12 Responses

1. I rescued a horse. At the time, they called him Cowboy. He was a 9 year old Arabian gelding. To me, he looked much more like his registered name, plus he was to me, “Magic”. Magic is my heart horse. I’d call a quarter horse Cowboy, just not my “Magic”!

2. Hello,

   I have an OTTB as well, he just turned 29 on 1/4 and his name is Toronado, (not Tornado). He came to me with that name, but with his lip tattoo I was able to research his name on the Jockey Club site, his name used to be Little Pep.

   We’re incredibly lucky to have two OTTB that are this age!

3. My late husband was a fan of all things Old West. Every time we bought a horse (for hiim) he changed its name to something “Western”. Over the years we had a Cole, a Concho, a Ricochet – his final horse was named Elvis! (I still have him.)

4. Yes, I changed the name on one of my horses. When I bought him he had a very long name so I asked to shorten it. And I am happy that I did. Makes it easier to fill out show or other event forms.

5. My boy was named ‘Just Toby’ after Toby Keith by the 3 year old daughter of the woman I purchased him from. Apparently when asked, if this was all there was to his name, the little girl loudly repeated JUST TOBY – and that is that. He does answer to either Toby of “Handsome” – and yes, he is spoiled.

6. My current horse was an “unknown” when I bought him. After I named him “Baby Huey” (because his four white socks made it look like he had outgrown his chestnut “onesie”), I found his lip tattoo and got a copy of his pedigree and some other informaton from The Jockey Club. His registered name is Echo Dancer. I did not know that he was an OTTB when I chose his name, but today he is “Huey” and knows it. He’s 29 years old (official day of birth February 27) and we were named Team 391 in June 2019 in the Century Club of The Dressage Foundation.

7. As long as the horse knows their name and has a positive response to is, I don’t change it even if I don’t care for it. I have given several horses different “call names” if I got them rather young and the given / registered name was either a mouthful or didn’t seem to fit.

8. If a horse comes to me with a cool or fitting barn name, I keep it. But I’ve also had a few exceptions… One of my mares came with the barn name Mover, in reference to her JC name. Not a very pretty name, so I changed it to Moira, which fits her so much better. Years back I adopted a gelding who’s JC name was lost to time, and the current owners called him My Love. A boy horse called My Love?! Yep, it got changed to Miller.

9. I have one horse named “Big” because he’s big and one horse named “Brownie” because he’s brown. I really wanted to change their names that reflected their personalities, but both horses know their names and come to them, so I thought it unkind to change them.

10. I have changed several–left the registered names, but changed the barn/show names. Usually because the registered name was a reflection of the horse’s pedigree, but meaningless in terms of the horse’s personality. “El Gar Laurtyn” became Bree, and “Gold’s Hunter” became Orion.

11. Renamed my horse from “Old Yeller” to “Oro”. Guess his color!

12. I kept my horse’s JC/show name, but I changed his barn name, which was previously an acronym. 🙂 Happy is a lot easier to say than IHA.