Are Appies thick?

I have only ever owneed one Appaloosa - he was a fine looking horse who made it along the Oregon trail with me without losing a days work

He was fantastic at walking long distances - not fast but reliable

But cross country at any sort of speed and he would find a gopher hole to drop his foot in and put in a really dramatic stumble

Unless you put the bucket under his nose he could never find it.

Could never find a gate he had been through several times.

He was much happier being a pack horse than a lead horse

The paint quarter horse I used for the same trip lost several days work through feet problems - but he was a fantastic ride. If travelling fast across country and he found his foot going down a hole he would do a flying lead change

Felt completely safe on him.

In my limited experience Appaloosa - dim but reliable

Quarter Horse - not as tough, but with a canter to die for and a real brain between the ears.

Never yet seen an Appie being used for brain work such as cutting, team penning or at a cowboy rodeo

Dylan

Um.... interesting. Was there a point here or are you asking a question or... ? Sorry i'm confused.

Apologies for confusing you

I was just asking a question as the founding chairman of BATEAW

(British Association for the Testing of Equine Accepted Wisdom)

Dylan

Apparently you haven't looked very hard. You just happened to have an appy that was slow. The same description you gave of your appy could be given about any horse in any breed.

As for the brains... There are many out there that have more brains than the people that own them.

Mmmm methinks your Appy trained you well, got you to put the bucket under his nose, got out of fast work by theatrical stumbles, preferred to chill out rather than lead the way.

My Appy is not thick, my Arab is the most laid back of all my horses, my Haflinger is the hottest and most spooky.

I have a Jack Russel Terrier who isn't a terror, a hound dog who doesn't roam!

I guess the critters around here haven't read their breed descriptions, and I treat each according to their individual personality rather than on a broad generality of type.

I don't think that your experiences with the horses you have ridden is indicitive of thier breeds. My father-in-law has a paint gelding that is probably dumber by an order of magnitude than your appy. I have a QH gelding that is tougher than any horse I've ever seen but I've ridden others that wanted to lay down and quit before you were out of sight of the trailer. It happens with gender as well as breed. Somebody has owned three horses in the last 15 years and conceeds that since he liked the two geldings more than the one mare that ALL mares are inferior to ALL geldings. You don't have to be a statistician to be able to tear that theory down yet many people believe that way.

I have had the pleasure of knowing 3 appies well, and 1 more from a distance.

There was Dixie, Daisy, Chalupa, and Addias.

Dixie - Percheron-crossed and athletic. One of the fastest horses I've known, and enjoys jumping. Quick to learn many things, especially things she shouldn't know. She was taught to rear in the span of one ride and still knows the cue, despite our trying to reteach her NOT to rear :eyeroll:

Daisy - Percheron-crossed as well. Full sister to Dixie. Definitely not the brightest bulb... we encountered a moose on a trail ride once. All 5 of the horses with us stood blowing and snorting at the moose, but Daisy stared at the exact opposite side of the trail, snorting and frozen in spot .... there was nothing there but wide open field and trees. But she is the sweetest horse ever born. I learned to ride bareback on her, and she was kind and forgiving. Would stand forever to be mounted. Would slow down when I was slipping off. And would stop and wait when I fell to the ground.

Chalupa - Another draft cross - way... WAY too smart for his own good. He's been known to climb under rope gates. He learns bad habits super fast, and learns good habits very slowly lol. He's very athletic, and well put together. With a mind that wanders spiradically, and extremely spooky, he is a challenge to work with. But he can jump, and he is fast, and he keeps us all wondering just what he could do if he could just settle down and focus for ten minutes.

Addias - appyXmutthorse - only rode her a couple times - Ugly as sin, and fast as a bullet. Addias learns patterns, not cues. She knows barrels, poles, and gaming. Just don't interrupt her train of thought because she doesn't understand the concept of "whoa".

Those are the appies I've met, although none are pure. All but one I really like, and all are very different.

Hey there Dylan, you are new to the horse forum and may not yet realise that the majority of people here are from the USA. Except me, I'm from NZ. I have been coming to this forum for a while now and I have to say that in that time, through various threads I have read about Appies being used in many different disciplines (some excelling by the way). Perhaps the exposure you get to rodeos, and the horses that participate in them is a bit limited in the UK, as opposed to the rodeo culture that exists throughout the USA. If you look hard enough on the web you are going to find Appaloosa bloodlines that excel at all of the rodeo disciplines.

Personally I think you're best to take horse intelligence horse by horse rather than try to judge brains by breed standard. Bare in mind that training and handling have a huge amount of impact on the perceived "intelligence" of an animal. Sometimes the most "lazy" and uncooperative horses are the smartest, they have learned very quickly exactly how to get a human to stop trying to push them around.

Personally I know some people, who ride horses, that are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, however does that make all people who ride horses dim?

Mac, the Subaru of horses. He can jump, trail ride, do a wee bit of dressage and barrels and WP. Do it all, but not super well.

No, he is so NOT thick or stupid. He is really smart. I swear I can hear him plotting in his mind as we go down the trail how to convince me to take the shortcut home.
Today when I went to get him in the lower 40 he had, once again, jumped over the 3.5 foot chainlink fence into the blueberry patch, where the grass is greener. From a near standstill. Wouldn't jump out for me so I had to lift the hotwire and have him go under it. He knew that wire is normally hot, and went under that wire like zoom!

Rode almost 3 hours today on the trails; jumping logs, trotting and cantering around corners up and down hills in a group of 4 horses. I am exhausted, but Mac, 18, is fine.
I have great respect for Appies.

I have 9 Appaloosas here and let me tell you, not a one of them has a dimly lit bulb. I would even say that they are some of the smartest horses I have encountered. I have some of different types and some are better at certain things than others, but they all have their strengths, just like horses of any other breed.