Spooky Names for Horse Ailments
Something foul lurks in the shadowy cleft of the hoof, a smelly black ooze that sounds like a songbird but smells like a graveyard.
What is thrush?
Two crossed rails form a mark like a treasure map’s “X” in this low, beginner-friendly fence, a young horse’s first jump
What is a Cross Rail?
A fluttering plastic ghost, a flapping tarp, or a shadow at dusk can make a horse suddenly leap sideways in this startled reaction.
What is spooking? (Accept: shying.)
Horses in this famous race thunder around Churchill Downs every May, and the winner gets a blanket of roses.
What is the Kentucky Derby?
Told from the horse’s own point of view, Anna Sewell’s classic 1877 novel follows a gentle horse with this midnight-colored name.
What is Black Beauty?
Biting midges haunt horses at dusk, leaving them so cursed with maddening skin allergies that they rub their manes and tails raw, despite the candy-coated name.
What is sweet itch?
Two sets of standards and rails loom side by side like a haunted gate, forcing a horse to clear both height and width in a single bound.
What is an oxer?
Two horses stand side by side in the moonlight, nibbling each other’s withers and necks, in this friendly bonding ritual.
What is mutual grooming? (Accept: allogrooming.)
The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont together make up this “crown” that only a handful of horses have ever won.
What is the Triple Crown?
In Walter Farley’s 1941 adventure, a boy named Alec Ramsay is shipwrecked on a deserted island with a wild Arabian stallion that is as dark as the night.
What is The Black Stallion?
This highly contagious bacterial infection, caused by Streptococcus equi, earns its terrifying name from abscessed lymph nodes under the jaw that can choke off a horse’s breathing.
What is Strangles?
Beware the dark pool lurking beneath this fence: a tray of water under the rail can make a horse spook and back away from the sight of it.
What is a Liverpool?
With its upper lip curled back in a ghoulish grin, a horse is investigating a scent in this behavior, which has a German name.
What is the flehmen response?
The colorful jackets jockeys wear to show which owner they ride for are called this.
What are Silks?
Marguerite Henry’s 1947 book tells of a pony born on Assateague Island and bought at the yearly pony penning on the neighboring Virginia island.
What is Misty of Chincoteague?
These soft, cool, painless swellings around the fetlock appear like ghostly puffs of air, but they’re just extra joint or tendon sheath fluid.
What are windpuffs? (Accept: windgalls.)
Horse and rider leap a rail, plunge into a gaping pit, and claw their way out to clear another rail, in this cross-country combination.
What is a Coffin?
Once believed to be a sign of surrender to the rider’s will, this mouth movement is now more often read as a horse releasing tension.
What is licking and chewing?
This unit of distance, one-eighth of a mile, is how most horse races are measured.
What is a furlong?
In Enid Bagnold’s novel, a girl named Velvet Brown dreams of racing a spirited horse in England’s most famous steeplechase, the Grand National.
What is National Velvet?
This ominous-sounding condition is an infected, often draining swelling at the very top of a horse’s head, just behind the ears.
What is Poll Evil
Looming like a haunted castle rampart, this massive wall of bricks has been cleared by horses at heights over 7 feet in a competition named for the French word for “power.”
What is a puissance wall?
A volley of loud, explosive snorts echoes across the dark paddock, with head and tail raised high like a banner, in this display of excitement or alarm.
What is a high blow? (Accept: high blowing.)
A horse that has never won a race goes by this title, which sounds like a character in a haunted fairy tale.
What is a maiden?
Mary O’Hara’s 1941 novel is about a boy named Ken and his wild filly on a Wyoming ranch.
What is My Friend Flicka?