# Swimming with horses



## walkinthewalk (Jul 23, 2008)

1. You need to know that not all horses can swim.

1.1. Never -NEVER take a horse in the water when it has a tie down on.

2. The lake should have some low places on the banks where the horse can walk right out, given its base is shoe sucking mud

3. If you live in area where there are poisonous snakes— they also love to swim - all of them

4. Except for one horse who refused to go in deeper than his belly, I have swam my horses in rivers, which are generally fast moving. I never asked that horse to swim because he wore a no-fear t-shirt about everything in this life. Nothing bothered him except deep water so I listened to him.

5. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t swim the horse. What I am saying is you need to know your horse and yourself in case you would get stuck in the mud a ways from the edge.


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## waresbear (Jun 18, 2011)

I took all my tack off and used a rope to steer. This a lake boat launch area, and named Horse Lake! Indy swam great, but he kept wanting to turn into the bullrushes, that was fun steering with a neck rope!


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## LilyandPistol (Dec 2, 2014)

I would suggest stepping in and seeing if it sucks your own shoes off to test if it might suck your horses’ off, lol. Perhaps not a foolproof method and mine are barefoot so it is really just a theory but at least it gives you some basis of how shoe sucking it may be. I do realize our shoes are not nailed into our feet 

I think others give some good advice, I would add to never try to make the horse stop while it is swimming (while wading is fine) because if horses do not keep moving while swimming they sink.


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## BethR (Feb 17, 2021)

We have a half-acre pond and I always wanted to try and swim Angelina. But it has a very sticky clay bottom (I lost a pair of flip flops in it once) and for that reason never tried it...I was afraid she’d get stuck. Then what?!
I think I might advise against it 😐


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

I know someone whose horse panicked trying to get out of the water. She fell off and the horse stepped on her back, then her head. Pushed her right into the mud. Amazing that she didn't get more injured. So yeah, use caution. Horses do not like that sucking feeling and can panic.


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

The sticky mud bottom would be enough for me to decide against it. Horses are afraid of mud for very good reason -- they can die in it. A heavy body on thin legs and relatively speaking, teeny sharp feet, is a recipe for disaster in such conditions. 

I used to love to swim my horse in the percolation ponds in the Santa Clara Valley of my youth, back when these manmade ponds designed to try to restore the aquifer were open for public use, more than fifty years ago now. But the bottoms were gravel. We'd ride in our swimsuits and bareback. All the horses took to it just fine. By and large horses are natural swimmers.


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## horselovinguy (Oct 1, 2013)

If the horse is allowed to make the decision and not "driven or forced" in where it not want to be....
I would allow it...
The horse can feel the footing and the "sucking" action or not.
A pond to stand in when its hot is cooling for the horse.
A pond that they can by their own free will navigate to a depth of water they want...acceptable.
Your horse may not go deeper than to the knee and lay down in the wet to cool and roll, mine do when given a chance.

I am not adventuresome enough anymore to want to chance swimming snakes or alligators so not often do we swim anymore.
If we are at the ocean we swim...strip the tack and pull out the nylon bridle, walk in to the water next to them and when they get deep enough I get astride and off we go splashing and having a great time.
But in areas you know alligators habitate makes me very nervous not only for the horse but for me being stolen and dragged under.
Add the snakes.... *I'm done!!*😱😨
🐴....


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## AragoASB (Jul 12, 2020)

Tamar loved to swim, she would swim on her own out in the pasture. I would look out there sometimes and say to myself What is that? An alligator going across the water? No, it was her head.


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## horseponycrazy27 (Nov 15, 2015)

Thank you for all the advice/suggestions. I do have a creek that I can see the bottom and it is not as muddy as the lake. It is not deep enough for her to swim but she will splash and then lay down on one side, then get up and lay on the other side.


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