Such a brave horse!! Silly boy.
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My own experience with a TB and donkeys.
When we were stationed in AZ, I was out riding down one of the little dirt roads that surrounded our barn. We had taken this route many times before, nothing but fields/mesquite trees bordering the road. As we were passing a field, suddenly there were two donkeys there who hadn’t been there before.
My horse spotted them before I did. Stopped with head in air about 50 yards from them, snorting. I petted him to calm him. No go. He whirled 180 degrees and attempted to bolt. I turned him back. Five minutes of backing, half rearing, spinning ensued. He was in a total panic.
Luckily, a friend appeared, driving towards the barn. I asked if she would try leading him towards the donkeys. Five more minutes of panic, we finally got him about 20 yards from the donkeys, and I told her I would take it from there.
I spent the next 2 weeks going past that field every day, telling him we would continue doing it until he could be a sensible boy. It worked, but I had some…interesting rides those 2 weeks. 
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Finally caught the donkey owner at a good time and she was happy to let my horse get up close to them.
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That’s great!!
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Excellent update!! Also, his tail is fabulous!!
Also also… is that a traffic bridge above the arena??? Is there a highway beside it? I feel like those aspects must add another layer of unpredictability to the daily mix!
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Yes and yes! Along the trail, you’ll pass by a dog park, a skateboard park, little league/soccer fields, and a lunatic or two.
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Love the videos!
Horse: What the heck are you guys?
Donkey: Quit sniffing my butt! We’re not dogs, you know!
Rebecca
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Hahahaaa!
Late to this thread but my riding horse also has a fear of donkeys, mules and minis. He does so much better if he can sniff them and most owners say “yea, this happens with lots of horses. Sure your horse can sniff my Fill_in_the_blank”. That has really helped. He’s so much better if he can put his nose on something and is crazy fearful if he can’t or won’t. They’re weird.
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Final update:
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BORED BY DONKEYS
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Awww. 
Is it tacky to say, “I told you so?” 
They all get over it eventually.
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For the future, usually horses will be very leery of anything that smells different that they haven’t been exposed to previously.
99.9% of the time it will resolve within a few days - your biggest thing to watch for is a dumb horse on day one who is so panicked, it decides to forego self preservation and run through/over existing fencing. The original video posted just shows a horse who is on alert, which is super tame all things considered.
Donkeys, cattle, pigs, goats… even mini horses to those that haven’t been exposed will all elicit suspicion initially - and then usually, usually, the horses will realize that the offending animal is more scared of them than they are of it and find it fun to push them around like the OP’s horse is doing in the mid October videos.
(As an aside, those are some cute donkeys! I love that the BO bought a pair - they always do best having someone of their own kind around. )
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Even other horses that “move funny”.
Our Region III Connemara show is run at the Virginia Horse Center, and there is often a Paso Fino show the same weekend. Some of our Connemaras really freak out when the Pasos ride by- “It LOOKS like a horse, it SMELLS like a horse, but it doesn’t MOVE like a horse!”
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My old barrel horse used to be so confused by them. Their legs are moving so fast but they aren’t really going anywhere. We rode with one on a trail ride a few times and my horse would speed up, then get way ahead, and stop to look back like “why is he still way back there??” 
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I’ll never forget the time my previous horse threw a twisting buck in response to a pair of Pasos.
My retired horse totally lost it with the pigs. I have been told that since pigs will eat meat that horses view them as predators.
Funny story: I took my horse on a hack around the property after not riding for a few days. I made the mistake of going near the freezer pigs. He was a bit upset. A horse in a paddock next to us galloped down. My horse decided Hi-ho Silver was the correct response. BO was yelling loose horse before I fell off. I yelled back, I am still on. I eventually hit the dirt but never let go of him. Once I hit the ground he was like what are you doing down there and chilled out. He never became a loose horse.
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A couple of mine think that gaited horses sound funny on trail and don’t trust the gaited horses to be behind them. Which makes trail rides fun when my mom brings her gaited horse to visit. It’s all good at the walk but when we pick up a trot and she starts gaiting you’d think that monsters were after them.
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My former neighbor’s elderly mare did this when she “met” my mini-donkey. I say “met” because he didn’t get within 100 feet of her before she bolted and went straight through a gate another 100 feet away. That’s how we learned neighbor couldn’t board him for me while I traveled. It was sad because he is the sweetest, most chill donkey ever and he seemed so confused about what he might have done to offend her.
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Our horses got used to the donkeys fairly quickly but there were some initial, ‘What the…’ moments when they first saw our baby jack. He won them over and my daughter’s mare fell in love with the mini donks who shared her space. She mothered them and although she could be a gigantic boss, she was so dear with those two minis.
However, when our neighbor’s baby longhorns got loose in our suburban town and wound up in our pasture for a week while the owner tried to figure out how to get them home, it was a different story. The horses were not having it at all. That was a rough week.
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