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What's the scariest thing you've ever seen at a show?

Hunter/Jumper
#121

[QUOTE=&WithStyle;2927997]
Last summer I was at a show, just watching the jumpers in between classes. This one girl went out, and they looked real good! Until he started to go around one corner, he started to flip his head, then he fell down (rider stayed on), got up, then fell down again and finally died of an aneurysm. They stopped all competition, and had to drag the horse out of the ring. The barn she rode for was stabled right next to ours, it was really sad. I had to go compete in a class about 1/2 hour after it happened
not fun.

I honestly hate watching “C” shows; those are truly terrifying. The turnout always leaves something to be desired. And I can’t believe how some of the kids treat their horses, yanking on their mouths, cowboy kicking, hitting/slapping, and how the trainers just stand there and let it happen. If a kid I was training ever did that to a horse (who did nothing wrong), I wouldn’t let them compete![/QUOTE]

was this in Michigan? If so, I was there too, stabled on the same aisle. What made it even sadder was the little girl was riding her trainers horse because hers had died under her a few months prior, broke a leg hacking, I think. Talk about bad luck!

#122

[QUOTE=Pennyhill;2933241]
was this in Michigan? If so, I was there too, stabled on the same aisle. What made it even sadder was the little girl was riding her trainers horse because hers had died under her a few months prior, broke a leg hacking, I think. Talk about bad luck![/QUOTE]

I was at that showw too, and I also heard that her horse died. I remember watching them all weekend, thinking how cute they were together.

#123

Local dinky show Ireland 2005 - a father and teenage children team (son and daughter) bring their two stallions to show in one of the classes. They were two trailers down from where I was with my filly and I could see the trailer rocking back and forth from the stallions kicking it.

They get the stallions out and go to bring them for their in-hand class. Father is leading the first one and the daughter is leading the second. They pass me and head toward the ring. As they go a man leading his mare passes by. The second stallion being handled by the girl jumps for the mare - his front leg caught the girl in the arm and side of the face as he did so and I she immediately crumples to the ground and doesn’t move.

Her brother rushed up and managed to pull her out of the way - she’s unconscious at this point and later we found out her arm had been broken - the stallion meanwhile is attempting to mount the mare and people are coming to help drag him off of her.

#124

Worst thing I’ve seen in person was an in-hand class open to mares, gelding, and stallions. 20+ in the class so it is taking quite a bit of time for each horse to get to its turn to jog for the judge. Horses are along the rail while the jog is going on in the middle of the ring. Well, it is a mixed sex class and one of the last to enter the ring was a palomino stallion being handled by his ammy owner (a big 6’ tall guy at the least). Quite a few of us are watching as they work their way around to present to the judge and the stallion is getting himself quite worked up. He’s standing still, but he’s obviously barely paying attention to his handler and stallion owner is OBLIVIOUS that stallion is getting himself worked up. Well, with about 2 horses to go the horse is fully erect and has all the classic signs of being “ready to go.” Mare owners and others are quite aware of this and folks are trying to give them a wide berth. Stallion owner is finally up for his turn and walks the horse up to the judge. He turns his back on stallion for a split second (who knows why) and the stallion JUMPS on him with his forelegs on the guy’s shoulders. Guy is crumpled to the ground in an instant and stallion is satisfying his needs very enthusiastically. As the horse jumps the guy his wife screams a blood-curtling “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” adding to the horror of the whole scene. Female trainer has jumped the rail and is making her way to the horse. The stallion owner is basically in a ball on the ground with a 1100 horse on top of him. Horse is loose, but isn’t going anywhere just yet because he’s not quite finished. (Mounting and finishing as it were only took a few horrible seconds.) Luckily, the photographer was right there and camera in one hand reaches out with the other, grabs the lead and DRAGS the horse off the guy. Everyone was “ok”, but it was definiely scary and even more frustrating because there were plenty of warning signs that something bad was about to happen.

#125

I saw a girl have a seizure after she fell off in a flat class. The judge had asked them to drop their stirrups at the canter for quite a while, and one of the horses got annoyed and took off. It was pretty scary!

#126

another PG Equestrian Center accident


at Local Day either 2003/ 2004. I was watching some friends go outside in the Large Children’s ponies. Meanwhile in the schooling ring a little girl on a paint pony are getting ready to go in. I didn’t see it happen but in the warm-up ring, all of the jumps are set side by side and there is all sorts of commotion going on. Trainer tells the kid to jump “that” fence, kid heads for the wrong fence (a large ramped oxer), jumps it backwards. Pony catches its legs on the backside and flips on the girl and scrambles(on top of the girl) to get up. They had the helicopter fly in and get her. I don’t know what ever happened to her but I’m pretty sure the pony is still around.

Also at Upperville this past spring I was helping a BNT warm-up my friends horse for the Young Jumpers. As we are putting the fence up (to about 4’3"), some crazy girl on what looked to be a large pony, without a trainer comes galloping from out of nowhere and jumps the fence, knocking the pole I was still holding, out of my hand. On the other side of the fence(sorry if this is hard to understand), my friend was standing with her back to me putting the pole up, and gets smacked in the back by the falling pole. So then, the non-horsey mother of crazy pony girl comes up to us, hysterical, asking why we had moved the jump up and that her daughter could have gotten seriously hurt. BNT, who had witnessed the whole event, rides up to the mother and proceeds to yell at both the mother and girl until they are speechless. They both walked away until we were done schooling.

#127

Two og the most horrendous things i have ever witnessed

This i gathered from an article.
A) A man loaded his older mare into an equally old rusted trailer. the trailer was in no shape to be carrying 1200 plus lbs.:no: the floor was rotted with urine and gave way mid way into the easily 3 hour ride. the horse fell onto the road and tried to keep up. After a while it became exhausted and collapsed. when the owner arrived at his destination he found his horse with his legs worked down to the knees. literally the horses legs were rubbed away to the knee. he was promptly euthanized and the owner was charged with animal cruelty.

case in point: always check your trailers and get regular maintinence.

#128

[QUOTE=Burns10;2935251]
This i gathered from an article.
A) A man loaded his older mare into an equally old rusted trailer. the trailer was in no shape to be carrying 1200 plus lbs.:no: the floor was rotted with urine and gave way mid way into the easily 3 hour ride. the horse fell onto the road and tried to keep up. After a while it became exhausted and collapsed. when the owner arrived at his destination he found his horse with his legs worked down to the knees. literally the horses legs were rubbed away to the knee. he was promptly euthanized and the owner was charged with animal cruelty.

case in point: always check your trailers and get regular maintinence.[/QUOTE]
omg that almost made me sick. That is the saddest thing i have ever heard and i cant imagine seeing something like that

#129

[QUOTE=Grannie’s Grey;2928255]
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?[/QUOTE]

At a HT I attended this past summer (Town Hill, in CT) there was a small child (with elder sibling and parent) standing ringside during stadium. The ring’s “fence” was just tape. I watched as the small child edged closer, and closer, and finally was under the tape and slightly past it, about 3 feet away on the far side of a fence set close the rail. At least one horse gave her the hairy eyeball on landing and finally I had to go up to the parent and say “that really isn’t safe. Could you ask your daughter to move back?”

To be fair, the dad complied immediately, but he also a) agreed, saying that the “girl had her own pony and should know better” and b) thanked me “for being the bad guy, so [he] didn’t have to.” Which left me believing he wouldn’t have said/done anything. :o

#130

Boy this was a long time ago. This accident happened at the Maclay Finals back in the 80s. If I remember right the rider was Neil Ashe. His girth snapped over a jump and the saddle came off the horse. I won’t ever forget that one. I will always check my equipment twice after that!

#131

Scariest thing I can remember happend 17 years ago or so. At the Bob Thomas EQ center in Tampa,Fl. During WEF. In the ring across form what used to be the grass Grand Prix ring. There was a little girl sitting on her small or medium pony cute little roan pony to boot. Little girl was bareback. She wasnt holding her reins and they were just layed on the ponys neck. He struck his front leg at fly and put it over a rein. Totally freaked out he started backing and half rearing little girl still on him.
He scrambled back a few more steps until his back feet his the paved road slipped fell over back ward and hit his head. Some how the little girl came off his side insted of ending up under him. Very verys sad to see poor little dead pony in his braids and scrim sheet , crying little girl , right in the middle of the main bath between the show rings and barns. :frowning:

#132

I have heard about this happening more than once
 people are so awful.

One time I saw a cowboy in Utah that had trained his horse to jump in the back of a pickup truck
and that’s how the horse got around! It just jumped right in like a dog. I was shocked.

One thing that shocked me was how they transport horses in other countries, esp 3rd world countries. In Peru, they use large open top dump trucks. They load the horses on a concrete ramp and put wood slats inbetween them. They ride down the highway with their heads sticking out the top. No joke. When I first went there (I lived there for 3 years) the trainer (a french guy) told me
 “when you go to a show
 just go and get on your horse at the ring (we had grooms). Don’t look at how your horse got to the show.” He wasn’t joking. It was shocking.

One time I saw a truck full of horses down there get a tire stuck in the mud, the truck tipped over and all the horses fell out of the truck. It was ugly.

Scary is an understatement when you see things like that.
:eek:

#133

Scariest experience ever was being kicked by a horse while blanketing it in the aisle – who had never kicked in 5 years of prior ownership, and who has not kicked in the 2 years since – while 4.5 months pregnant.

Second scariest was watching a polo pony drop dead mid-game about 10 feet in front of me. Very sad. She gave the rider about 2 seconds of “something’s not quite right here” time so he could safely jump off before she collapsed.

#134

Not anything that DID happen, but something that definitely could have been really bad. More than once I’ve seen someone on horseback at the show holding an infant in his/her lap. Often the baby is not theirs. I mean, if the horse takes off instinct tells you to drop the baby and grab the reins
it scares me every time I see it :no:

#135
  1. My family sent a mare to KY to be bred and shown. The lady who was caring for her took the mare and her gelding to a show with the trainer. The gelding flipped over on her and killed her.
  2. At Showpark a kid was dismounting and she caught her crotch on the saftey stirrup and the horse took off. While she dangled along hooked. She lived but had crotch repair work done.
  3. Funny- in a driving class the idiot driving makes a bad entrance into the ring, hits a wheel and falls off. The horse exits the ring and runs into VIP parking. The horse runs between parked cars breaking stuff left and right
 My Dad says," glad I didn’t park there." (He usually did and never did again.)
  4. Me going cross country at home age 12 decide to go “off-course” I jump log and look up only to be hit smack in the mouth by low branch and land on my back on the log. My Mom has just driven up and so I fake that I came off just hacking. Within five minutes my lips were so huge I looked like botox gone bad.
  5. I was grooming a 3 year old colt in the cross-ties at home
 He was getting ready to be shown in-hand by our trainer. He got pissed when I turned the clippers on and reared up and struck. His hoof hit me in the face, broke my nose- but I didn’t cry. I walked back to the house and the white shirt I was wearing was beet red. My Mom wasn’t home so I put the shirt in the laundry room sink in cold h2o to rinse it out. My Mom came in the house walked in the laundry room all I could hear was her scream. My nose was huge and she shipped the horse to the trainer the next day. I was always more concerned with her selling a horse because I got hurt then the actual getting hurt.
#136

[QUOTE=onlyleftsocks;2923726]
crazy- i live near there- that show has always been nutters. never have gone tho- nuthing for me.

even scarier- go to the eti nationals in burbank- every year i take the little ones to get miles- its the scariest place i have ever ever been. this year a girl got bucked off and kicked in the teeth about 20 feet from me- no helmet- western rider- :eek: had to be taken out on the stetcher.
not to mention the general freaky-ness of the jumper ring that goes down. no scratch that- of any over fence class, or rail class. in fact just walking on your two feet is hazardous.[/QUOTE]

Don’t say that
I’m probably doing that show in Burbank this summer. I’ll probably be in the 2’ 18+ class, so hopefully I don’t get any of those in the flat with me :eek:

#137

Giant black WB horse galloping around the showgrounds at LAEC with his saddle under his belly. I heard he ran over a groom, breaking his (the groom’s) ankle before they finally caught him. Poor grooms, right in harms way & who knows if they have the health insurance they need to be working in such a dangerous sport (my guess is they don’t).

Another one, along the same lines, girl entering her jumper class (good rider, good horse), saddle starts to slip over her second jump, eventually just slips all they way under the horse’s belly. She felw off, but was ok, horse ran around the arena bucking. All were ok in the end though, thankfully.

Otherwise, I’ve seen some pretty bad/scary jumper classes where the kid is getting left behind at every jump or is giving no release & horse inverts over every jump. Super scary when trainers let these kids be over faced because the kid or the parents want the kid to jump higher too soon. Sometimes I feel like people aren’t willing to put in the flat and x-rail time anymore.

I personally had a pretty scary round once where my horse was suuuuuper high, pulling on me all over tarnation, I dropped a rein mid-course, he dropped a leg in the middle of an oxer (didn’t drop the rail though). We ended with 8 faults I think, but I should have been circling and woahing, maybe even stopping on that day.

#138

The scariest thing I’ve seen at a show as a lot of you ahve already said it are the small jumper classes at small shows but even worse are the gamblers chocie at about the 2ft level. One schooling show that my barn would go to (normaly for 1st show exp.) had one and man those kids just flew but the seccond time I was there as an assistant the the trainer I’m standing next to one of the trainers hearing her only advice over and over again “GO FASTER”
what more cann I say?
Other than that My trainer was in one of the Jumper classes at a BRHJ show, about 4 jumps into the course there is a nice tight roll back saddle just goes, leg gets traped in a strange way and hamstring is gone! Yup he hobbled the rest of the day with day glow orange vet wrap around his leg refusing to go home or the doc, had to finish up the show (other riders were called in for the horses he had there).

#139

Not at a show but


I was riding my 4 yr. rescue old in a lesson and he was acting up a lot that day. So anyway a 6 yr. old girl used to trailer in her western pony because she wanted to learn how to jump, but my trainer would have her go over poles and call it “jumping” because this girl could barley stay on at the trot. So as I said before my horse was really acting up that day. My trainer had me go over a little jump(couldn’t have been more than 2’ 6) and the western girl halts right next to the jump to talk to her mom:eek: While I was in mid-air over that same jump!!:eek::eek::eek:Somehow I managed to turn him mid-air over the jump and landed paralle(sp?) to it! Amazingly no one was hurt but i know i was pretty shaken.

God my horse was a saint even when he was 4!!:winkgrin:

#140

I have never really seen anything just a couple bad falls, though the people riding got up within 5 minutes of the fall, but I have seen some potentially SCARY things.

a)We were at local show, known for hunters not many jumpers, but they still provide the classes. Well, a little girl(I was told she was 9 who was really small, could have passed as 6) was riding her 16.2+ big necked/headed WB in the jumpers. I think they were doing 2’6", which isn’t big, but when you think about it for this little girl, she should still be doing 18" beginner stuff on a dead broke pony. Anyway, we was jumping in a ‘makeshift’ schooling ring, with no fencing, schooling maybe 3’-3’3". She only fell off three times, but I guess that was no sign to the trainer to get her off that horse, and on something much easier and smaller.

b)It wasn’t too scary, but more unsafe. A girl was doing the short stirrup(I think) with no trainer, just her dad(who I think signed in as her trainer or something) there to give her pat on the back when she came out of the ring. And her dad I am guessing did not know much about horses, just seeing the way he acted around them. Anyway, the pony was cute, the girl was any ok rider. They look like a cute pair when they were just standing. Then they went in the ring and the pony was a little fast, not scary, but faster than any pony my trainer would let me ride when I did SS. Well, she refused like the 3rd jump which was at the far end of the ring, and couldn’t stop her pony. The pony finally stopped when he got to the in-gate. Of course they went back to try the jump again, and the same thing happened till I think the steward asked them to leave the ring.

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