Fence walking/stall walking

[Abbasiyah]

Nothing annoys me more than to have a stall walker or a fence walking or what we call pacing horse! Sometimes stall walkers even weave or sway back in forth in the stall when they can't pace or walk back and forth.

I have found this to be prevalent in some SE lines more than others.

Is this in your opinion an inherited trait?

What are your opinions?

[dez]

I never thought about stall walking to be inherited in certain lines. I am very interested in which lines you think are more prone to this activity. I just assumed from watching my group that the stall walkers/fence walkers were the dominant horses.

[Abbasiyah]

(03.04.2011 01:47 PM)dez schrieb:  I never thought about stall walking to be inherited in certain lines. I am very interested in which lines you think are more prone to this activity. I just assumed from watching my group that the stall walkers/fence walkers were the dominant horses.

Hello,

What made me think that this could be an inherited trait as well as a behaviour or learned trait was my experience with using a stallion last year for the first time on mares that have never produced a foal that paces or walked the stall or fence lines.

I know that some horses get into this habit due to being nervous or they are claustrophobic but ALL of the foals from this particular stallion paced from early on and still do. The stallion is a combination of some very popular lines Anaza El Farid, Ruminaja Ali (twice) *Magidaa. I am not trying to insult any one particular bloodline or horse but I found it very strange that all the foals from this particular stallion have this tendency to pace the fence lines and stall walk.
When the mares have calm and quiet dispositions and they do not pace or fence walk and they have never produced a foal that does that it does make one wonder if this trait is inherited??

[dez]

Hmmm, that is interesting. Fence/stall walking really bothers me too. The mare I have that does it is the dominant mare. She started the day we got her but actually stopped for a couple years when we had a mare that was more dominant. After the other mare was gone the first mare took up fence walking again. I am delighted that neither of her foals picked up this habit. She is ordinarily a very calm mare, in fact she is who I usually pick to put a beginning rider on. She starts fence walking about 1 hour before it is time for her to go to her stall. She has hay in the pasture so I don't think that is the reason. Just for interest, the only horses up close in her pedigree that are in common with your lines that do this are Morafic and Bint Deena. It does certainly sound as if there may be an inherited factor with the stallion you used. Do you know if the stallion does this? It would be interesting to see if others have any thoughts on this.