Phrase origin: Piss like a racehorse

[Frumpy_Jones]

At lunch today, one of my fellow workers uttered he had to “piss like a (chineese) racehorse”.

This led us to talk about it’s origin. my WAG was that racehorse, either before or after a race, empty their bladders and do so for a long time…

But I need DEFINITIVE answers… Not some silly WAG (Which, by the way, mine have hit at 96% recently).

So, help me out TM’s…

I thank you in adnvance for your big brains.

[BobT]

Race horses are conditioned not to pee before a race. Have you ever seen a horse on the way to the starting gate pissing on the track? I don’t think so.

However, the trainers let them go when the race is over. And when a horse (or really any large mammal) has to go, it’s quite the multimedia experience, sight and sound.

I believe a related phrase is one my father uses “raining like a cow pissing on a rock”.

[Frumpy_Jones]

I apologize for all the typos in my question.

[Doctor_Goo_Fee]

I find it hard to believe-- as BobT asserts-- that racehorses have been conditioned not to pee before a race.

I thought that racehorses, in fact, “piss like a racehorse” before a race in order to be at the lowest possible weight before running a race.

And why do racehorses pee so much? Well, for one, because they are such a large animal. So then, why not just the expression “piss like a (plain old)horse”?

Because-- racehorses are often doped up with diuretics (such as Lasix) precisely so that they will piss off the maximum amount of their water weight before a race.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

Horse-crazy little girl here.

Eh, Bob, I have never heard of racehorses being “conditioned” to pee or not to pee (that is the question…) This would seem to presuppose that you can housebreak horses, i.e. train them when and where to relieve themselves, and you can’t. The reason you can housebreak dogs and cats is because you’re making use of their instinct to mark territory, and not to soil their dens. Horses, however, being free-roaming herbivores, don’t have this same sort of instinct, so you can’t really housebreak them.

Yes, yes, I know, the story of Misha the Fabulous Housetrained Horse is widely posted all over the Web. If you go back and read the original story, you’ll see that the owner trained herself to let the horse out every 4 hours to pee and poop.

http://www.petsmart.com/acme_pet/features/pets___their_people/articles/article_4206.shtml

Housebreaking her was easy. Every four hours, day and night, I led her outside, urging her to “poop” and “pee.” As soon as she did, I brought her back indoors and rewarded her with a cookie, apple, or (her favorite) a cream-filled donut. My husband built and attached a horse-sized porch onto our kitchen, then invented a double-swinging door that Misha could push open to go in and out. By the time she was 18 months old, she had mastered the concept of letting herself out through her door when she needed to do her “business.”

What she has here is not a horse that is really housetrained–she has a horse who learned that if she went out through the door and relieved herself, she would receive a treat. I would also be very interested in knowing just exactly how long it took her to teach the horse this–I’m betting it took months, but that Misha learned her lesson very, very well, because 12 years later, she’s still hopefully doing her “trick” for a reward. Horses are like that. I would also like to know how many “accidents” Misha has had that somehow didn’t get mentioned in the website. A dog that is truly housebroken, on the other hand, will go through incredible agonies to hold it and avoid soiling the den.

But the thing is, Misha’s results aren’t reproducible. There’s no pet-owners body of knowledge concerning “housebreaking horses” the way there’s a body of knowledge for “housebreaking cats and dogs”. Misha is a very unique horse. Nobody else that I know of has ever been able to get a horse to do this.

And sometimes a person, with a tremendous amount of effort can get a miniature horse, the really teeny ones that live indoors, to behave as though it were housebroken. This usually involves the person being extremely alert to when the horse needs to relieve itself, and hustling it over to the agreed-upon location in time.

There is only one person on the Web that I found who says you can housetrain a miniature horse, but upon reading her, I see that she’s really training the person to be alert to when the horse needs to go, and taking it outside in time.

http://www.guidehorse.com/press_vetcentric.htm

And yes, it is possible to housebreak a miniature horse, in much the same way that one would litter-train a cat, Ms. Burleson said. Horses aren’t able to wait as long as other animals between “bathroom breaks,” though, she said—they’ll need to go outside every couple of hours.

Otherwise, it’s diapers.

http://www.king5.com/localnews/storydetail.html?StoryID=5434

Of course, with that comes a stable of problems – not the least of which is how does one housebreak a horse?

The answer: an adult Depends diaper. “It’s to keep her from soiling the carpets, so when she goes into restaurants, she’ll know that she can’t do it there,” King explained

This was the only stuff I could find under “racehorse urinate”.

http://www.backyardracehorse.com/BYfourAsk.html

The second duty of the state barn at Tampa Bay Downs is to verify the collection of all post-race urine/blood samples. After each race, usually the first and second finishers are taken to the state barn , and the horses are encouraged to donate a urine sample so that the sample may be shipped to the state lab in Tallahassee for analysis.

http://www.paper-horse.com/askthevet/pdpu2.htm

. (One of the most reliable times to collect a urine sample from a horse is when you return the horse to a freshly bedded stall.

http://www.theindependent.com/stories/031900/fea_fonner0319.html

The winning horse and jockey don’t have much time to relish their victory. The top two horses from each race must head to the test barn near Thompson Arena to have their urine or blood tested for illegal drugs and levels of legal drugs.

After the horses take a walk to cool down, one of three employees will collect a urine sample from the horse in a stall, Larsen’s co-worker Jill Brester of Howells says.

If a urine sample is not collected within an hour and a half, blood will be taken instead, she says.

Basically, you just stand there with a container and wait for the horse to pee. And here’s where we address the OP.

Most racehorses are male. When a male horse urinates, he needs to let his penis drop down out of the sheath. So he gets this big THING hanging down there, and then he pees. Man, does he ever pee. He pees a river, a lake, an ocean. Racetrack touts leaning on the fence would naturally be impressed by this, and to city kids like them, a racehorse would be the only equine they would ever have had any contact with. Hence the saying, “To pee like a racehorse”, rather than “pee like a plowhorse” or “pee like a carriage horse”.

[galt]

A good friend of mine used to work as a courier for a lab which did the drug testing on the urine samples from the win, place and show horses at the local racetrack. He says that the horses were conditioned to the sound of a particular whistle, and they would piss on command when a cup (on a long stick) was placed under them and the whistle blown.

I did some Google searches to see if I could find documentation or mention of this practice, and didn’t find anything.

[Badtz_Maru]

I always heard the phrase ‘Piss like a Russian racehorse’. Nice alliterative ring to that…

[padabe]

but I practically grew up on the racetrack.

Thoroughbreds are not given any water before they race. In fact, back in the day, if you wanted to fix a race by slowing a horse down, you would give that horse a bucket of water right before the race. If a horse is thirsty, they’ll drink 5 gallons at once (not good).

Horses can be conditioned to urinate on command to some extent. If the horse doesn’t have to go, you can whistle until you’re blue in the face and it won’t have any effect. However, if the groom is willing to put in the effort, the horse can be relaxed enough by whistling to let it go at an opportune time. Not sure I’d refer to this as housebreaking, though - they don’t live your house.

As BobT said, it really is a multimedia experience. I’m not sure why the phrase would be “racehorse.” My best guess would be that it’s a phrase orginated by racetrackers. They really do have some colorfully descriptive phrases.

Now, why a Chinese racehorse??

[funneefarmer]

Check out a previous thread.

[BiblioCat]

*Originally posted by Badtz Maru *
**I always heard the phrase ‘Piss like a Russian racehorse’. Nice alliterative ring to that… **

I always thought it was rushin’ racehorse. I assumed he was rushing to get to the finish line so he could pee.
Oh, what the hell do I know…

[Cartooniverse]

I’ve had the unique chance that very few get. I have walked ON the track next to the horses during the Post Parade at Triple Crown races. While I don’t remember seeing any piss during the Post Parade, they sure let loose IMMEDIATELY before in the outdoor Paddock areas. ( Just to lay to rest the idea that you can train a horse not to piss before a big race. I believe the Kentucky Derby is about as Big Race as it gets in the United States).

Lawdy, do they go. And go. And go. Volume AND force!!! Impressive, if such things impress you.

Cartooniverse

[plnnr]

A neighbor of my parents used to raise Arabian horses and I was present during a semen collection procedure for use in artificial insemination. I can personally attest to the fact that urine isn’t the only thing stallions produce in volume and force. OH MY GOD!