Who's smarter? Horses or mules?

I don't know who is smarter, horses or mules, so when I ask the question, it's not that I have the answer. I don't know anything about mules and am a little mystified by the current fad where lots of horse people are switching to mules. The hooves alone can't be the reason.... I'm in the watching and wondering phase.

But I have a story. One of my horse vets has horses and mules (and can't explain why, but that's beside the point). She had a young mule and a young horse that she was trying to teach to load in the trailer. Every night she would tie them to the trailer and they would eat out of buckets on the trailer floor. They would have to reach in through the trailer doors to eat, and every day she would put the buckets farther into the trailer.

The day that the buckets were no longer in reach, the young horse had no problem hopping into the trailer to eat, which was the plan.

But the mule had to think about this. And this is the truth about what happened. The mule was not interested in being so foolishly manipulated as the young horse had been. But he figured out a way around it. He reached down, grabbed the rubber floor mat with his teeth, and PULLED! The mat slid toward him, and with it, the food bucket. The mule ate his supper without having to go through the indignity of getting in the trailer.

Don't know how she ever taught him to load.

Lucy is smart, and a smart horse is not necessarily a good thing. What about intelligence in mules?

Or are they all smart and much smarter than us? We're the ones who have to work to feed them, clean out their stalls and keep them from suicide in a fence....

Comments

[risingrainbow]

I don't know either. I just know that mules are noisier!