House horse

Rowan is a lot like a dog. She sleeps next to her owners' bed, she weighs about a hundred pounds and she takes baths in the bathtub. She rides in the back of an SUV, and she even has a doggy door. But Rowan is not a dog. Rowan is a horse. Mike and Jodi Thorn of Belgrade prefer horses to dogs, and Jodi grew up training them in Minnesota. But now, living on an acre of land, their options and their stables are limited. Enter Rowan, a tan 30-inch miniature horse whose long tail brushes the floor as she clops across the kitchen. She joined the Thorn family in 2008 and is like a little sister to their four boys, Mike said. "People who don't know about her walk into the house and are a little shocked," Jodi said. "They usually think she's a dog." "Some people ask if she's real," Mike said. Miniature horses are not ponies. The Thorns joke that ponies are uglier and meaner, whereas miniature horses have been bred over time from fullsized ones and are more affectionate. They live as long as horses, too about 25 to 35 years. In fact, looking at the 2-year-old Rowan, it's as if she is a normal-sized horse and everything around her is just ... bigger. Besides lying on the sofa, Rowan enjoys being a horse, as well. She grazes in the yard, pulls the kids in a wagon and she can be fast when she wants to, running along the fence with the neighbors' dogs, Jodi said.