Backing out of a pile of boulders in hand while you, the rider, are behind the horse. Where it’s one step, move carefully, another step…
Navigating hills with all kinds of loose brush and deadfall because the trail got blocked and you have to find a way around.
Carrying an injured or too tired dog over your saddle.
Having that branch you just rode by slap you in the sides, without taking off, bucking or otherwise dislodging your rider.
Having just about anything get tangled in your tail, your feet, without losing your cool.
Meeting elk face to face.
11 Likes
Bathroom breaks
11 Likes
Walking past alien trash cans
Learning not to react to gunfire and tannerite explosions in the not-so-far distance
Navigating the horse-eating herds of moving cotton balls aka sheep
6 Likes
The pasture full of running goats is not out to get you.
The car who comes right up behind you and blows their horn is something to be ignored.
6 Likes
Walking past a mattress.
5 Likes
Stomping a snake. (now a dead snake)
Low flying helicopters disgorging Army Rangers. (17.2h 4yo, on his first trail ride, stood on the dam with his mouth open as they hit the water.)
12 Likes
Female wild turkey defending her hatchlings (relative success)
Sleeping snapping turtle (success)
Loose (tacked up) donkey trotting down the dirt road (utter and complete failure).
15 Likes
Pawing an old mattress, getting a shoe stuck on a coil, and standing stock still while panicked child runs to the nearest road and flags down a telephone lineman with wire cutters in his truck. Not my story told me by someone in my age bracket.
7 Likes
OMG - you just made my heart stop. I come across mattresses all the time in the desert. I won’t walk over them for fear of exactly what you describe!
A human couple engaged in an intimate act in the middle of a clearing along the trail in the woods.
A group of people dressed in black hoods doing a covert op of placing garden gnomes along the trail while playing the Mission Impossible theme on their cell phones.
A grassfire.
Helicopter flying overhead carrying a house.
21 Likes
Living through Cranes bursting out of the tall grass right under your nose. Standing firm as they fly away, making that horrible chainsaw noise. The horse passes if he stands, no deductions for trembling and heart pounding palpably under the rider’s leg.
5 Likes
Taking a single Cheerio from the fist of a baby in a stroller without nipping a finger. A baby that is smaller than the horse’s own head.
20 Likes
The group placing garden gnomes LOL
12 Likes
This one killed me 
10 Likes
Used to have some creative folks at our local “fun” shows. They wanted to make the trail course challenging and more realistic. So they did things like have caged chickens near an obstacle or a running lawn mower, as well as weaving through trash cans - some on their sides!
Another show was held on a local farm that also had some cows. The trail course was adjacent to the cow pasture. Some of the horses lost their minds over the curious cows. One woman complained to the judge who just raised an eyebrow and said “trail class?”
12 Likes
Field full of minis
Field full of long horn steer
A high wind tumble weed race with every tumble weed in the county vie ing for first!!!
6 Likes
you win!
7 Likes
Another one I remember .
Husband suddenly firing up a weed eater to cut around the barn and the string repeatedly hits the tin wall of the barn. Of course you are in the arena on the other side of the wall so your horse can not see what is making that noise.
Most memorable as your wife is mounting her young horse for just the 3rd time. Thankfully horse passed the test .
8 Likes
When I was a kid, the cowboys who organized the trail class tied a live chicken inside the mailbox that you had to open from horseback. They also had us ground tie our horses and walk over to the judge for a lengthy chat while they unloaded pigs next to the ground-tied horse. Who, of course, was no longer ground tied.
14 Likes
Two people “wrestling” on a picnic blanket.
We were sort of doing ok until the horse behind us sniffed my horse and my horse freaking lost his shit because he thought the monster had gotten behind him somehow. The cantle on my saddle stopped me but I had bruises on my thighs for weeks.
8 Likes
