SomethingAwful forum goon Ruddha:

I don't know about anyone else, but I know for a fact that horses are stupider than shit and WILL kill themselves if you don't take an absurd amount of precautions and adorn them in the right silly accessories so that they don't scare themselves and fall over dead, and even then at best you can reduce the chances that they will do that, but they're still absolutely going to. Women who are obsessed with horses are just as bad as ones who are obsessed with anything else, but it may be dumber because it's a placeholder for animalistic male sexuality; however, in reality, it doesn't hold up because dominant male sexual energy is incompatible with horse personality and tendencies because, again, they're absolutely going to kill themselves by accident, whereas studs and straight power tops are highly unlikely to catch their reflection in a mirror then break their leg and get eaten by a mountain lioness

Of course, if you don't nail little metal rings onto them, they'll split open, and then they'll die.

I personally guarantee you a dog will never in this life hear a bee then have a heart attack out of fear, dying

My dad had a horse fall in a hole and almost die. They had to use a truck wench to get her out. She was too weak to walk so they tied ropes between two trees to hold her up. It took days of them hand feeding her before she could stand or walk on her own. Less than a month later, she fell in the same hole and died.

Babies grow up and that's okay, it's like, sometimes a great meal is worth a lot of prep, for example. Horses only get more likely to die from a stupid reason as they get older. Oh poor ol' Freckles, thought of ants and died

That's understandable, but in the scheme of things it's a fairly low chance. With horses, there is no such thing as a natural death at any point in existence: they've strictly only died from stupid shit. Saw water and passed away

As someone who grew up with a couple friends into horses and fucking dressage I can say that if anything you are being way too easy going on them. Its like their survival strategy is to break their legs or kill them selves at the slightest sign of danger, or a noise, or a change in humidity.

My friends barn had to install a big fence because they were next to a turkey farm and despite the horses seeing these birds every single fucking day, any time you'd ride past them most of the horses would briefly flip out and hurt them selves or throw their rider when the turkeys came into view. You could literally ride in a loop for an hour and every single time the horse would "scare" at the turkeys.

Maybe wilder horses are smarter but dressage horses are more fragile and stupid than a baby that just learned to crawl. They will jump onto fences and cut them selves in half, they will get stuck between buildings, they will randomly for no reason at all break their legs. If there is a way to kill or hurt them selves they will find it. And people drop 50k or more on these idiots.