Why don't horses run away when their reins are casually looped over a rail? I see a LOT of horses on my trips to Smyrna and Oakfield.
Amish are a big presence here.
They use buggies and carts to get around. I always do a quick mental appraisal of any horses I encounter.
Breed, age, disposition.
I've startled Amish with how quickly I can get the gauge of a horse.
They think no English has the savvy they have, because they're around horses all the time but I had horses for two decades and spent hours watching them with great fascination.
I myself used a horse for transportation til very recently.
His name was Rauður, and he was a failed children's pony with an attitude problem.
I loved his sassiness and his infinite creativity at misbehaving.
We were pals, within weeks of his stepping off the cattle trailer.
He read as a horse who was *real sick* of people and their expectations, so I gave him a year of work free vacation with a couple mares and then we took up with a very mutual relationship.
In the pics he was in town with me, on errands.
I had him tied to a tree in pic one, and to a hitching post in pic two.
What you can't see clearly is that he wears a rope halter.
Ordinarily, a working horse (whether cart horse, logging horse, or police horse) wears a flat, woven halter made of 3/4 inch poly ply.
It has a quick buckle on the side and sometimes a break-away is installed for emergency use if a horse panics and needs to get loose fast.
I tried using a flat halter on mister smartypants but that bugger was quite crafty and as soon as I walked away, he'd scrub his head on the post or the tree or any other handy surface, and pop the halter and bridle right off.
I'd come back to the little turdball eying me with only reins looped over his neck, and both the bridle and the halter dangling useless.
If I'd have tied him by REINS, he would have been injured, gotten loose, or made a total broken mess out of the whole business.
So I switched him to a rope halter, rounded instead of flat.
He'd still try to pop the halter off over his ear but had no luck because the fit thwarted him.
If I ever saw a horse tied by reins, I'd stay with him or her til the driver/rider appeared, because nobody with an ounce of sense uses reins for anything but driving/riding! That said, there IS one group of horses who'd stand stock still even if reins were looped.
Amish horses.
They are put through a rigorous training program designed to turn them into automatons.
I asked an Amish man about it once.
"Forced submission" I was told.
The horse is used so severely, and subjected to such punishment, that he or she loses whatever will they may have had.
They are living robots.
They have their wills broken.
And they show it.
