Draft horses: Equine giants

There were more than half a dozen draft horses at the horse rescue I visited. These actually belonged to the woman who managed the rescue, but she invited us to visit with them as well as the rest of the horses.

I have seen some pretty large horses pulling carriages on the Sixteenth Street Mall in Denver, but I have never before been this close to — let alone handled — a horse this size. Draft horses are amazingly gentle, though, considering how big they are. I guess when you're that big, you don't have to be pushy or aggressive to get your way.

My favorite of the draft horses was a mare named Primrose. She was perhaps 16 hands — at least, that's what I'm guessing, because her withers were about even with the top of my head. Although that doesn't sound that big, draft horses are massively muscled, so they tend to appear much larger than a lighter horse of the same height.



Primrose was extremely sweet and gentle. After my husband took these pictures and I finished brushing her, we started to walk away, and she walked along between us just like we had her on a lead rope. When we stopped, she put her head over my shoulder and her cheek against mine, and "snuggled" like that for a little while before moving away.

I wish we'd gotten a picture of that, but the next one is almost as good. In it you can see her most striking feature, long white eyelashes over her left eye:



The biggest draft horse at the rescue stands 18 hands, 1 inch. His head was humongous! He was in a stall, so I didn't get a picture with him. However, my husband did get a picture of me with one almost as tall. The amazing thing is, this horse is only 2, so he's actually still growing:



I brushed this horse too, and he was so tall that I had to stand on tiptoe to brush his back — not that I could see what I was doing! (His belly, on the other hand, was much easier to brush than Panama's, because I didn't have to bend down at all.)

Odin was sweet but very mouthy, being young still. It's a little disconcerting to have a mouth that big trying to nibble on you!