So I am in my own little hell right now and just as a way to find some humor in a not great reality, let’s discuss the stories that your horses have come with of their past. And then the realities of what you ACTUALLY found out to be true?
Good or bad. Funny or sad.
Let’s hear all the Fish tales. 
Em
Happy to oblige! Mine is an auction find but he was bought with the understanding that if he didn’t drive a ton every day, he would spook at cars. And I thought, ah okay well that’s fine because usually cars won’t chase you around the dressage arena!
Yeah, he’s actually just very afraid of motor noise–I’m not sure why! Cars, trucks, equipment, you name it. He lived next to a freeway for a YEAR and it got slightly better but I think he’s just a hyper vigilant sort of critter. Interesting observation though the other day, I was lunging through the spring sillies and he spooked at a car running (not unusual) but NOT at an electric/hybrid when it pulled into the spot by the barn. Even though to me, it makes a funky noise. That didn’t seem to bother him!
It has gotten better with age and miles, as most things do. When I first bought him, he’d just about jump on top of you if you heard something turn down the barn drive. Now it’s just extra alert/a little snorty.
As a kid we had a pony who came to us with the name Captain Cuddles. He was reportedly an ex-driving pony, was all of 13hh, and bit and kicked us many times. Also taught us how to sit a proper bucking canter.
He was sold to my parents as kid safe. 
Reminds me of this Halloween costume! (Stolen from fb)
My first event horse was purchased from a trainer in Aiken. The story was that he was his brother’s hunt horse, but the family had given up fox hunting. Over the 20 years I owned the horse I would encounter this trainer at horse trials around the area, and each time we talked the story about the horse’s background would change completely.
But despite the falsehoods or made up trainer stories the horse was the best I’ve had. Lost him to colic at 28 unfortunately. I often wish my horses could talk so I could find out the truth about their pasts.
If you are going to make up alternative facts for a horse you are selling, try to be consistent.
Horse showed in the locals at Devon. No one mentioned he jumped out of the ring over the in gate. With the male trainer.
I bought a clydesdale a couple of years ago who purportedly had very little spook. I rode him, my husband rode him and he was a very good boy.
Get him home and it may have been the 3rd ride, I was heading out to the trail and all of a sudden was facing the opposite direction. Discovered he has a pretty quick spin spook. LOL
But the biggest thing we learnt after over a year of owning him was…he is deaf.
He’s got the longest most adorable derpy ears that mostly flop sideways when he’s relaxed (or so I thought). Went to a clinic and when I walked in to the arena, the clinicians assistant said, that horse is deaf. DH was sitting close to him and said wait what???
Indeed he is deaf. Does not react at all to noise but if something catches his eye too quickly he’ll try and exit stage right.
We’re all sort of embarrassed we never noticed it. 
My mom had worked for a top pony hunter breeder/trainer/judge and after she had kids they would occasionally drop a pony off randomly while we were at school. In retrospect I think at least some of them were rejects from either Thurmont or New Holland that they’d decided weren’t suitable for the A circuit pony hunter kids but were good enough for pony club kids to break in or be broken by 
. Most of them stayed for a few months or a year and then went back never to be heard about again, but the highlight was Stormy. He was a fancy, well-bred Welsh pony with a super long registered name and in retrospect I am not sure why my mom wasn’t more suspicious. They told her that he had a tendency to cross canter but was a good jumper.
They didn’t mention that he could jump literally anything-- like if he hadn’t been 12.1 he would have easily been Olympic material. We had 4’6 Dutch doors in the barn (onto a concrete aisle) and he immediately jumped out and then jumped in and out of all of the fields. At the time we had a fairly large TB business with mares and foals, stallions, and some young horses in training and he absolutely terrorized them all.
I was like 8 when we got him and I showed him locally in short stirrup and the small pony hunters (where he usually either won or did something terrible and dumped me) and played pony club games and evented him unrecognized BN and eventually Novice. He was well known for jumping out of the dressage ring and once out of the sj ring over the ingate right next to the vice RS. He didn’t like his ears handled. He didn’t like baths (he was gray). He didn’t tie to the trailer. He broke probably six bridles over the years by bolting with the reins around his neck during the tacking or untacking process. It took two adults to get him in the trailer at 3 AM on rally mornings, leading him with chain shanks from both sides or else he got loose and ran around trailing shipping bandages. He had to be hobbled front to back to keep him in the field and even then he still sometimes jumped out.
He cost $1200 which was more than any of my horses since but we had him for almost twenty years and learned so much from him. He went to pony club championships and junior hunts (he was unstoppable when hounds were running and was not allowed in the field because he passed the Master). He even played a donkey in a Nativity play but Mary wisely refused to ride him. In all the years we had him I think he cross cantered like twice.
Dogs and children used to be terrifying. Like spin and bolt blindly level of terrifying.
Was raised from birth to nearly 7 with both dogs and children. It literally took years to get over dogs and children. WTH? LoL
I don’t have a story but just wanted to say sorry you’re going through stuff right now. Big hugs 
Friend has a horse she’s had since he was 9mos.
ETA: He’s now 15
He is terrified of their vet, has to be put into their small (2h) trailer to be examined, vaxed.
He’s never had a bad vet experience & their other horses are fine with the same vet.
Same friend gave me a horse she’d only trailrode & horsecamped for 6yrs.
So she never experienced his patented Telespook: 1 minute there’s a horse beneath you, next minute NOT!
He’s my Dressage ride & luckily telegraphs his intent to perform the spook by grunting.
Before I learned this:
I would PM you…but I cannot apparently. Your profile is private.
You can PM me and I am happy to share with an old friend. Short version: It sucks.
Em
Seconded. 
When the horse I ride was young, he got loose on the farm (during winter, I think), went on tour over to the neighbor’s house, and ended up IN the in-ground swimming pool. Luckily he’s a large horse and the in-ground pool happens to be small and shallow. The story is that he got himself back out . . . and I believe there was some kind of quiet arrangement made between neighbors when it came to pool repairs – have never heard THAT part of the story.
I thought I was doing pretty OK training my horse, Peanut. But he is now jumping at a level I never anticipated and I am not having to work hard to encourage him to do it. Whoever is training my horse, THANK YOU!
After five years of lessons and lots of pleading, I was finally shopping for my first horse at 11. We looked at several perfectly suitable candidates nearby, then one day went with my instructor who taught about an hour away once a week and tried five horses there. For some reason, I decided on the firey 14.2 hand mare with a back story. Apparently someone tried to break her when she was 2, failed, and she was chucked out in a field for the next six years. Now, at 8, she had two months under saddle.
My instructor once said “if I had known she was like this, I never would have let you buy her.” She had a nervous, flighty nature that never went away. My beginner mother once tried to get on her instead of holding her while I rode another horse, and ended up with a broken pelvis (she never successfully mounted). She scrambled in the trailer unless the divider was tied over to one side.
However, I ended up eventing her through training, and passing my B Pony Club rating with her. I could trail ride her alone anywhere, explore places I’ve never been, and give her a loose rein to find her way home. I used her once for Pony Club games and she was NOT a fan. I’m pretty sure I could have progressed faster with a more suitable horse, but I did get there eventually with this one.
After finding out my pony was not a fan of pony club mounted games, I asked a boarder next door if I could use her 3 year old Chincoteague pony for games the next year if I trained him for her (he was just a companion/pet). He turned out to have a backstory as well. His owner won him at the Pony Penning in a raffle. Apparently they raffled off the first foal to swim to shore and he was it. A year or two later, I purchased him from her when she was moving. I sold him after college, lost track of him, heard he was at a rescue but not which one, found him again, brought him home, and he ended up being my son’s first pony.
I got a call from the mother of an old student, wondering if I needed a school pony, which, of course, I did.
She explains that her sister has a wonderful pony who has been Pony Clubbed and done all sorts of stuff, she wants to ship it to me, have me use it as a lesson pony and have her daughter ride it and take lessons.
Pony is described to me as a large large, mare, “sort of black and white” named Star. I anticipate a pinto with a star on her forehead. Oh, and “there’s something wrong with her feet” and they weren’t able to get the farrier out before she shipped.
It was the era before cell phones, van driver was ridiculously late, no call, I gave up and went to bed. Pony arrives at 3AM, driver puts it in stall and leaves.
The pony is a 13.3 H Appaloosa gelding, who has previously foundered and has really long slipper feet.
I call to make sure they’ve dropped off the correct pony. I am mildly furious, and swear to never take anything sight unseen again. I call my farrier and tell him it’s an emergency, I need him right away, I don’t even want to turn him out with his feet looking like that. I relent and turn him out in a tiny isolation paddock to await the farrier.
Farrier arrives and I go to catch him. He looks at us and casually trots to the paddock fence and hops over. Paddock fence is 3’9".
We try to chase him, and when we get close, he just jumps the nearest fence, jumping in and out of the other paddocks. Farrier looks at me and says “I don’t think his feet are bothering him all that much.”
Takes me 3 more days to catch him. He is never in the same paddock. I am beyond furious now. I joke, grimly, that I am going to rename Car Keys, because he’s never where I left him. Farrier trims his feet, and miraculously he is sound. I find tack for him (he came with a cheap western saddle and bridle with a horrible aluminum curb bit, so I am expecting a total backyardigan) and take him for a test ride
Lots of boarders and students watching as I ride him. He is foot perfect. W/T/C on a loose rein, offers to go on the aids, has good lateral work and a change. I am trying to find a hole in this pony I have come to dislike intensely and I just can’t. I point him at a line of fences and he canters happily down to it on a loose rein, hits a good distance and makes the stride down the line. With me purposely perched on his neck grabbing mane like a beginner.
I ride him back to the barn and grumble to the watching crowd “I guess he can stay.”
He became a staple of my lesson program. Multiple children leased him, showed him, Pony Clubbed and foxhunted him. He went to the PC dressage and show jumping rallies and was amazing at both. I was frequently made cash no contingency offers for him at hunter shows. Once he was settled into a stable herd, he stopped jumping out.
He was leased by students into his thirties, and then he became my daughter’s leadline pony. I very sadly put him down at 35.
I decided he was named Star not because he had one, but because he was one.
The front end on that pony! The jockey ain’t half bad, either 
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