Stallion Relief - Rick Gore Horsemanship

Question
Hello Rick.  Sometimes I have observed stallions (and geldings) relieving themselves.  In city environments and other areas where they have to deal with hard pavement, I have seen them spread their legs very wide, extend the penis a little but holding that organ pointing sort of forward. They'll drop the organ limply afterwards. In pasture environments however I have seen them spread their legs only a little and let the penis drop down to a fuller length to relieve themselves.  Is the roadway stance to avoid the splashing from a hard surface which would not happen on grass?  Also I wonder if they tend to hold themselves in as long as possible on hard surfaces, so that when they finally "go" they extend the penis as little as they can before releasing their stream?  Maybe in the pasture they feel comfortable "going" as soon as they get the full signal, so they drop the penis more completely?  Finally, I've seen pasture horses walk up to their border fence to make their puddle.  Is this territorial marking?  Thanks very much.


Answer
This is the second time I have answered this, but the stupid web site keeps deleting my answer.  That is why it took so long.

No horse likes to pee on himself, the splash gets on their legs and feels like a fly or insect or bug crawling on their fur.  Horses are pretty clean and never lay in the pee or poop in the wild.  but humans want to lock up horses in a stall and force the horse to ignore this clean instinct.  No horse wants to smell like horse poop or horse urine when they are being hunted by predators, so their instinct is to not pee or poop on themselves.

If a rider was more aware they know that horses stand cross wind when peeing, so the wind will blow the pee to the side and not on the back or front legs, so when horses pee in pasture the will put their side to the wind. Most riders never let the horse do this so the horse has to "park out" (stand really wide and spread out) in an attempt to avoid wind spray or splash.

So peeing on dirt, rubber mats, concrete will all cause a horse to park out wider and bigger stance.

A good horseman will read this and when stopping a horse will face them cross wind so the horse can pee without getting wet over spray.

http://www.thinklikeahorse.org/

http://www.youtube.com/user/horseawareness