The same thing can happen with a full cheek snaffle with no keepers. I saw a horse reach around to scratch an itch while a girl was riding on a trail ride, and got the full cheek stuck in the stirrup… The horse was spinning and spinning, very close to a steep downslope next to the trail. Fortunately, there happened to be a person nearby that was able to run and grab the horse before they both went over the edge.
Scary indeed.
i dont know if this is actually true or if my trainer just told us this becuase stock pins are so ugly and she wanted us to get our collars monogrammed…but one day she told us of a girl who fell off and the stock pin came un-done and stabbed her in the neck…i dont think she died but i will never wear a stock pin agains! evn if the story is not true. it seems like it could be possible
[QUOTE=La Gringa;2928115]
The same thing can happen with a full cheek snaffle with no keepers. [/QUOTE]
Reading about the horse getting her muzzle stuck on her bit, and then reading this quote reminded me of a very scary incident. A 6 year old was sitting on her pony and the instructor asked me if I could hold onto her for a moment. Before I could take a hold of her reins, the pony rubbed her head on my jacket, hooked the full cheek on my jacket pocket and reared with the kid. Luckily, I was able to grab the kid in the midst of the pony flipping over. I have no idea how as I am NOT the quickest to react. Pony and kid were both fine. Never thought that could happen.
An unsupervised tiny girl crawlwd under the rail an popped up behind a fence as my friend’s horse was leaving the ground. Somehow my friend had her wits about her and screamed at the child to stand still. Thank god the child listened. The horse swerved hard to the right barely missing the child.
The announcer had to page the parent 3 or 4 times. The parent was a spectator, how can you not know your child was missing after a couple of pages?
Last year while in Ocala I went to watch a either derby or derby cross… Basically the rider had to go over a cross-country course but it was like in a pasture… anyways (sorry)
they were advanced jumps
(wait does this count as a show?)
ok so this on rider comes in and everything is great until she comes to this jump that in the water. horse slips, and flips over the jump rider comes off… of course everyone is like omg about the rider, but then the horse takes off running he jumps out of the pasture runs around and jumps into then out again of another pasture… he then is running around the barn and i mean he seriously is jumping everything i think he even jumped the wash racks. Ther horse is like flipping out, just running crazy everywhere…
me and my trainer are just standing there (we were hunters and jumpers, and were pretty shocked) finally some people get in a like golf cart and go catch the horse. Everyone is talking about how amazing the horse was for being able to jump all that he did (trainer and i are still shocked) Luckily girl is actually fine, and she hops back on and I know she jumped that same jump again, i don’t think did the rest though…
but i was very happy after I left i do jumpers…
Wow. After reading this thread, sign me up for that knitting group…
You guys are right…I don’t want to read these, but I can’t look away. So I’ll have to add one of my own.
My daughter was on her new horse, taking a lesson in the indoor. The trainer’s 3 year old son burst in through the door and ran right in front of my daughter as her 17H horse was cantering into a jump. By some miracle, the mare jammed on the brakes, almost throwing my daughter right over her head. It was a lucky day for all of us that no-one got hurt.
My kids tease me and call me ‘Captain Safety’ because I am so obsessive about using care around the horses, but these stories remind me that even when you try your best to be careful, freak accidents can happen.
scariest thing i see at shows is the jumpers under 2’9’’! LOL.
but, my personal scariest experiance was not at a show. a couple years ago i went to a sleepaway camp that also had a riding program. not much. looking back, i realize the trainers sucked, and they took terrible care of the horses. but i had only been riding for a year or so at this point and didnt know better. so, in a lesson one day, instead of riding in the ring, the ‘trainer’ takes us out on a trail lesson type of thing to have a lesson in one of the ‘villages’. (like the area of cabins for one of the age/gender groups for the camp) anyway, there is a hill that we are cantering circles on. kinda not the smartest idea.
hill is kind of like this…
…_____ (not that steep but still) and we are doing circles, so a quarter of the circle is going uphill, the other 1/4 is downihll, and then 2/4 on flat land. i’m riding this horse cody, sweet thing, sweet HUGE thing (like 1700 lbs of sweet horse…) but just not the most balanced sure footed creature…
so we’re going on the downhill part, so far everythings been fine, done about one or two circles, we were to do three full circles. anyway, like i said, its been alright so far, but i recall being half way down hill when i have no idea what’s just happened but i defiantly know i’m about to fall off! i dont remember actually falling or hitting the ground, but cody tripped on himself, we BOTH fell to the side, good thing my feet were out of the stirrups right away, but i landed on a rock and cody landed on my torso/chest area and ROLLED over me twice. i dont actually recall any of this after me saying that i feel like im about to fall, but the instructor and the other kids in the lesson told me what happened. pretty scary. i just remember waking up in the nurse station place and being like, …wasnt i just riding ? what am i doing here? and theyre like, youre pretty lucky, you could be dead from impact right now! and im like :eek::eek::eek::eek: scared me shitless!
Luckily I have not seen anything bad happen at a show- which is pretty amazing since I have only been to local schooling/4H type shows.
I worked at a small barn cleaning stalls in the morning and it was an old barn- prob. built in the late 1700’s- early 1800’s.
It was built into a hill so the entire barn was built up, with a huge run in area with some really old unused stalls full of god knows what underneath the stalls above.
I had just fed and there was a pretty TB mare and her weanling foal at her side in their stall. I hear a crash and go to see what it was- the mare disappeared! I looked in her stall and where she was standing was a hole- not much wider than 2 2/2’ by 3 1/2’ and her foal looking quite puzzled.
I ran downstairs and there she was, shaking in an old boarded up stall with a few scrapes and cuts.
I was so scared as to what I was going to find when I got downstairs. Luckily it was superficial. And the BO shored up all the floors to the stalls upstairs to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Speaking of barn-related incidents, as a kid I rode at a farm that bred TB racehorses in addition to their H/J lessons and showing. They kept the broodmares in an old bank barn where the stalls only had 1/2 doors. One day (I wasn’t there to see it, thank God), a foal tried to jump the door. He flipped over the top and broke his neck. 
After that, they put screens on all the broodmare stalls so it couldn’t happen again.
Looking back, I now realize the BO’s were well-meaning neophytes who wound up hiring some really un-knowledgeable people, leading to A LOT of preventable incidents. But at the time, I was just a horse-crazy pre-teen. :sadsmile:
Sometimes I think it must be scary just being a horse and relying on humans to keep us safe.
check your tack!
I was at a show maybe 10-15 years ago riding a horse for my trainer. I was having a great trip. About halfway around I was heading for the outside line and my outside rein broke. The hook basically pulled out of the leather at the bit. I tried to turn the horse in a circle to stop it, but we were on a grassy hillside and with only one rein he went down on his knees and flipped me off over his head. Luckily he just barely caught me with his hooves as he went over me. I had some bruised ribs and a concussion but was otherwise OK. Horse ran out but was later caught and was fine.
Now I check tack before I get on someone else’s horse.
I’ve seen 3 people die. One loading the horse on a trailer, One horse flipped over a fence and the third, a pony just stopped and the kid hit it’s head and snapped it’s neck. It doesn’t get any worse than this. I’ve been doing it for 50 years but still you never get by this.
I saw a horse bolt out of the arena at a gaming show and jump the bed of a pickup. Horse obviously missed her TRUE calling, because she cleared it with ease! Rider stayed on and no one was hurt.
I’ve also seen a drugged horse crash right through a jump and just do a face plant on the other side…I was working as an assistant trainer at the time and the head trainer turned to me and said “there is such a thing as too much Ace.”
teeth hooked on stirrup…
I have to add something about the horses biting the stirrup…I was probably 13 or 14 at the time, and was in a lesson, riding this amazingly sweet older horse. Me and the other lesson kids were sitting in the middle of the ring, talking about the lesson. Well, when I wasn’t paying attention, Ray turned his head and went to itch or something, but ended up biting the stirrup…:no: He got his teeth hooked around the bar of the stirrup, which were the bendy kind- NOT the safety ones. They did not release, which as you can imagine greatly panicked him.
He realized his teeth were stuck, and started freaking out. He started spinning around in circles, like a reiner. I was still on him at that point, and after realizing that I couldn’t do anything, I jumped off. THANK GOD I jumped off to the outside, away from the direction he was spinning! If I hadn’t, he surely would have trampled me, and this was no small horse. He was a good 16.3hh, 1,300lb hunk of a gelding. I think I gave my poor trainer a heart attack, and to this day I NEVER let a horse reach around to do anything resembling biting, anywhere NEAR the stirrup.
Did an author base a book on this? I was recommended a book (which did turn out to be an excellent, if very sad read) that was based on a woman who had something similar happen to one of her sons. The person who recommended the book rode on a regular basis with his younger brother who eventually became one of the top dressage people in my region.
My two scariest were:
One time a horse refused a jump rearing and the girl smacked him hard on the shoulder, she than reaproached and rufesed rearing again and she smacked him a couple times. He was kicking out every time she smacked him. Third time around he reared up again and she started whiping him on the top of his poll. He started rearing higher…and higher… Luckily at this point people rushed in and made her get off…but it was awfully scary…
The other time was a complete heartstopper for me. I had seen a horse go at a couple of shows and I REALLY liked him. He was a draft or draft cross and looked clunky and odd standing still but as soon as he moved and jumped he was beatiful. He had gotten wonderful scores and placings previously as well. So I was walking my cross country course with some other people and he was going XC. I told them I really liked this horse and wanted to watch him go. He galloped past us and headed up the hill to a row of trees with a jump in the row. I couldn’t see beyond the jump or the row, but I could see the jump. It was an oxer with a ditch underneath. The horse looked alittle sticky on the approach and then gave a very half-hearted effort. and his back leg sortof kicked out and got caught in the jump. The force of this threw his rider off, and from where I was standing (WAY across the field) I could only see the horses back legs were hung up in the jump. I ran towards the jump and heard a loud CRACK and someone screaming. I about turned away because I couldn’t BEAR to see what I thought I heard, but I had to know. As I came around the tree-row it turned out that the horse was okay. The crack had been the jump breaking and the rider was VERY worried about her horse but EXTREMELY relived he was okay. I think his huge draft horse legs saved him because he didn’t seem to have a scratch and walked away seemingly sound.
And then there was the time I was watching a grand prix jumping event at an indoor stadium in Portland Oregon. One of the riders was about half way around his course, coming down a line (6 strides?) in the indoor sporting arena. He was jumping a line and had cleared the first fence in the line - was heading to the second and the power went out in the building. It was pitch DARK in the ring. I couldnt see my hands in front of me.
So how does this poor rider know where he is - or where that fence is that he is about to crash into? The entire crowd went AHHHHHHHHH !
Luckilly the lights were only out for about 3 seconds. When they came back on, he had stopped right in front of that freaking fence. He got off his horse and walked out of the ring. I will NEVER forget that. !!! Way way way too scary!
The scarriest thing I have ever seen happen at a show was this past April. My husband and I were taking out young stud colt to his first show. My husband backs the colts and I finish them. I had been training him and he was doing great w/me. Not so bright, being 4 months pregnant but that’s another story.
We get to the show grounds and colt is a little antsy. Hubby offers to hop on to “make sure he’ll be ok.” I hold the reins and stirrup as he mounts. Silly colt won’t move off. Hubby moves his hands forward, encourging gently w/his legs. Colt steps backwards. Again, gentle encouragement and colt rears straight up and over. Hubby, being his quick thinking self, in mid rear tries to bail. He turns his left foot outward to kick loose as colt looses his balance and falls on his left side. The impact snaps my husband’s leg backwards. With dumb colt still lying on him, dear hubby looks to me (all of 6 feet away) and says, “Ahhh, my leg. It’s broken!” Thinking of that sends shivers through my body He had to kick the colt off of him w/his other leg and as the colt was leaving, stomped the broken leg again. Someone at the show called 911 and 20 minutes later we were in the ER. Broken tibia and fibula. Can’t say enough about UVA Medical Center. He was in surgery within 3 hours of the accident!
That’s truely the most difficult thing I’ve ever seen. Watching someone that you love get hurt by a horse that you both love is hard. I was ready to send the horse to auction but in typical MR. HDFarm style, he told me we had to keep him to be ridden again.
We kept him, GELDED him the next week and last week, Mr. HD rode him again for the first time.
[QUOTE=Showjumper28;2926730]
One of my very good friends had taken a few students to a local rated show. The one girls horse (she was a new student and bought this horse under the previous trainer) was balking and giving the girl a rough time. So my friend hops up on the horse decides to ride it in the first class in order to get the horse used to the course. Horse comes up and takes off over the 3rd fence, has heart attck mid jump, dies instantly and flips over in the air. My friend landed face down in the mud, with the dead horse on top of her. They did manage to pull the horse off of her pretty quickly but she was in a coma for 2 weeks, and although she is ok, she is not the same person. It was extremely terrifying, and the poor girl was devastated.[/QUOTE]
This was at witsend right? I know both parties involved, girl and trainer. i actually am friendly with the girl, and this past summer she was still upset when recounting the story of losing her mare. Thank goodness, the trainer was okay.
Didn’t see this but my husband & daughter were at A show in Aiken, show cancelled for day due to storm and everyone was just hanging around the barns (temporary stalls). The next aisle over a horse kicked up and caught his hoof in bars and was just hanging there with leg up in air. My husband went in stall and one of the drivers of horse transport was outside bars.
My husband put his shoulder under horses leg and pushed up and guy on outside pushed and they were able to free horse. Daughters trainer ran over to another BNT to ask for his help and he wouldn’t come over, said he didn’t do things like that.
I really feel like my husband saved that horse by his quick thinking. Of course he hurt his shoulder and it was sore for long time but that’s the kind of guy he is, he’s always ready to jump in and help whenever needed.
I have always been bothered by the temporary stalls with those bars, when they told me about this it was like “you know how we’ve always been worried about this happening well it did.” :eek:
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