[QUOTE=Kitari;8157694]
Poco spooked and a republican political sign once. I think she decided she is a democrat.[/QUOTE]
Not a spook, but a horse I had leased out killed the poor lady’s chicken named Obama… I don’t think our horses would get along much :lol:
A pole. The FOURTEENTH time we rode past it.
Someone opening a tape measure.
A wheelbarrow near the door of the barn. You’d think it was a mountain lion with all the snorting, eye rolling, stamping…it’s a wheelbarrow.
[QUOTE=Kitari;8157694]
Poco spooked and a republican political sign once. I think she decided she is a democrat.[/QUOTE]
Same thing, back in Fall 2008. My horse spooked at a McCain yard sign, but not an Obama yard sign.
ETA: I think the actual reason for the difference is that the McCain sign was shiny and white, so it reflected light weirdly. The Obama sign was blue and not shiny.
A box. About 8" x8" x8". After I finally got him to approach it, I gave it to him and he picked it up and waved it around for about fifteen minutes. How to get out of work…
A toad that ribbetted and hopped 6 inches. What made it worse was that we had just been in the arena and stood there while a dump truck dumped a load of sand about 20 feet away from him. He didn’t care about that…just stood there. Then I rode him out of the arena, and got about 40 feet past the gate and a toad hopped. All 4 of Jet’s legs went 4 different directions, and he got about 2 feet lower to the ground. Apparently toads eat horses and are to be feared!
With a previous horse I owned, my grandfather had mowed the grass in the field the horse lived in with the horse in the pasture while mowing. This was no big deal until the next day when the previously cut green grass was now yellow…
With my current mare, I forgot to latch the arena gate that we go through to enter/exit the arena every stinking time we ride as well as lead her through to go to the grooming area. The wind blew the gate open while I was riding… she spooked/spun/bolted so hard/fast that she almost fell… I am still not sure how I stayed on.
Gunshots – wayy away (on another property). He rears and bucks and gets completely hysterical. Hunting season (we are by a state forest) is not fun.
My old pony is pretty bombproof, but I was trail riding her one day and she spooked at a pine tree which was waving slightly differently than the other trees. She also spooks at mini horses - there was one in the arena we were schooling in one day and she would not go anywhere near him. It didn’t help that the poor guy kept whinnying, trying to make friends. It looked like a horse…but it wasn’t a horse.
[QUOTE=TheHotSensitiveType;8158026]
With a previous horse I owned, my grandfather had mowed the grass in the field the horse lived in with the horse in the pasture while mowing. This was no big deal until the next day when the previously cut green grass was now yellow…[/QUOTE]
Oh, wow! I’d completely forgotten about it, but I had exactly the same experience with a TB I used to own, the day after the field next to his was bush-hogged for the first time! He spent 10 minutes snorting and dashing up and down the fenceline, staring at the drying grass. :lol:
There’s the day not long after I got him that we explored down a new trail that ended by a lovely pond with a pair of ducks floating. The ducks did nothing. He, however, jumped sideways out from under me and I watched his Paint butt booking it up the slope. Fortunately he was in Natural Balance shoes so I was able to watch his tracks to make sure he made the turn towards home. Shortly thereafter I heard the (hung over) b/o calling my name from further up the trail.
It was the first of many, many spooks…
My old mare spooked at a duck. The only time I ever promptly fell off her. FWIW, I said “BOO” jokingly and rubbed her withers. Clearly I was asking for a freak out from my otherwise nearly bombproof pony.
New guy spooked sideways on his second ever trail ride when a riding buddy opened her velcro phone case to take a picture of how cute he was. :no:
Musta bin a great pic!
[QUOTE=Ambitious Kate;8158080]
Musta bin a great pic![/QUOTE]
I wish she would have gotten it, but instead her horse ran into a street sign. It was an interesting trail ride.
My horse is a something-changed-in-my-environment spooker. I moved the mounting block ten feet to the right. My horse saw me move it. Snort-wheel-bolt. :rolleyes:
And he’s firmly convinced that the neighbors’ very sweet pet goats are planning to murder us all in our sleep. When I lead him past the goats, Vee will puff himself up and place himself between me and the goats, every muscle on alert for danger.
Totally on me, back in the day when helmets had no chinstrap, jumped my TB & he “cracked his back” (really good bascule) over the fence so hard my helmet came off.
And bonked him right between the ears.
He landed & buck/spooked then carried on like nothing had happened.
Same TB would jump shadows in the indoor & tall grass at the edge of a mowed field.
The World was his Hunt Field.
And then there was the time I took him on trails with a friend who wanted her horse to get used to going out.
Came to a field we crossed routinely solo all the time.
Except this time it contained a large herd of grazing deer.
Horse planted & stood shaking.
I could feel his heart pounding through my legs.
That lasted maybe 30sec, then he did the Whirl/Bolt 180.
Fortunately Newbie horse did not lose his stuff, so my big chicken calmed down instead of making for home.
Sheep. We rode by a flock of white faced sheep that peacefully grazed near the road every day. He never even looked at them. One cool spring day the lambs were playing as we went by. He totally freaked out at the lambs bouncing around in the field. I guess he never realized that the sheep moved.
[QUOTE=californianinkansas;8158101]
My horse is a something-changed-in-my-environment spooker. I moved the mounting block ten feet to the right. My horse saw me move it. Snort-wheel-bolt. :rolleyes:
And he’s firmly convinced that the neighbors’ very sweet pet goats are planning to murder us all in our sleep. When I lead him past the goats, Vee will puff himself up and place himself between me and the goats, every muscle on alert for danger.[/QUOTE]
mine is like that too!
we have a rock wall that spans the entire of our property - old property line from the farming days of the 1800s - now we abutt two large farms that generously let us hack on their dirt roads adjacent the fields. to get to it you have to step over the rock wall, which is not big - maybe 6-12 inches wide and at most, 1 foot tall - easy to step over.
well, i moved ONE rock over to make passing easier . ONE!! not even a big one, but enough that the rock wall looked ‘different’. forgot about it until the next time i rode over it, and sure enough my horse goes up to it as if everything was normal and at the last minute whirled back and snorted, backpedaling faster than he trots… apparently that one rock held together the entire construction of his universe… and moving it stopped the planet from revolving…
My mare is now 17 years old and as a former race horse is not scared of a lot of things, but will / has spooked from various seemingly innocuous items, such as…
-The barn watering hose on the ground - sometimes it moves when someone is pulling on it at the other end. Not to be trusted.
patches of fresh snow in the ring especially those lurking in the jumps’ shadows. They weren’t there yesterday!
the measuring stick. aaargh mom what are you trying to do to meeeee (this is a horse who doesn’t flinch when given a shot, when I pull her up to any biggish object so I can get on, when I vacuum her, etc etc)
Lone boulders and logs. Horse-eating things lie in wait. Not to be trusted at all. If worst comes to worst they are to be jumped over with lots and LOTS of clearance, just in case.
her own hoof prints on wet sand, on the beach. Those are tough, because, how do you get away from them? Hahaha. I felt like I was in a Thelwell drawing.
All these made me realize (and onlookers) very early on that Mare is VERY quick and VERY athletic! And who ever said, this is where you learn to laugh at your horse, is right. This mare makes me laugh every day.
My old show horse would jump ANYTHING in an arena without even a second glance. Out on the trail however, natural obstacles were not to be trusted. Apparently, you are supposed to go up to them with LOTS of authority as if to attack them and then launch as high over them as possible and scoot away on the other side. I miss him so much, he was the best horse ever and I would give anything to experience that silliness again.
Another horse I have is absolutely TERRIFIED of plastic bags. He ran through 2 fences and down the road for 2 miles when one flapped in the wind.
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