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I don't know much about horses but I'm a big Red Dead Redemption 2 player and I noticed that Arthur (the protagonist) is "calming" his horse when skinning a dead animal next to it, is this a real behavior ?
We have a pretty good baseline for this. Alongside horses, we raise cows, and as they say… livestock, deadstock. We also use our horses to pack game and meat. They don’t like the smell of fresh, pungent death and might start at a dead cow along a trail, but generally not a big deal.
They do have the be acclimated. You need to use a little compassion training pack horses to carry game or meat (particularly anything predatory towards a horse) - they used to just grab a handful of blood or Vaseline and stuff that up their nose, but people know better now. I did a lot of groundwork with ours using deer skins (and cougar skins) before ever asking them to pack, and it wasn’t an issue (with sensible, kind handling) when the time came for them. Our mule has packed out elk, deer and sheep, the donkey has packed out many elk and the horses have packed everything from cougars to elk. You can actually see photos in the past I’ve posted of them packing.
Horses consider pigs a predator to them. They’re more of a scavenger, but a pig can really hurt a horse and they know it.
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Thankyou, he’s an angel, he really is!
And for sure. They used to have all sorts of tricks to get pack horses to submit to the idea, but we try a lot harder nowadays… and since they often borrow my nice ponies to pay their way for the outfitting, I make sure they’re emotionally and mentally prepared. Don’t forget a leather saddle is (processed) skins, so we literally throw something dead on them every time we ride, the game/meat is just a little more raw 😅