Nature
PUBLISHED
Parks and Rec fans rejoice – L’il Sebastian might be gone (always in our hearts), but we bring to you an even tinier horse to obsess over, with an equally glorious mane and a lovable personality: Pumuckel, the world’s shortest living horse.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.To say this horse is tiny is not an overstatement; Pumuckel is just 52.6 centimeters (20.7 inches) to his withers (the ridge between a horse’s shoulder blades). That’s a fair bit shorter than the average 1-year-old human, and well under a quarter of the size of the tallest horse ever documented, Sampson, who measured in at 2.19 meters (7 feet, 2 inches).
Pumuckel nabbed the crown from Bombel, a miniature Appaloosa from Poland who stands at 56.7 centimeters (22 inches) – but neither of them qualifies for the title of shortest horse ever documented, which goes to a 44.5-centimeter (18 inches) tall miniature sorrel brown with the most appropriate name of Thumbelina, who died in 2018.
As a Shetland pony, Pumuckel was always going to be on the smaller size compared to some horses, but his owner, Carola Weidemann, told Guinness World Records that his particularly teeny tiny stature was a “quirk of nature” rather than the result of deliberately breeding him to be so wee.
Weidemann first came across Pumuckel back in 2020, when she was looking for small horses that could work as therapy animals. By chance, an acquaintance rang her to say he had one such horse.
“I drove over, took a look at him and was truly, completely shocked. I had never seen such a small, little horse before,” Weidemann said. “He was just five months old at the time, and believe it or not, only 47 cm tall and, I think, didn’t even weigh 20 kilograms yet.”
Weidemann took him in in October, and while he hasn’t exactly grown much in height in the five years since, this short king still has a big personality. Pumuckel apparently “loves being the centre of attention,” and he’s got a pretty ideal job in that case, spending his time as a trained therapy horse visiting nursing homes, hospices, kindergartens, schools, and facilities for people with disabilities.
In his time off from being a very helpful lil guy, Pumuckel chills out in the meadow with the other therapy horses at Weidemann’s farm in Germany, and likes to chow down on mash, hay, carrots, and apples. Sounds pretty dreamy.
