{"id":595446,"date":"2019-03-01T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T06:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"<br><div>\n\n        <div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.ghana-mma.com\/2019\/03\/2177430881652_3739294120317.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"horse\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"166409311\" onload"},"modified":"2019-03-01T06:57:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T06:57:08","slug":"meet-aston-the-bull-who-thinks-its-a-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/03\/01\/meet-aston-the-bull-who-thinks-its-a-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Aston: The bull who thinks it\u2019s a horse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.ghanamma.com\/2019\/03\/2177430881652_3739294120317.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"horse\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"166409311\" onload=\"pagespeed.CriticalImages.checkImageForCriticality(this);\"\/><\/div>\n<p>As a male calf born on a small cattle farm in France, Aston was originally destined to be slaughtered for meat, but after forming a bond with a horse trainer he became a showjumping bull instead.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, Sabine Rouas, a horse trainer from Strasbourg, France, had just lost a horse that she had spent 20 years of her life with and felt that she couldn\u2019t get attached to a horse anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, she became interested in a family of cows living on a nearby organic milk farm.<\/p>\n<p>One of the cows she spent time with was pregnant at the time, and Sabine believes that the calf may have gotten used to her voice while still in its mother\u2019s womb, because soon after it was born, it started following her around whenever she came by. Unfortunately, the farmer wasn\u2019t interested in keeping a bull on a milk farm, so he planned to have the calf, named M309 at the time, slaughtered at only three months.<\/p>\n<p>But Sabine wasn\u2019t going to let that happen.<\/p>\n<figure><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BqCs2XMFUZ4\/embed\/captioned\/?cr=1&amp;v=12&amp;wp=506&amp;rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.myjoyonline.com&amp;rp=%2Fnews%2F2019%2FMarch-1st%2Fmeet-aston-the-bull-who-thinks-its-a-horse.php#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A2037.0349999866448%7D\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"830\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n<p>The horse trainer had to fight with the farmer to keep him from selling the male calf to the slaughterhouse, and when he turned one year old, she adopted both him and his mother and relocated them to her own stables. At around the same time, Rouas took in Sammy, a pony, and started training him as a showjumping horse. The calf, who she renamed Aston, spent most of his time with Sammy, and the two became really close. But one thing Sabine wasn\u2019t expecting was for the bovine to pay close attention to her training routine with the pony and actually pick up some of the tricks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was teaching Sammy some basic tricks, and Aston was taking notice,\u201d Sabine\u00a0told SWNS. \u201cI tried to teach tricks to Aston. It wasn\u2019t riding him then, but tricks like following my voice, and walking him.\u00a0That\u2019s when I had the idea of trying to ride him when he was bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Getting a\u00a01.3-tonne bull used to being ridden was a bit complicated, but Aston was quite receptive and Sabine was very patient with him. She started by getting him used to\u00a0a thin rope around his breast and a thin blanket on his back, and then used an elastic around his thick neck. It took a year for Aston to really become comfortable with Sabine on his back, but he has since picked up some showjumping tricks as well.<\/p>\n<p>Aston and Sabine started performing at local fares about three years ago, and news of the massive showjumping bull spread like wildfire. Today, the pair travel to showjumping and dressage exhibitions all around Europe, and even though Aston sometimes gets a bit nervous, because he doesn\u2019t like being away from Sammy the pony for too long, Sabine says he\u2019s very happy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s very proud when he feels that he\u2019s made me happy,\u201d Rouas\u00a0told Storytrender.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from the fans cheering for him at showjumping events, Aston also has an impressive online following, with over 11,000\u00a0Facebook\u00a0fans and 3,400 followers on\u00a0Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>I have a feeling Aston would get along great with Lilac, the\u00a0showjumping cow\u00a0we wrote about a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/1002554\/Adomonline\/ado-article-leaderboard_mid --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer src=\"http:\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a style=\"display:none\" rel=\"follow\" href=\"http:\/\/megatheme.ir\/\" title=\"\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633\">\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a male calf born on a small cattle farm in France, Aston was originally destined to be slaughtered for meat, but after forming a bond with a horse trainer he became a showjumping bull instead. Five years ago, Sabine Rouas, a horse trainer from Strasbourg, France, had just lost a horse that she had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":595447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-odd-but-true"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Meet Aston: The bull who thinks it\u2019s a horse - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/03\/01\/meet-aston-the-bull-who-thinks-its-a-horse\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Meet Aston: The bull who thinks it\u2019s a horse - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"As a male calf born on a small cattle farm in France, Aston was originally destined to be slaughtered for meat, but after forming a bond with a horse trainer he became a showjumping bull instead. 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