My uncle, J.W. Hylton, had a farm horse that had a mind of his own. He was a beautiful animal, sleek, very large, very strong, and very intelligent.
We lived on a dirt road, and either direction you went from our house, you had to climb a long, rather steep hill. Occasionally "city slickers" would come to the river below our house and get caught in a rainstorm, making the hill very slippery. When they could not get up the hill with their car, they would come knocking on our door and ask if we had a tractor, or a horse, that could pull them up the hill. Our stock answer was, "We have a horse you can use, and we will harness him and hook him up to your car, but you will have to take the reins and get him to pull it up the hill". Well, we knew what "Ole Dick" would do when we handed them the reins. He would huff and puff and strain, and even break out in a sweat, but he just couldn't seem to budge their car. After they gave up and handed us back the reins, we would tell Dick to "Get up!" and that car was at the top of the hill before you could spit.
One time he was missing and we found where he had broke out of the pasture. We tracked him down into the wilderness along West Fork of Little River, all the way to where it came out in the open below Will's Ridge. Then we tracked him up into the hills, and eventually back toward home. We never once saw him. We got back to the barn at dark and there was Dick, standing at the barn nickering for his evening meal. We never tried to track him again.
Another time he broke down the gate leading to the road and was gone several hours, but came back for his supper. The next day, J.W., Obediah Weeks, and I worked all day making a new gate, putting in new posts, ect. while Dick grazed nearby and watched us. As we were heading back to the barn with all our tools from installing this brand new, super touch gate, we heard a loud "Crack...". Yep, Dick had walked right through it and was standing on the other side looking back at us. We never put up another gate, and he came and went as he pleased from that time on.
He used to play a little game with Grandaddy Hylton. Grandaddy (in his early 80's) would put the bridle on him in the pasture and be leading Dick to the barn to be harnessed. Dick would come up behind grandaddy and push him in the back with his nose. Then, just as grandaddy was about to fall, Dick would rear his head back and pull grandaddy back up straight. Grandaddy would then take the bridle straps and pop Dick across the nose rather severely, after which Dick would do the same routine again.
Another time, when I was a teenager, a carload of drunk moonshiners were running a load through the back roads by our place and they turned the car over. The only sober one of the bunch came to the house to get help and grandaddy and I took Dick up to see what we could do. Well, the moonshiners at the car were mean drunk and threatening, and we were not sure how we were going to get out of what could become a bad situation. Dick saved us! He suddenly went "bersherk", shorting, kicking, rearing up.....things he had never done....and it scared the drunks into the woods, at which time grandaddy and I left. Somehow they got the car uprighted, because about ten minutes later they passed us, flying down the road. About ten minutes after that, sheriff Williams came by, hot on their trail. He caught them in front of Webb's Mill.
Dick lived to be very old, and was one of the two smartest animals I have ever personally encountered.