Somehow, my largest fattest horse is the best at escaping.  I came into the barn last night to find a pile of manure in a small walkway.  "that's odd.." I thought.  How on earth did a horse poop here?! My barn was built in 1888, and is rather chopped up and not set up like the average stall barn.  My stall situation involves a large run in corral, and the only access to the main part of the barn is through a 4 ft. wide wooden door that opens INWARD  into the stall, and has a spring closer.  In the main part of the barn, I have a stall made for my geriatric horse so he can eat in peace without competition.  I guess my dad came out to the barn to find both Lucky (the geriatric one) and Daisy (The obese houdini) in the little stall!   She had opened the spring loaded door in HER stall, and walked out, acrosss the walkway and into the other stall.  I think the barn ghosts were watching out, because Daisy could have escaped out of the barn alltogether had one swinging door not been shut.  The creepy part is that door is NEVER shut.  The ghosts must have done it.  I doubt that the horse shut herself in, but my GOSH I'm glad that door was closed otherwise she would have had access to all the hay and feed. It wasn't latched, but it was enough of a visual barrier to keep her from leaving.

Anyhow, the moral of this story is.....never underestimate a horse's power to escape....esp. if there is food involved.   Keep grain locked up! 

Our gates are the ones that have a slot to put a link of chan in then a hole under it to slip the rest of the chain through.  My 2yr old has learned to open the gates so we now have to put bull snaps on them.  She can open the trigger snaps.

My dads horses ruined his centeral air conditioner one day.  They found that it blew air up and cooled them off on a hot humid day and when he came home his mare and mule were standing over it and when it turned off they started stomping on it and kicking it to try to make it turn back on.  Destroyed the fins and housing.

OMG that is the funniest thing I have seen in a long while.  I'm sure your dad wasn't happy but I will be getting giggles out of the image for a while, just picturing the horses going "Hey! what's wrong with this thing?"

I know someone who has a horse that not only let himself out of his stall but opened all the other stall doors with the exception of one.  Apparently he didn't care if that one horse had to stay in a stall.

Aren't animals wonderful!?!