‘true’ horses, wild horses…truly NATURAL horses.
Makes you realise how unbelievably UNNATURAL our horses have had to become…because of US, us humans…
"Discipline"
This week I witnessed something with the wild horses that I've never seen before. The young bay stallion, Tate, was recently kicked out of his natal band. At four years old, it was time. Like many young stallions do, Tate joined up with the older pinto stallion, Re*****on, who for the last few months has been acting as the unofficial lieutenant in the stallion Derby's band. But unlike most young stallions, Tate was very aggressive and was always battling with Re*****on. Not sparring, but battling.
On this morning, Tate began sparring with Re*****on and knocked the older, arthritic stallion to the ground. Normally when sparring the stallion standing will maybe take a swipe at the downed stallion, but would normally let him get up without incident. In this case, Tate went for Re*****on's throat and neck and was holding him down. Re*****on was emitting a blood curdling scream and his band, led by the stallion, Derby, along with most of the other stallions and their families came running to see what was going on. It was amazing to see Re*****on's adopted family (Derby's band), lunge at Tate until he let go of Re*****on. Re*****on quickly went to seek solace with Derby's band and Tate was descended upon by many other band stallions who wanted to take a swipe at him. Here the grey stallion, Boreal, goes after Tate. After being rescued by Derby's band, you can see Re*****on, the second pinto at right (behind Tuff), moving off with his adopted family.
I honestly have never seen any behavior like this where wild horses came to the rescue of a fallen comrade. Perhaps young Tate broke protocol in trying to injure Re*****on for no reason. It seems the other horses didn't approve of Tate's aggressive behavior and wanted to teach him a lesson. I'm not sure if the lesson took, but I hope Tate thinks twice before trying to seriously injure another stallion while sparring.
I shared some more images from this encounter in the comments section, so you can see what happened with the horses. I'm kicking myself for not videotaping this incident, but it all happened so fast that I wasn't ready. And poor Re*****on. He seems alright, but what Tate did to him must have really hurt.
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