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in the interest in full disclosure:

What is your Haflinger mischief story?

What has your horse destroyed? It seems that my Haflinger destroys everything in her path. Daisy Destruct-O has ruined numerous gates, she just paws them till they break then she carries them around. She has gone through 4 buckets in the last month. She has gotten out of an electrobraid fence TWICE. She has broken a stall that has been perfectly fine for YEARS. She kills water troughs, heated buckets, bucket hardware, and anything that should be horse-proof. None of the
other horses bother anything, its just the Haflinger. I bought her one of those lickit stall treats. She won't touch it. This horse that ATE my hat and a trailer tie, and wood chips, but won't touch a sweet apple flavored treat. Go figure. Amanda in IL

When I first got my Haflinger,on day 2, I arrived in the morning to find she was not in her paddock. I heard her moaning and raced around to the back of the barn, she was standing there with a look on her face that was beyond belief. It was not immediately apparent what was wrong and I didn't know until I went into the barn and saw the grain container lids on the floor, containers tipped over and hay everywhere. She had quite a feast. Then I looked and saw a perfect Haflinger size cutout in the plywood wall. I'm not kidding she walked right through the wall. Now my barn is like Fort Knox. Every gate latch has a clip on it and in one case the clip has a clip and she still works at it with her mouth. I'm so lucky she didn't founder or colic. Leslie

Let's see. My boy has plowed through wood fence - which is why we now use all electric fence though he does try to unlatch the plastic handles and gosh forbid
the fence be low for some reason - he has attempted to jump over a metal pipe gate only to land on it and squish it down (not to mention the time he tried to
SIT on the metal fence and make it squish down), he has pawed our metal barn door until it looks nothing like its suppose - maybe a metal sculpture of some
kind, abstract in nature? He has also broken every stall door in our barn, tore off & destroyed the grazing muzzle we got him, and I shouldn't even mention the
time he got loose and tried to climb up onto someone's front porch - which was NOT built to carry a horse! Ummm....yeah...Jessie

Ours took apart the tractor seat when it was sitting out in their pasture while someone was taking a break from mowing. The seat, foam and springs were strewn about and I'm sure they'd have started messing with the rest of it if someone hadn't come and moved them away. Jennifer in Texas

Fortunately, since I have not had my Haflinger for a very long time, not much has been destroyed...yet. (knock on wood!) But I can tell that certain things are "bothered" around the barn and pasture that used to not be disturbed. The lights hookup for my horse trailer was found "chewed" on and pulled out, my barn was broken into and a great amount of hay was eaten and huge Haflinger-sized piles covered the floor. A new Christmas wreath made out of jingle bells was pulled off the wall and trampled, litter, from passing garbage trucks on our road, has been pulled through the fence to be "played" with...and more than a few fence boards knocked down so that the offending horse could reach the aforementioned litter. My stall walls are disintegrating rapidly because of being railed upon by hard, round, "little" Haflinger hooves. He is not kept stalled, but he does a dance every evening at feeding time, doing intricate spins, lofty airs above the ground, and bouncing off of the stall walls and water buckets until I enter his stall with his feed...then he is most respectful and will back off until I allow him to eat. While he is eating he paws the air with each front foot...changing from one to the other. When he was at the trainer's place, the trainer said he had never seen a horse get so excited about eating. Every horse I have ever had was a good eater and greeted feeding time enthusiastically ...but nothing compares to the passionate display this Haflinger produces at every meal. (Are all Haflingers like this? I've read many posts saying that Haflingers love their food, but I wasn't expecting all this unbridled
exuberance!) Since he is not disrespectful or ugly when I go in to feed him I don't think I should do anything to keep him from expressing his joy...but geez,
what a show he puts on! To keep anything else from being destroyed, I'm trying to keep everything I possibly can out of reach of his inquisitive mouth and doors firmly closed and latched. I am amazed at how things that have been undisturbed for years by my other horses are suddenly being made into play things by Nashville. I considered getting him a horse toy to play with out in the pasture, but from what you said, it seems they enjoy inventing their own play things more!
I must admit he has been the most fun of ANY horse I've ever had. Even my husband loves him and laughs at his antics! I can't wait to have a couple more
someday...they really are addicting. Norma in MS

One of my Haffies broke out of his pasture one day, and decided to see if the dog kennel was more fun. Broke through the gate into the pro-chain link
dog kennel, chased the dogs out and ate their food! I had put a canvas tarp over the kennel for rain shelter, it was low, Artie didn't care, he just let
the tarp lay on his back as he munched away devouring all the Kibbles and Bits. I was worried about him getting mad cow or something because, if I
remember, horses are supposed to be vegetarians, right? LOL :,)  Susanne in California

My haffie has gone through a chain link fence, bit a water hose in half- I was recovering from surgery and my nephew had let the bucket get so low that it was drained so she bit the hose I guess to get some water- she cannot be tied up with a lead rope because she will chew it in half- her mother has this same habit as well. She has also done some damage to a fence that had been up for years and several metal gates as well as destroying a couple of wooden ones. She will work the gate until she gets through it if she wants in with another horse. She will not stay in a pen by herself. I love her but she is a handful and somewhat of a bully though I
don't think she means it that way but she is so much bigger than everyone else.  from Georgia

My Haflinger has destroyed my budget. Deb in MA

We have box stalls and standing stalls and I got really tired on pail watering everyone just to have them spill it all over. We bought water bowls for them all only to find that they made great places for the haffies to rinse their teeth after they ate. The would lip the water out, only to have the bowls fill again and would start all over.
Not all of them did this but the ones that did could fill their mangers almost to the top and then of course it would fill the barn. We had to put shut offs on each one so that the bad guys could only drink when we turned them on. They soon learned not to mess around. Now only the colts get that treatment. We have a mare that loves to stand in her manger so she can get a better view outside. She has had to have it reinforced so won't fall thru, but we've had to put a bar above it so she couldn't get in. She'll think of something else shortly. We also have a mare that will stand and pull the boards off the fence just to see them fall. She has a hot wire on it but she knows just where to grab. Not sure how to outsmart that one. Hetty in Ontario

I've only had Star two weeks and already she has decided the horses in the next door pasture are better buddies than our two older mares. Maybe it's just because they're more timid and she can bully them into following HER lead easier! She's politely dismantled the fence twice so far and seems to have decided to live next door. She also emptied the shed where we had some odds n ends stored out at the 60 acres. We went out to feed to find tomato cages, a couple of 55 gallon drums, several boxes (which were emptied) all strewn around the front of the shed. We have to go rebuild the fence on that side now because of her! She doesn't bother the other sides, there aren't any friendly horses over there. Our neighbor out there is getting a big kick out of her. We put her back where she belongs, feed them and as soon as we're out of sight she makes a bee-line for the fence-line and finds someplace with a little slack and she's through again. Lydia

In the early 90's my friend boarded and trained horses. She had this Haflinger stallion in one of her pastures that was fenced with livestock fencing. It had rails along the bottom and top of the fence for extra "stallion" support.  She couldn't figure out why all the livestock fencing wires were getting broken down near the bottom of the fence. So she set up a lawn chair one day, a ways back from the pasture so as to not be too obvious, and waited. It didn't take long before he carefully put his front foot through the hole in the livestock fence, carefully placed the wire between his hoof and the back of his shoe and slowly pulled his foot back. Twang!!!! He would throw his head around a bit, then buck and kick a little. Then once he settled down he would do it all over again!! Tracey in British Columbia

Our little barn was blissfully peaceful until Morgan arrived. A little electric tape contained the horses safely on the property. It didn't take long for Morgan to figure out the weaknesses of electric tape. He escaped and then let the other horses out with him. We now have wooden fence backed up with electric tape. Its a little like Fort Knox for horsies.
The worst thing he almost destroyed? The neighbor's brand new EXPENSIVE topiary garden. And then there was the wheelbarrow he decided to stand in....just to see what would happen. Both wheels went careening down the barn aisle. Oh, and he was getting his feet trimmed one day when he reached over and pulled a rung off our wooden ladder to the loft....Craaaack! Then, there was the time he did some construction on his stall; made the feed
window much larger, then reached out and pulled all his halters and lead ropes in. Sigh.....as you can see, I'm having a hard time coming up with just the ONE THING. Karen in CT

We have VERY LARGE automatic waterers in each of our pastures - they're white heavy plastic which sit over the pipes and fill automatically as the horses drink...well apparently Cinderella somehow pushed this tank over and was rolling it around the pasture. This of course opened up the pipes and the insulation for the other horses to poke around in....soooo we've reinsulated with straw, placed the tank back where in belongs and staked it back with iron rebar. Barbara in KY

Well, lets start this with windows in the barn! Bucket, AKA Hallmark's Boutique, decided looking through the window wasn't good enough, so she poked her head out for a better look. Must have thought that was cool, because she did it to another window! She really must like the view, because she also remodeled the outside run-in, making open windows there too. She also broke one of those 'super tuff' buckets right in half. Then came the stall remodeling, ripping off boards, nearly petrified, that had been there for years, to better see her half brother. Add to that the numerous chunks of foam insulation taken off of the stall walls! Her latest thing is eating the stall mats. These things are so heavy that 2 of us can hardly move them, but every morning she has one of them turned around and upside down and is customizing a beautiful key hole shape in it. How can she do that with a mouth and foot? Beats me! She is very loveable and a real clown, just coming 4 this spring.
Evie in Michigan
 

Add your own "mischief" story--send to emily@haflingerhorses.com