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Near Trainwrecks, Bullets Dodged, And Lessons Learned - Please Share!

fyi have seen this happen with woven-wire no climb horse fencing…

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the no climb wire we got I guess they could but it is woven not wielded, our others are V Mesh which appears to be indestructible

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Near Train wreaks… six year old daughter who disappeared one day… check around finally noticed one of the five Bay horses was missing from the pasture so went to the barn to find both missing child and horse.

Daughter was “training Foxie” using an assembled bitting rig made with a surcingle with some lead ropes and a halter

(We did not have a bitting rig so she built one…how and were she figured out how to when asked she replied “I saw a picture of one and Foxie needed some training”)

Dear. What’s you doing? "Oh, Foxie needed some training.

How did you get that on her? (Horse is 14.1+ while dear daughter was about 3 ft 7")… I got the mounting block to get into her feed box where I stood so I could get everything hooked up and I made her turn around so I could get the other side

Actually everything looked correct, no harm done to horse or child

for reference here is child with her horse

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Reminds me of one of the other owner/trainers (we’ll call him Earl) at the training centre I used to board at. He went out to the paddock to bring in a horse and horse wasn’t really interested in heading to the gate. So Earl walks into the paddock, leaving the gate open behind him. Horse suddenly decides to head for the gate…guess it took him about half an hour to catch the horse as it cavorted around the farm. Every now and then I remind my SO to not be an Earl.

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When I was working, horses would see my car from the pasture by the road & head for the barn, knowing my arrival meant dinner.
I could see that pasture from my BR window & glanced out as I changed from work to barn clothes.
Odd… TWH was still standing at the fence :flushed:
I go out & he’s still there. :confused:
TB is nowhere in sight - traitor had headed in, leaving TWH…
Who had a front foot stuck in the wire bracing a corner post, near the ground.
Several piles of manure show he’s been trapped for a while :dizzy_face:
I try freeing the foot, it’s wedged so tight I’m worried if I do get it free, wire may have sliced into him & pressure is acting as a tourniquet :worried:
But I managed to free him - he never struggled - TG he is unhurt, no blood :pensive:
He takes a single wonky step, then walks beside me to the barn, perfectly sound.
A testament to the Good Mind of the TWH.

At one place we boarded, stalls had Dutch doors at the rear, leading to the 40ac of unfenced acreage & a road at the front.
DH’s TWH (using his Good Mind :smirk:) figured out how to unlatch the Dutch door when the top 1/2 was open.
He not only freed himself, but also let out the 3 young stallions kept in a field just outside the block of stalls - same latch mechanism as the stall door.
Led everyone a merry chase :persevere:
Next day TWH had a padlock on the bottom 1/2 of his Dutch door.

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well coming home to find this foal like this

Pony in bucket1 Pony in bucket2

she was not harmed but had to get the bolt cutters (again) to cut the handle off to get her out.

Never ever figured out how she got into this mess

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Several times, I’ve forgotten that I was filling the stock tanks . . . until many hours later (once, not until morning - yes, it ran all night . . .)

The two most memorable involve my old mare, Deuce. She had a habit of somehow getting out of her paddock and into the area behind the house, which is full of junk my dad won’t get rid of. One time, I came home to find her inside the old above-ground swimming pool (don’t worry, it hasn’t held water since the Great Fish Rescue of 1988), but I still don’t know how she got IN it! Moral of the story: if a horse CAN do it, they WILL do it.

I also had a mare who climbed up into the feed bunker of an old-two horse trailer - both front legs were wedged inside the feed bunker. She’d decided she’d had enough of being in the trailer. By the time we got to a safe place to stop, she’d freed herself with only a couple of scrapes. I’ll never own one of those trailers again.

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Back in my days with a 2 horse bumper pull with no tack room I’d load hay bales on the floor in front of the horses to take to horse trials. I arrived at a venue after a three hour trip to find one horse had hooked a shoe up on the bale twine, and had been traveling calmly on three legs for some part of the trip.

I never loaded anything in front of the horses again, and also bought a trailer monitoring camera (back in pre-wireless dats).

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So many. So many times of leaving water troughs filling all night or leaving the gate unlatched just that one time…

But here are some of the top train wrecks over the last 25+ years.

1:
Big red beast was living with a young bay dragon of a stallion, being a mentor of sorts and keeping the bay dragon grounded. Well suddenly one night, bay dragon discovered that he was in fact still intact. He broke down the top two boards of a split rail fence and left to go find himself a girlfriend, leaving big red beast by himself. All that was left in that small section of fence was the bottom rail… about 10 inches off the ground.

Now, big red beast is quite a scopey hunter; has schooled up to 3’9" and has cleared 5’ corral panels from near standstill. But I’ll be damned if he was going to cross that 10 inch tall fence rail. Nooooo no, can’t do that. Instead he proceeded to pitch, what I imagine, was quite a tantrum. This particular dry lot is adjacent to a concrete block barn, part of which they use for a run in shed. He likely ran away from that section of broken fence line, squealing to let everyone know his displeasure for the situation, and kicking out to the side (his trademark).

I go out to feed in the morning and find the chaos. Bay dragon is nowhere to be seen, but boy could I hear him. Big red beast is standing by himself being mopey and non-weight bearing on a hind leg. Fast forward a bit, bay dragon is a gelding now, fence got replaced with something that won’t rot and allow the rails to fall/be broken, big red beast broke his coffin bone clean through. 6 months of stall rest and lots of hand made shoes with casting material, he’s been perfectly sound ever since.

2:
The day after big red beast’s first ride out of rehab… the. first. day. after… I assume he was playing with another gelding over the top of some corral panels (he always does these things when I’m not around). And by the way, I am religious about keeping the joints of my panels tight so they cannot lodge anything in between. So anyways, I went inside about 1 pm this one afternoon to watch a football game. Everything was fine when I left. Go out at 5 pm to feed and find big red beast is on his back with a front foot hung up from a corner joint in the panels. It would appear he reared up and put a foot down in the corner, then rotated over backwards and fell. With his foot suspended by the corner joint (at the pastern), he was stuck on his back.

At first glance I thought he was dead. I screamed his name and he picked his head up and whinnied at me as if to say “come help me, woman”. It was a warm day for January, but the sun was going down and he was laying in a few inches of mud. I figured he would be going in to shock soon and I have no idea how long he has been like this (a possible max of 4 hours).

I try to yank the chain loose to free the joint, but see above about me keeping the corners tight. I don’t know how he managed to fit his big pastern down in there, but the tension was too much for even my adrenaline-fueled self to yank free. I yelled for my mom to get a sawzal and extension cord. I’m usually one to remain calm during chaos, but this is my baby. He means more to me than anything in the world. I go to hacking pieces of the panel apart with no real plan. Luckily my mom stops me and says “why don’t you just cut the chain?” Good idea. I cut one chain link and the whole contraption pops free.

Big red beast pops up, not particularly weight bearing on that leg, shivering, and quite distressed. After a few days in a stall (much to his dismay), he was perfectly sound within a week. Just had some soreness, probably pulled muscles in his shoulder, some nasty looking scars from pressure sores on that leg and on his neck, and the inside of his ears split open I assume from them being folded oddly while he was on his back for so long. Those took a loooong time to heal and you couldn’t slip a halter or bridle over his head for a few months.

If that wasn’t enough stress from one damn horse…

3:
Walked a broodmare up in to the old draft horse barn to put her in the stocks to breed. This barn has old standing stalls with feed bunks at the back made of rough sawn 2X6 boards that are tough as nails. Mare decides she doesn’t want to go in the stocks and starts backing up in to one of the standing stalls. Obstinate and stubborn, she will not stop backing up. I released pressure, nothing. I put on pressure, nothing. She was determined to slowly and methodically back away from the breeding stocks.

She backed up until her butt hit the ledge of the feed bunk, and continued to back up. She sat her butt on the feed bunk, and subsequently lost balance, and rolled in to the bunk, landing on her back. Now this feed bunk was probably a good 40 inches tall, so horse is crammed upside down in the thing, with nothing but lower legs sticking out. Here’s where the “calm amidst chaos” me comes in. Out comes the sawzal and I go to work. It took about 45 minutes, several blade changes, and some deep burns to a few fingers from doing said blade changes to cut through that ancient hard ass lumber. She was freed with nothing more than some soreness and a scrape down the side of her wither.

4:
Took a yearling to a local show to do the longe line and expose her a little bit before hitting the major shows that fall. Show grounds was just 45 minutes from my place, so I just hauled in with no stall. Showed the filly and put her on the trailer, then went back in the building to watch a friend show before heading home. I was gone from the trailer maybe 5 minutes. Seriously, I leave them alone longer at fuel stops. They make an announcement that in the parking long a horse is trying to get out the escape door of a trailer. My mom and I look at each other and go “she’s not in the stall with the escape door”, and ignore it.

A couple minutes later, they make the call again. I decide I better go look. I make the very short walk out to the parking lot and find a nice older gentleman in his show clothes walking my filly. Turns out, she had pawed the window open and decided to climb out. Well the impatient beast was tied. So I can only imagine what that looked like as she folded her front legs up, put them through the window, and jumped, likely snapping her head back around her, then hanging with her back to the trailer. Said older gentleman had tried to discourage her from coming out, then afterwards reached in and untied her after she had come out and was hanging from the tie inside the trailer. She received 3 stitches in 3 different spots that got dinged up, and a few chiropractor appointments to realign a few things. I’m just glad she never got so impatient while actually on the road to try such things and only did that while at a stand still.

Long story long, if there’s a way to induce gray hairs, they will find it. Also, keep a sawzal handy with plenty of extension cords…

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What a heart of gold that mare had. Always enjoy hearing stories about her.

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I was maybe ten years old. We had a field full of ponies. While I preferred riding, my Dad liked to drive. We had a little two wheeled pony cart for training, and a lovely little four wheeled show type buggy my dad had refurbished. We hadn’t used the fancy four wheeled buggy as yet. While I’d watched dad harness a pony a few times I’d never done it myself.
One day after school I decided to drive a pony instead of ride. And I decided I wanted to use the fancy buggy. I gathered up the harness and went to the pasture to catch a pony. Having no real experience of how the harness went on, my ten year old self figured out most of it and I backed the pony into the shafts and hooked her up. I was merrily driving figure eights in the back yard when Dad got home from work. He very slowly came to the front of the pony and took hold of the bridle, telling me to quietly step out of the buggy.

As it turns out, the pony I’d selected wasn’t broke. Not to ride, not to drive, and barely broke to lead. Had never worn a bridle, much less any sort of tack. And in the four wheeled buggy, no less…far more likely to have a wreck in one of those.

If I tried a stunt like that today, now that I know better :wink: there would be buggy and harness and pony and human parts scattered from here to Timbuktu. My guardian angel was sure working overtime that day.

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I have too many to count as well…once when I was about 8, I rode my 14 hh buckskin grade mare under my grandparents’ pear tree, then stood on her back to get the fruit. She then walked away leaving me hanging onto thr tree branch…

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You win the internet today.

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Yep, the trophy is yours :slight_smile:

This story turns out to be heart-warming, but it could have gone wrong in so many ways.

When my daughter was 4 or 5 I started taking her to the leadline classes at a local Open Show. I always let her pick which horse she wanted to take to the show, and this time she chose our 17 hand Appendix QH, Luke.

I had loaded everything but the horse when I realized I had forgotten something I needed in the house, probably my purse. Luke was in his stall with the door closed, so I told DD I would be right back.

I felt like I was only gone for a second, but it must have been a few minutes because when I returned, LUKE WAS LOADED ON THE TRAILER! No only did my petite DD somehow halter a 17 hand horse, but then she walked him on the trailer! I have never loved a horse more for being such a good boy, and DD had a stern talk about safety, but I will never stop being gobsmacked at a tiny little girl doing all that by herself. RIP Lukie, you were a very good boy.

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You just have to love a good QH. That reminds me of when my now 25YO DD was a bit more than a toddler, and I used to take her to the barn I worked at. One day when I was cleaning stalls, going flat out as usual so I could get home, she comes wandering up to the stall I was cleaning and I asked her what she had been doing. She blithely replied she’d been sitting on Dancer (my then 4 YO appendix QH). I replied what!? She responded Dancer was laying down and she was sitting on her. Dancer usually took a nap midmorning every day, and somehow my little one managed to open the stall door, which was a challenge for us adults, crawl on top of the mare and have a cuddle with her. I rushed down the barn to check, and somehow DD had managed to close the stall behind her. WTF! Love that mare, she’s now 28 and has a home for the rest of her life.

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our youngest daughter was four when she was in her first big-time lead line class back East where the class was judged just like all classes were.

All twenty something horses were at the line up, each rider was addressed by the judge who asked a few question then told the rider to turn your horse to the right and return to the lineup judge was actually on horse’s right so daughter did as she was told knocking the judge down…judge gets up laughing as she knew she told her incorrectly …daughter won the class as she was the only one to actually follow the judge’s instructions

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I’m flattered! But a little distressed it had to be the Trainwreck thread… :joy:

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I had a similar experience with a lead rope several years ago and learned to always keep a sharp pocket knife on hand.

We were also once in a trailering accident and the horse had only minor injuries. The vet said it would likely have been much worse if we hadn’t done everything exactly correctly in terms of safety dressing for the horse prior to loading. Historically we were a bit lazy about shipping boots, etc. but that day we had lots of time so we did everything by the book - including tying the horse with a leather halter (which broke in the accident), but having a nylon halter underneath so we had something to grab when the leather halter broke.

Now we always fully dress horses for even short hauls.

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So many ways I could embarrass myself with this but will instead recount two stories i know to be true, although neither one was committed by me.

First: we were a bunch of barnless barn rats in middle school (it was all backyard corrals then) riding our horses around until dark every day, tying them to trees with their bridle reins while we went in the gas station for a 10 cent Coke, galloping like wild Indians up the local bridle path between two two-lane highways and so on. Life was glorious.

Until one girlfriend combined several of the above activities by stopping to talk to a boy riding a bike on the bridle path, and somehow decided that it was a good idea to tie her horse to his bike while they stepped away from their modes of transportation to go sit on a tree stump together.

Of course the horse spooked and ran home up the bridle path, between dozens of cars on the highway watching something they simply couldn’t comprehend. The horse was seriously cut up, the bicycle was DOA, and the friend got in very serious trouble from all adults involved.

Second was a friend who had wild cousins, and said wild cousins had a pony. As in The Cat in The Hat, when the cousins’ parents stepped out, many adventures with said pony ensued, most notably the time they had the pony in the house, mom came home unexpectedly, and somehow it became a good idea to hide the pony from mom in the second floor bathroom.

Unknown to all there had been a long, slow water leak in that bathroom that rotted the floor. The pony’s weight was enough to tip the scales and, while cousins were in the kitchen being perfect angels with mom, the pony, bathtub, toilet and cascades of water came crashing through the living room ceiling, all landing in a heap on the grand piano.

Naturally the pony was fine (ponies being made of mischief, luck, and iron) but the cousins were not. The pony was forever banned from entering the house for any reason, through any portal, and the ban stuck until they were all old enough to laugh about it, even with their mother.

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