Yeah, I don’t blame them for not correcting the horse lol.

No. In normal circumstances, we wouldn’t allow horses to bite. In these circumstances where the guards can’t fight or argue or protect their mount with the glut of people hassling, provoking, taunting, poking and generally being awful quite frankly, the tourists were warned 🤷‍♀️

The point I’m making is based off OPs title; this isn’t a “trained war horse”, this is a horse that’s found a way to find his ever so boring and often overhassled job somewhat entertaining and has never been corrected, thus has developed it into something he does regularly; training by omission of correction, as opposed to intentional training. This is not something they set out to train, it’s by circumstance.

There’s quite a few videos of them doing this kind of thing. No one here is defending the poke and prod sally tourists who should take a look at the sign.

Exactly the same! You want a horse that can move a cow without severe emotions or losing control of themselves, and without getting so worked up and frustrated that they resort to more extreme measures. Even on a ranch, sure something that’s a bit gritty is nice but they can take it wayyyy too far especially if you’re trying to move a group of scoury calves, old cull cows, basically things that don’t need an awful lot of pressure. Really good comparison.

Funnily enough in competition (cowhorse, cutters) horses are docked for biting or snarling at cattle 😅 but yes, in a ranching situation it can come in handy to have an expressive horse. But these really aren’t “war horses”, they’re more or less hour-long display animals. In a true war situation though, anything goes.

We have a working cattle ranch as well as an outfitting business and that’s why we have horses. It’s just a worthy note; we can’t have horses being too aggressive, especially when moving calves, especially sickly calves. We also don’t want horses that want to be too forward and won’t set back on your dally.

I mention competition for the sake of those reading here; just as these aren’t true war horses, “cowhorse” doesn’t simply apply to the ranch.

We own the cows we work with horses, so we are more careful with them and can take more time than someone dayhanding someone else’s cattle, pen riding, working for someone else or in an auctionmart or feedlot. We don’t hard tie, we don’t expect things to happen right this second, we want happy mama cows that are horse broke and respectful but aren’t fearful or fast. Our bulls are also horse broke, though they often require a little more work. That’s a likely difference here too; we gather, we brand, we move cattle, and my partner is hired out to rope and doctor waspy ones using rubber not mulehide… but that doesn’t mean we need it to go Instagram worthy hard and fast, especially when it’s your money on those hooves. Competition is modelled on the ideal situation, which we all know doesn’t always happen when you involve cattle :)

My mother was a mounted cop in Australia - yes not the UK, not a military horse, but they certainly didn’t Calvary train them specifically. It was one day they were on the track, the next day they were assigned to someone in the police stables; and they learned on the job. The Queen’s horses are not military trained per se, not the same way you’d see in the manuals of the 1800s. They have coaches in the mews and most of them don’t leave the city or the arena; they aren’t out training them to run into cannon fire and fallout, jump barbed wire, slide down cliff faces, etc. they’re simply exposing them to crowds, loud situations, minor gunfire, and primarily ceremonial duties, which of course is more than your average horse is exposed to. The UK mews are fascinating to read about, but they are far more lax nowadays with a tonne of history and culture behind them. Real war horses are a thing of the past… and don’t forget many of them were simply pulled off ranches and farms, confiscated, collected to be taken away, branded and thrown into the trenches in WWII with zero training or exposure. We aren’t gonna fight the next war on horse flesh, I’m surprised the US is putting any effort into it anymore. Thanks for your service, btw.

My mother was a mounted cop in Australia in the 90s. One day those horses were on the track, the next they were in the police stables lol. They primarily learned on the job.