Glen Grobler wrote:
It needs a name.
I also want to know if any other horse does this.
For a while now, I have encouraging the games Laska and Freckles play together. The rearing, bouncing, kicking, biting, spinning and running together. I give this encouragement by laughing, clapping my hands and praising qhile they are doing it. Of course, there are many times they play together and I am not there to see it.
Several times during the last month or so, when I have praised their energy and wild movements, Freckles has glanced at me, dropped his nose to his toes, and jumped up and down 4 or 5 times on the same spot.
He's like a little boy exploring how to balance while bouncing on a trampoline for the first time.
He sometimes turns a bit while he does this - like a pirouette. He keeps his nose down at his feet, as if he's watching his clever feet do something interesting. His feet leave the ground almost at the same time, with the front lifting ever so slightly before the back. He lands all 4 at the same time, flexes his whole body slightly, and jumps up again. He does it at least 3 times and never more than 5 times in a row. Then he looks at me all proud of his "new accomplishment" and waits for my admiration.
It's the cutest thing ever, and he looks like a pony on a pogo-stick.
When I was a young lad, in my late teens and early twenties I fancied myself a rodeo performer. I competed in some roping, tried bulldogging a couple of times, even rode bulls -once- and once only.
I also rode saddle broncs, and tried bareback bronc riding too.
You are describing one of the common movements a bucking horse does. I think you folks call bucking, buckjumping. One move is to plant the front feet and kick the hind quarters way up in the air with a mighty outward kick, and covers some distance forward with each buck.
The other is referred to as crow-hopping. The horse does what you say Freckles is doing. Drops his head way down and does a series of four footed springs into the air landing pretty much in the same area they rose from and often with a spinning motion.
However, this is done out of pain, fear, and training to fight back hard at having a person on top. The horse has a strap, with a quick release, tightly around his flank to make him feel captured. The lion, or other big cat that jumps on a horse to bring it down often comes in from the rear, goes up over the haunches, and hangs on, and uses their claws coming in under the flanks to gut the horse.
Of course horses have evolved to NOT want pressure in this area.
If one stops and thinks about it much play, by any animal species, including humankind, is based on violent confrontation. Our sports are just tamed down battlefield warfair.
Freckles play is about nature coming through and having him practice bucking off lions. That he does is up close for you, I think, warrants his trust for you. "Look, look at me mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, look at meeeeee."
Bonnie is like this too. She can't go to her hay pile out in the big paddock in the morning without bucking, running about, and generally cutting up for a few minutes first.
Of course that we live next to the deep dark forest, and we have seen sign of bear and lion here, as well as both live, might just lend to her "practicing."
Both she and Altea, once feeding has started still stop for the occasional "sentry," look about, and stare sometimes at the woods for many long seconds. Sometimes they tell me something is passing in the woods. Mostly it turns out to be harmless elk, even deer, on their morning feeding migration.
Once though both "pointed," very like a bird dog, at what I at first couldn't see, a coyote sitting quietly contemplating us. We were too many and far too big for one coyote but you could see the happy contemplation in his eyes of a really big juicy meal possibility.
Wish you had a video of Freckles crowhop.
Donald, Altea, and Bonnie Cupcake (yes, I have videos of her morning workouts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkfy6SbhoQ