"Fake spooking" spin off

[J-Lu]

I like your response.

My horse, Sir SpooksAlot, can do a really hard spook when he’s actually afraid. Which is a hassle - I love silicone full-seat breeches but man, my back isn’t pleased. But he’s learned that a mild spook is something that can get him out of work (or so he thinks). Actually, he’s a very hypervigilant horse and is usually looking for things that are “out of place”, according to him. He’s gone in the same arena for 10 years and still spooks in the same place (at something he sees in the distance beyond the gate) or if something is out of place. Similar to your horse, he spooks less when his tasks by the gate are hard and he really has to pay attention or I do something like comb my inside leg or spur and he says “what’s that?” and puts an ear on me. I always praise him when he puts an ear from strongly on “that” to on me. He learns to pay attention because the spooking doesn’t get him out of work and will make him circle around and around and do stuff (even walk and turning patterns) in that same scary place. But at the same time, I don’t want to punish him for spooking because he actually spooks sometimes and I can feel his heartbeat. I know that is genuine. I want him to pay attention and have confidence in me rather than something he sees outside of the arena. It’s been a long haul but the training has worked.

I do what you do.

[tbchick84]

LOL Sir SpooksAlot. Great nickname. Mine is Mr ChickenSh#t. It sounds like we have very similar horses. I’ve ridden out some wicked spooks over the years. I’m more bothered by the whiplash than in my back. More recently my luck ran out and he got me off with a rather spectacular teleport spook. I’m home now healing the leg. It’ll be full seat breeches going forward for me. I’m getting too old for this crap.

[endlessclimb]

Try one thing at a time. My mare is the same way, but improving with consistency. She will always have a big random spook in her though,and as it gets more infrequent she will be more likely to deck me, not less.

[atr]

Mine is much worse if he’s sore anywhere.

When it goes from being the occasional “this work is harder than I want to do today” or “oh, a bird, let me show you my half-Arab side” spook, to spooks in every corner and every dressage pylon and every pass by the mounting block, I know its time to break out the Osphos and Adequan.

[J-Lu]

I think we do have the same horse! He has for sure mellowed over time and with training but he could be Mr. ChickenSh#t2. He still spooks at the same damned place in the arena, but at 14, it doesn’t have the same sudden drop, whirl and bolt as it did when he was younger. And I’ve developed an attitude of “we’re circling and I’ll die trying but you WILL go past this freakin’ gate you totally know and have ridden beyond”. I think me determination that “your behavior is dumb and you will go past this gate normally” (with stronger aids) but not punishing him for spooking has been the key to my success and physical well being. I tripped over a dog last month that silently laid at my feet while I had a wine glass in hand and people were impressed I fell to the concrete floor and rolled without breaking the wine glass. I learned that skill from Sir SpooksAlot.

Silicone full-seats are the only thing I ride in now. They are extremely sticky at first but it does wear away over time and gives you grip when you really need it. I’m also getting too old for this crap! Hahahaha!

[tbchick84]

Thankfully mine is a TB and never learned how to drop his shoulder like those QHs can do. I’ve been playing the game with him for 16 years. He’s 21 now and you’d think he’d grow tired of it. A clinician once told me he has a sadistic sense of humor. Perhaps he’s right.

His most recent episode, and the one that finally caught me off guard, was after we had finished some very nice ring work. I was about him to take him around a field to let him stretch out. I foolishly dropped the reins down to the buckle, he deduced there was a monster over there, squealed, turned inside out and there was a horse suddenly not underneath me. I had my arm stretched out as far as I could and still couldn’t reach his mane. I won’t be dropping my guard again.

I was trying to explain the term “teleport spook” to the doctor. I heard a nurse outside of room giggle. Sure enough, she rides.

[mdp9]

I have seen lesson horses fake spook once they have assessed their rider is not up to the level they want them to be.

[J-Lu]

Sir SpooksAlot is a warmblood. He’s landed me in the hospital and Urgent Care. I usually reward him with loose reins but my “brother from another mother” doesn’t frequently spook on a loose rein and I gather the reins when both of his ears pitch very strongly to something. I’ve learned. I have a panic strap on the pommel of my saddle that I like to remember to grab. It is not in my muscle memory.

Unless you’ve ridden a horse like this, you haven’t ridden a horse like this.

[prunebey]

I have a mare similar to this. She’s a seventeen year old QH with a lot of working cow blood which makes it really easy for her to get down and out quickly lol. While I know her well enough to identify most triggers, she also frequently lulls me into a false sense of calm and security before spinning and bolting without warning. She is mostly quite lazy and goes around like a little pleasure horse…until she doesn’t. I have found that a sound blocking ear bonnet actually helps her immensely! I think it dulls external stimuli just enough that she focuses more on the task at hand. It’s not foolproof, but it has helped. She pretty much refuses to eat any calming supplement so I can’t give advice there lol.

[Mustang_Levi]

Thank you so much Prunebey! It’s frustrating to get comments where it seems people just think I"m an inexperienced horsewoman. I have ridden all my life-eventing, dressage, hunter-jumper. I know how to ride! But you can relate to how difficult it is to sit a quick QH who “lulls you into a false sense of calm…” Exactly!!! Finally, someone who “gets it”! I challenge anyone to sit that type of “spook”. And my QH also “gets down and out quick”-a real cutting horse manuver. I love your suggestion of an ear bonnet or maybe ear plugs. I keep thinking this horse just needs to block out some of that outer stimulation-he acts like he’s on speed when he gets anxious. And like you say, otherwise, a nice little pleasure horse who is a joy to ride when not worked up. Thank you - your post made my day!

[xQHDQ]

I have found that horses are more spooky when they have pain somewhere or when they get tired. Of course, they are also more spooky when they are not really through. I don’t consider these instances “false spooks” but they are not at anything in particular (like the cat jumping off the ledge), so I can see how someone would call them “false”. However, horses see/hear differently than us, so I’m sure they see something, just not anything that would bother them if they were not in pain, not tired, or they were listening to their rider. The original query seems it’s more a semantics issue rather than a horse issue.

[Curly_Feather]

I’ve really enjoyed reading this discussion. Spooky behaviour is one thing I don’t want to deal with. My neck is just too fragile and normal safe riding is enough of a risk for me.

My gelding’s version of a spook is a weird drop-step with his front legs, which bangs my very sensitive bony undercarriage bits against the pommel. HATE that move, but at least he’s too lazy to actually spin and run.
In our many years together, he’s only properly spun and taken off (3 or 4 strides max) a handful of times. But he’s built for comfort, not for speed, so it’s more like a canter pirouette stride that is easy to stay on (*touch wood).

[Montanas_Girl]

@prunebey

She is mostly quite lazy and goes around like a little pleasure horse…until she doesn’t.

I’ve noticed that this is quite common in QHs, a lot of warm bloods, and other stoic types. They internalize whatever kind of stress they are feeling until it builds up and then…bam. Explosion “out of nowhere”.

My Arabians wear their emotions on their sleeves, for better or worse. They may be more reactive to seemingly benign stimuli, but at least they never take me by surprise!

[prunebey]

That’s why I love Arabs so much . My retired mare isn’t spooky to begin with, but she also never faked me out. I was going to know immediately if she was bothered haha.

[IndysMom]

The worst “stop, drop and roll” I ever had was a TB chestnut mare who was 16.3 and wire an 84 blanket. (Stop, drop the left shoulder and bolt at mach speed) I think I spent as much time coming off as I did staying on! She was amazingly good at having a good ride and then spook without warning while “relaxing”.

I finally donated her when she was 8ish. Years later when she was 21 I found out she was still doing it…

[J-Lu]

I have a “spooky” horse. I rode with a trainer from Germany who pointed out that my horse was not spooky. He proved this be taking his glove off quickly an lobbing it at my horse’s face. My horse just blinked in disbelief. “See, your horse isn’t spooky”. After 3 days of watching him go and react (and riding him, and working with us in his last 3-day clinic), he explained that he’s hypervigilant - always on alert and looking for danger. That predisposes him to finding danger. Not unlike a stallion. He rides stallions and gave me some tips to better ride this horse.

Perhaps your horse is hypervigilant also. Going just fine until he spots something that is not fine, to him, and he reacts. When my horse was younger, he’d react to shadows, changes in footing from dirt to grass (I’m not kidding), things that were unusually light colored and things unusually dark colored… None of this was fake spooking. I had his eyes specifically checked. I could feel his heart beat, or not.

I had/have your horse. I get the duck and whirl and bolt.

I ended up sending my guy to a Natural Horsemanship trainer who did dressage lessons with a noteable founder of USDF. He trained in a bunch of groundwork that I use to this day, 10 years later. It instilled that I am the heard leader and boss mare - pay attention to me. Period. I don’t accept anything else but his attention and 90% of the time it works. He’s a mental busy-body and I sometimes have to work at it, but I revert to excercises the NH guy taught us and that seems to be a zone of comfort for him - he long knows these exercises. Over time, I’ve become boss mare and he looks to me for comfort but that has taken work to explain that I am boss mare and that horse or situation over there doesn’t matter. He largely understands now and follows my lead. He’ll always be hypervigilant but he’s come to listen to me even if I have to really enforce that he listens to me (with the leg or whip, grabbing his attention). You don’t have to whip hard (unless needed) just rub the whip on his body to say “hey, your attention should be here and not there, I’m talking to you”.

I have a brother from another mother and have worked on a lot of this. Feel free to PM me for specifics.

[Mustang_Levi]

Hi J-Lu, always find your posts interesting. My spooky QH stopped eating a few days ago. Thought it was start of colic, but Vet now thinks it’s gastric ulcers. Have you dealt with that and spooky horse(s)? Or perhaps ulcers is the result of a highly sensitive horse inclined to scare easily. Now we are doing a 7 day treatment of GastroGuard at $40 a tube (once a day) along with Sucralfate tablets (also not cheap). I figure it will be about $1,000 for the month of treatment. I’m so stressed I think I’m going to get ulcers next!!!

[LCDR]

With apologies to those who do not anthropomorphize, but that is what much horse humor is based on.

[J-Lu]

Uuuuuuggghhhhhh! Ulcers. I’m sorry.

Shortly after my hot mess of a youngster turned 4, I had him scoped for ulcers. The vet and I thought he’d have major bloody ulcers based on his behavior. The vet let me watch the camera and he had no ulcers intially… She found one set of mild ulcers removing the endoscope (pointed them out to me) and since he was insured, we opted to treat him for 6 weeks. 4 weeks of the full dose and a 2 week tapering dose. I learned 2 things. 1) Somehow, my 4 year old horse who got nervous/spooked if you brushed the outside of one leg and then (!) reached underneath to brush the inside of the other leg (I’m not kidding - he didn’t understand at the time how his body was all connected) had guts of steel and 2) he was forever excluded from ulcer treatment by my insurance company after that. So I don’t think ulcers are always connected to spookiness (it wasn’t with mine as a 4 year old mess) but it certainly can be with others. My horse has never had an issue with eating. We had to pump calories into him as a hot youngster. Now he just gets balancer. He’s also in his own personal 1+ acre pasture 24/7, which he likes. He arrived at this 24/7 turnout situation (except for inclement weather - everyone has a dedicated stall) as a late 4 year old and it seemed to really suit him (spent nights in a stall since a yearling, maybe his whole life).

Treating ulcers is not cheap!! I know. At the time, I’d supplement his hay with a flake of alfalfa. Alfalfa is rich in calcium, a positively-charged cation that helps buffer stomach acid. I supplemented his winter hay with alfalfa for years after that and spent money to analyze the grass in the pasture. I created a balanced diet for him. For a while, I would grind human calcium/zinc pills and add that to his feed based on diet analysis. I don;t know if it did anything but it made me feel happy.

Ask your vet about introducing some alfalfa hay. Not only is it good for horses with ulcers, it’s very palatable to most horses and will get them to eat. Ask about adding ground calcium alone or calcium/zinc to his food for now to help him through this stress period where he’s not eating.

Report back!

[Mustang_Levi]

This is so helpful! I am new to ulcers. Talk about expensive! I went to pick up a week’s dose today at my Vet’s and the bill for a 7 day treatment was $266. (He did say I need to do the 4 week plan). That’s $38 a dose for one syringe of GastroGuard. Plus more $$ for 2 bottles of sucralfate which has to be given 4x/day. And he doesn’t want to eat, so getting the pills down his throat has been horrible. And Vet says “only on an empty stomach.” I’m trying to figure out how to give 4x a day on an empty stomach and still try to feed him! He also said alfalfa would be preferred over the grass hay I’ve been feeding, as you say, plus turn out on grass-same as you. I had pulled him off grass because he had laminitis a few years ago, so I’m ultra careful about “rich” foods, like grass and alfalfa! Now the thing I’ve stopped giving him is suppose to help his stomach issues! Ai yi yi! I like your suggestion of adding ground calcium . I am committed to the 4 week treatment, but groan at the cost-and that he may get ulcers again down the road-that’s almost $1,000 a month for treatment. Ugh. I guess what I’d like to ask you is, does your sensitive horse get ulcers again after treating them, or have the diet adjustments and adding calcium helped keep him from developing ulcers again? Thank you for all your help!!!