Monday, September 18, 2006

Thus Ends Weeks of Speculation In the Pink Shoe Household:

So, a colt is a male horse under four years old (Also a brand of revolver. And a professional football team.), a filly is an immature female horse, and a foal is a horse baby (I'm sure that's a technical term). Adult male horses are stallions (and Italian Stallion is a movie from 1970 starring Sylvester Stallone), and adult female horses are mares. And, Wikipedia so gently tells me, "desexed" male horses are geldings (for some reason, saying that the horses are "desexed" jars me more than just saying that their balls got sliced off). Finally, a pony is a horse of small stature, standing less than 14.2 hands high at the whithers.

Although firey-tempered breeds of horses, like Arabians, are never called ponies, regardless of height.

(Pssssssstttt. Check out Logan's Facts About the Sun. I like that he stepped in when I was too tired to write it myself.)

5 comments:

Chris Wilson said...

Well we know that a horse is a horse of course, that is unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

markus said...

but what about donkeys?

Princess in Galoshes said...

That was fantastic!

And, Markus, I believe a donkey is a totally separate species (but same family and genus) as a horse...

Extra tidbit: a mule is a male donkey/female horse hybrid, and sterile. Unable to reproduce. Nature desexed them, so to speak.

Anonymous said...

Umm, what the hell is "at the whithers"?

Maybe I don't want to know.

Anonymous said...

You totally should have asked me, if you wanted to know all that! I'm full of horse lore...whether that's bad or good has yet to be determined.
Anyway, the whithers are really just where the horse's neck meets its shoulders. If you feel the back of your neck, the bump of bone where your neck meets your spine/shoulders/whatever is the same on a horse, pretty much. Sorry that's not more fun to know.

And did you know that the center of a horse's hoof, which is actually pretty tender, is called the frog? I always liked that :)