# Worst spook?



## Roman (Jun 13, 2014)

Probably a few weeks ago when a turkey shot out of the grass and scared the life outta Roman. He went one way, I went the other way and landed in the grass. I was totally shaken up...Roman, however, just started grazing.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## LifeInTheIrons (Mar 28, 2015)

Roman said:


> Probably a few weeks ago when a turkey shot out of the grass and scared the life outta Roman. He went one way, I went the other way and landed in the grass. I was totally shaken up...Roman, however, just started grazing.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Ouch! That stinks! Your horse sounds just like mine though, mine always starts grazing whenever I fall off haha.


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## Reiningcatsanddogs (Oct 9, 2014)

Before anyone points out how stupid this was....I was a 10 year old kid. 

My brother and I were taking lessons from the same teacher. I would go first and then it was his turn. After his lesson my mother and the instructor were talking and my brother was still on the tacked up lesson horse. 

I was tired of standing on the fence rails to talk to him so I decided to climb on the back of one of the other horses in the pasture and talk to him over the fence. 

Everything was going great until someone started a tractor not far away. The old tractors were a lot louder than the ones today. 

The horse I was on spooked and bolted. My brother's horse spooked and bolted through the open arena gate. At this point, I was holding on to the mane for dear life. Then the horse jumped the fencing and continued across the farm driveway and down towards the pond. I could hear my brother's horse behind us, but since I had no way to stop, we just kept running. 

Now I have my arms wrapped around the horses neck and my legs locked tight and the horse heads for a big weeping willow tree. I close my eyes. I hear a grunt and a thud behind me followed by his horse passing up my horse with no rider aboard! The horses eventually stopped when they hit the end of the property. DANG I WAS STUPID!

Shortly after that, my brother quit riding, and I got a new instructor. It was both the dumbest thing I ever did and the most exhilarating thing I ever did. When you are 10 you think you are invincible.


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## waresbear (Jun 18, 2011)

I live on a mountain top, 2 miles of steep winding hills. I frequently ride up and down this road all winter, great conditioning for the horses. This particular evening, it finally stopped raining so I took Indy for a ride on the road rather than schooling in the arena. He much prefers arena riding, he is a show horse and feels secure in an arena, so I like to expand his horizons when he gets comfortable. There is about 20 or deer that live on this road, Indy probably knows each one personally! On the way to bottom, he's Mr. Cool, then down a valley off the side of the mountain, some people have massive bonfires burning, Indy starts picking up his head, snorting, being a crazy horse. I do the circles with him, flexing, relaxing about a quarter mile to the highway. Turn around & head back, he is still a crazy horse, but he is listening to my cues, we are still circling making our back up the mountain, we've been through this before, eventually he gives it up and flatfoots it. Then a bunch of deer run down the upper clearing of the mountain, I have the reins on the loose side to make him relax, he catches the sight of deer and jumps sideways in the circle and catches me off guard, continues to go Mach speed sideways. As I get myself centered, my leg is no longer disengaging his hindquarters and he takes off running up a driveway with barb wire on either side of it. I had a moment of thinking to bail but I leaned back, held the reins and yelled WHOA! He slid to a halt and watched the deer run in front of us. Pretty glad he did because I would've bailed and eaten a ton of gravel & broken or torn something. Going home was full of snorts and circles, but I kept relaxed and my efforts paid off the last 200 ft to home, he calmly walked, his sides foaming with sweat. That has been his worst spook I think, most scariest for me.


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## ponypile (Nov 7, 2007)

I was galloping on a trail with a friend. I was in front. Came around a corner and about 20 feet in front of me was an ATV. The horse I was riding was a bit of a chicken turd. All I felt was his front end dropping about 2 feet, and then I was flung into the brush on the side (luckily missed all of the many trees). My friend told me later that his front legs spread out like bambi before spinning around in the fasted "roll back" she had ever see before taking off back home (her horse bolted a ways to keep up with my horse going home before she regained control). The people on the ATV were nice though and gave me a ride across a creek we had crossed, and no one got hurt.


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## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

One of the spoiled horses I bought, back when that's all I bought, was sold because he would spook, run sideways, spin, and then bolt for home. 

I assessed him physically and all was well.

He once did his sideways run when a deer jumped out of tall grass next to the road (one of my ranch roads) and I was NOT going to let him spin and bolt. He was NOT going to get to go home for a puny excuse. 

He ran sideways sooo far he finally fell over. I pulled his head around to the direction he was falling and kicked free of the stirrups, in case I had to dismount. He was so shocked, he got back up, trembling. I asked him to go forward and we walked off.

He never spooked again. 

He did have a scuffed nose after the wreck, but healed fine, wasn't headshy, became a useful horse.


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## WildAtHeart (Jul 17, 2013)

I have had some nasty falls but most of them were my fault. 
My most recent:
So my mare and I were riding along our merry way when...BAM. The boogie man was definetly behind that tree. Might I add, this is the tree we had ridden past at least three times on this ride already. So Smokey takes off, I slide to the left but hang on. We are out in a big field and I am determined to climb on as she dances around. I pull myself up onto her neck and at this point she is in a flat out gallop...and might I add she is an ex racer...so her gallop is fast. I am thinking "Ok, move back into the saddle and one rein stop". Then she swerves to the left, I go to the right and SMACK. She is still running and I am in the dirt.

I limped after her and found her back at the barn (thank goodness). I sat on the mounting block to collect myself (the adrenaline was wearing off and the pain coming on). The whole time I sat there she stood over me with her chin on my back. How am I supposed to be mad at that??? After a while I climbed on, walked a circle and hopped off. I have this "get back on or go the the hospital" thing.

My hip swelled up like a balloon and made a popping sound for a week or two but it is all good now. 

So that was fun


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## Saranda (Apr 14, 2011)

We had recently changed barns and now had some spectacular trails to use, but to reach them one has to cross a railroad track. One day, when one of my barn friends and myself were riding on a road parallel to the tracks, a huge cargo train charged by and sounded the horn. My gelding had been fidgety upon the massive train approaching, but the horn did it - he reared and bolted, and so did the other horse. There were absolutely no brakes, the road was narrow, full of ice and hilly and, when it seemed that things couldn't go worse, the rider behind us fell and her horse raced ahead of us. There I was - on a runaway horse, with a riderless one bolting in front of us, spurce-tree branches hitting in my face, running for our lives over hills, creeks, fallen trees and whatnot for almost two miles. 

Fortunately, the other horse was then spooked by a couple of skiers and stopped dead in his tracks, which is when I managed to jump off, grab both horses by the reins and go searching for my fallen companion. Thank gods, she suffered no injuries, but this incident left my gelding and myself with a deep trauma and fear of trains for months to come.


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## Zexious (Aug 2, 2013)

My hunter has a huge spook x.x 
The last time I rode him before my last set of surgeries he pulled one of his stupid, spooking crap and did his typical backwards/sideways teleport because of some birds on the property.

So far he hasn't dumped me ;D


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## Woodhaven (Jan 21, 2014)

My first horse and this is back in the 1950's (yes that long ago). 
It is December there is lots of snow and the roads are snow packed and icy, slippery, we just had our horses sharp shod the day before.
I went over to the barn to go for a ride, the other two girls who had horses at this barn were already gone, so I saddle up and head out. 
I should mention here that when we moved to this barn I found a snaffle bit someone had left and I put it on one of my bridles which I decided to use this day. The horses are feeling good because of the cold weather and not being worked as much in the winter. I turned on to a road and I see the others about 1/2 a mile ahead and my horse got a little excited when he saw them and wanted to move out to catch them. I checked him up and lo and behold the bit broke in two and there I was, holding reins attached to nothing.
My horse hestitated for a second then took off at top speed along this icy road, I thought of jumping off but looked at the hard ground flying by and decided to stay on so I called to the riders ahead to let them know we were coming (at warp speed), they stopped and we came racing up and when he passed them, he turned into a field and when he got to the fence he hesitated and I jumped off and grabbed his noseband.
I lead him back out to the road, my friends were wondering what the heck happened so I explained about the bit. I took the reins off the bit and tied them on to the nose band and rode home, changed the bridle and started out on a ride again.
The funny thing is, I could ride this horse all over with just a halter and lead rope, right down busy roads and he was always fine. I guess the excitment of seeing the horses ahead of him and then the bit breaking just set him off.
It was an awful feeling, having the reins just there attached to nothing I can tell you. Thanks goodness he was sharp shod, I hate to think what could have happened without those shoes.


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## mkmurphy81 (May 8, 2015)

My best was definitely my fault -- I'm the one that scared the you know what out of my own horse. I was a stupid teenager at the time. It was a cool day, and my horse hadn't been ridden in a few days. I was lazy and decided to ride bareback on top of the thin nylon sheet she was wearing. Like I said, I was stupid. We walked once around the arena, and then started a nice easy trot. She got distracted by horses in a nearby pasture, and she dropped to a walk. In order to get her attention back, I kicked her - hard. At least I had the sense to grab mane before I kicked. I expected her to bolt. I did not expect her to leap sideways and buck. This horse never bucked with her heels more than 2 inches off the ground until that day. That mare responded to the tiniest leg cues. When I kicked, she didn't know what had just grabbed her. I don't know how I held on, but I did. Looking back, It was funny, and I deserved it. I really don't recommend spooking your own horse, BTW.


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

I was either 9 or 10 and trail riding with the riding school where I'd spent 6 months in a beginner's course in riding basic dressage. I was on a horse new to the school that we had just purchased off the school. I'd trailed many times before by that stage, and on a wide variety of the school horses, so the school certainly couldn't be blamed for not educating their riders - you weren't even allowed on a trail if you couldn't competently ride your horse through all the up and down transitions in the arena, and do arena figures to prove you could steer - all of which they taught in their excellent, military-style group riding lessons.

I think in retrospect, the problem was that nobody was aware that the horse I was riding had a phobia about trucks and tractors, or if they were aware, they didn't communicate it. The other problem was that they had me riding tail-end Charlie, and I should probably have been in the middle of the single file we were riding along the road, since the horse was new to the area.

And as we were walking the horses on the verge of the narrow country road, a large, noisy truck came up behind us and compression braked. Before I even had time to think (and at that time, I wasn't anticipating a spook, as I'd not ever experienced one), my horse was off and overtaking the other horses on the side away from the road. The truck kept compression braking and the whole group ended up bolting in a big stampede.

This was a really scary experience, and I've never witnessed anything remotely like it again in the three and a half decades of riding since. All the horses were running like they were possessed and heading straight back to the barn by the shortest possible route, which included short-cutting through the middle of a pine forest, not along a trail but literally doing slalom through the trees. It was at this stage that I lost a stirrup and then, when my horse wildly careered around a tree, lost balance completely and fell. The standard riding cap with chin elastic of those times rotated forward during the landing, and I broke my nose on the hard brim of the cap.

Everyone bar one 9-year-old girl fell off as the horses stampeded home. The large group included mostly adult riders with reasonable skills, and at least two highly skilled people, including the instructor. Most of the horses were very steady sorts who didn't usually bolt. One of the women who fell off in the forest was critically injured with a broken skull. Thankfully she recovered in time. (But it says a lot about the usefulness of those sorts of helmets. I threw mine away, spent years riding without one, and the next one I bought was an eventing helmet with chin harness, a huge cumbersome thing in those days and not ventillated and if you were riding in the sun, your brain was in danger of overheating. Not like the nice, light, ventillated helmets you can get these days for a reasonable price that will actually absorb impact.)

I think that the compression-braking truck breathing down the group's necks from behind was a particularly nasty kind of thing to encounter and would in all probability have at least unsettled even very experienced horses. Added to that, I think in a herbivore group like that, panic spreads very easily, and the combination of at least one already blindly panicking horse and a very large and scary object would have just led to an instinctive chain reaction deeply rooted in basic survival.

It wasn't like any sort of spook I've ever encountered since.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

When I was 12 my parents bought me my first horse. I had had ponies since I was 5, but they had been boarded and really, I had never been left alone with them. My parents knew nothing about horses, but got tired of hearing me beg and finally gave in. At age 12 I got a quarter horse who seemed fine when I rode him in an arena, but it turned out he was scared of cars, running water and, well, almost everything we ran into while trail riding. I avoided riding on roads as much as possible, but we lived in a rural area and to get to certain trails, I had to ride along the shoulder for a bit. One day I was coming down the hill and a big dump truck was coming down the other side very loudly. I knew this was not going to end well. As we met the truck, my horse spun around and dove into the steep ditch head first. I don't know how, but I managed to stay on. He was shaken, and left a horseshoe on the pavement, but we made our way home unharmed. 

A message to non-horsey parents: do NOT assume your child can handle a horse all by themselves! We both could have been killed that day.


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## Textan49 (Feb 13, 2015)

Years ago I went on a trail ride with my girlfriend. A storm was coming up quickly with dark clouds and distant thunder so we decided to head back and hopefully get to the barn before the rain started. We had about a half mile hack from the trails to the barn on a narrow country road when the storm got closer. I had gotten off my horse, my friend was still riding. We had to pass under a huge oak tree that was about a hundred yards from the barn and the rain was just starting. I turned around to comment that we made it back just in time when the oak tree was struck by lightning. I felt my mare make one hell of a jump sideways. The saddlebred mare reared with my lady friend who fortunately rode well enough to handle it, My brain was still working and I was expecting the horses to bolt but I couldn't move and I don't think any of us could for what seemed several seconds. When it was over both horses were trembling but very much in control. So this was not really a bad spook but by far the scariest.


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## Zexious (Aug 2, 2013)

Acanadianartist--I think 12 is plenty old to handle a horse on one's own :O What would your parents have done to help or stifle the situation... Particularly being "non-horsie" parents?


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## Textan49 (Feb 13, 2015)

This was not a bad spook because I was extremely grateful of the way my two mares handled it, but by far the scariest situation I have ever encountered. I was trail riding with a lady friend and a storm was brewing in the distance so we headed back to the barn. The storm was getting closer and we had just a half mile hack on the road to the barn. Just when the barn was in sight the rain was about to start. We were passing under a huge oak tree and I had gotten off my horse and turned around to comment that we made it back just in time when the tree was struck by lightning. My mare made a huge jump sideways and the saddlebred mare reared and made a lounge. It seemed like the four of us could react at first but then couldn't move for what seemed like several seconds. I remember thinking that the horses could bolt but they didn't, and by the time I was able to move they were very much in control but trembling. Being able to talk took a few more seconds. It was one of those things that if it had to happen could have been much worse. My horse jumped away from me instead of on me and stopped when she came to the end of the rein. My friend kept her balance and her horse stopped after the one lunge. Neither horse had any problem with storms or going by that spot again, and even the old oak survived but it did lose all the bark on one side.


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## walkinthewalk (Jul 23, 2008)

We have an organized ride that is noted for going thru the llama pasture twice a year.

The male llama is not nice. The year I decided to take my nervous 16.1 horse, was the year that male llama caused a couple people to get dumped off their horses.

I kept my horse last on a ride of over 200 horses because he is a kicker. The male llama was struttin' around, proud that he had just caused so much havoc, when suddenly he saw me and my horse. 

He came toward Rusty, lips rolled back, hissing, neck stretched, and pretty much giving Rusty heart failure.

Rusty can drop his shoulder, spin on a dime and give me change for it. His performance was stellar and I can still hear the Drag Man hollering "ride him out! Ride him out!"

I did ride him out but Rusty was so scared, his whole body was trembling and he wouldn't move. I ended up getting off and walking him back to the trailer, because he was way too blown to be safe to ride.

The following Spring, I took the horse in my avatar, hoping that llama would still be raising cane. Sure enough, he was in the pasture , not too far from where we came thru the gate.

He gave Duke a sideways look. The Drag Man told me to keep moving and the llama would stand.

I dropped the reins, said "Duke, get him" and he did. Went right up, nose-to-nose, snorted, pushed a very taken aback llama a few steps back, and we continued, uneventfully, on the ride.

Duke was born wearing a no-fear t-shirt. Rusty born having meltdowns every time he turned around and he never grew out of them, because Duke was always such a piece of perfection to ride.

Meaning, it is my fault Rusty stayed a nervous horse but when you're in your 40's and have a no-mistake horse like Duke was---------------

Anyway, riding out the dip and spin spook and keeping Rusty from running from the llama was my absolute worst ever.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

Zexious said:


> Acanadianartist--I think 12 is plenty old to handle a horse on one's own :O What would your parents have done to help or stifle the situation... Particularly being "non-horsie" parents?


I disagree. This horse needed some serious desensitization and had a lot of dangerous fears. Now that I know a lot more about horses, I would know to test for those things before I buy a horse. I could not even spray fly repellent on him without having him try to rip the post he was tied to out of the ground. He wouldn't go near water, even puddles. 

As a horsey parent, I will make sure my daughter has a safe horse and will not let her do things that are unsafe. I should not have been out alone on a road with that horse given that he was so unpredictable. My parents were terrified of the horse and wouldn't go near him so that was no help. It is too much to expect of a child to train a spooky horse. I read everything I could about horses and tried to help him, but without a trainer or instructor, it was utter foolishness. While I expect my daughter to help look after her horse, in the end, it is an adult responsibility and parents need to realize that. I'm not saying non-horsey parents can't let their kids have horses, but boarding would have made more sense.


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

Horses give off signals that something is brewing in their mind. Most riders are either not educated in this or ignore them. When it comes to storms, most horses are ok if out in the open but not in an arena. The reason is the storm messes up their senses. Sounds and smells travel for miles on the wind so with limited vision horses become nervous and flightly but when out in the open they have a chance to escape. If you watch horses during a storm they'll be out in the most open area, away from everything that could conceal a predator. Our first reaction is to bring them in but that's not what they want. Nature provided the horse with very thick skin on the hindquarters to take the brunt of the wind, which is why they turn tail to the wind. Back to the signals. Most horses that desire to head home will often look for the smallest excuse to spook. If he feels tense, ear flicking, he's telling you this is going to happen. That is the time to diffuse it with hard work, circles and circles until he's puffing.


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## mkmurphy81 (May 8, 2015)

I remembered another fun one of mine. First, a little background story: After I had been riding for several years (I was probably 13 or 14 at the time) we moved my horse to a new barn closer to my house. Everything was great until summer came around and they informed me of the barn rule that said I couldn't ride wearing shorts. I had been wearing shorts to ride in the summer for years with no problem -- western, never ride English in shorts, I learned that the hard way. They said no riding in shorts unless, you know, you were just riding bareback. There was the loophole. They didn't realize that anything I would do with a saddle I would also do bareback. That included trail riding, jumping, cantering around the arena waving my hands over my head... you get the idea. I rode almost everyday for a month without saddling my horse. The BO finally agreed to let me saddle my horse, and that was the day I learned that rules didn't apply to me! This story comes from that bareback month.

We decided to ride down the levee behind a neighborhood instead of going down our usual wooded trail. Someone came towards us on a bicycle, and there wasn't much room to move over. As he got closer, I learned that my horse was scared of bicycles. She took off down to the bottom of the levee. I stayed on and she stopped, but then I was at the bottom of a steep hill, in someone's back yard, bareback. The spook wasn't the difficult part; getting back up was. I swear that hill was twice as long going up as it was going down.


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## Bondre (Jun 14, 2013)

I have a pretty laid-back horse and she's only spooked and bolted twice in the nearly two years that I've had her. Both times she caught me totally unawares, because she too was totally relaxed instants beforehand. The second spook she was grazing peacefully on the trail while I waited for my dog to catch up with us. The dog emerged from the undergrowth in typical tail-wagging doggy fashion and my mare went from head-down grazing to a fast canter in the blink of an eye. I spent what seemed like an age gathering up the reins, which was the worst thing as I felt so helpless with the reins flapping around all over.

Much more scary was one time she freaked out over a dirtbike. She didn't spook because I spotted the possible explosion a mile off and did my best to defuse it. She's normally fine about dirtbikes, as long as they're considerate, but this time she was giving off danger signals when the bike was still half a mile off so I took her into some open fields beside the track to put distance between us and the bike. I made her walk, but when the bike went past on the track (slowly and over 100m away from us) she was so up-tight I could feel she was about to explode into action; I wouldn't let her take off at the gallop for home but at the same time by holding her back I was risking making her go up on me. I disengaged her back end and did circles, anything to keep her in movement, prevent her rearing and get her mind back on me, and gradually the blind panic receded. The whole episode only lasted a few minutes but it seemed endless, and was much more nerve-wracking than if she'd actually spooked and bolted. During the rest of that ride we heard the dirtbike growling in the distance at intervals, but fortunately we didn't come close to it again.

The dirt biker was DH, my horses have had plenty of contact with dirtbikes and normally don't do more than focussing with their ears - so I still have no idea why Macarena was so scared on that one occasion.


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## womack29 (Oct 30, 2011)

I ride alone most of the time. My husband rides dirtbikes and we have a lease that we can both ride on. We have a wild hog problem here in Texas. Sugar and i were in a remote area on the ranch and some cute little baby hogs crossed our trail folllowed by a snorting mean momma hog. Well she charged at us Sugar jumped up did a 180 and took off. I was amazed I stayed on. that is a day i wish someone else had seen it.


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## bkylem (Sep 21, 2013)

WildAtHeart said:


> I have had some nasty falls but most of them were my fault.
> My most recent:
> So my mare and I were riding along our merry way when...BAM. The boogie man was definetly behind that tree. Might I add, this is the tree we had ridden past at least three times on this ride already. So Smokey takes off, I slide to the left but hang on. We are out in a big field and I am determined to climb on as she dances around. I pull myself up onto her neck and at this point she is in a flat out gallop...and might I add she is an ex racer...so her gallop is fast. I am thinking "Ok, move back into the saddle and one rein stop". Then she swerves to the left, I go to the right and SMACK. She is still running and I am in the dirt.
> 
> ...


Sorry about the fall, but you sound incredibly lucky that your injuries weren't worse.


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## bkylem (Sep 21, 2013)

I have been riding a horse for the last few months that spooks easily. You can only tack her in her stall, gradually tighten her girth and spend ample time with her prior to the ride. This past week I was in the ring with her and had just started a canter. A guy in the next field over started up a weed-whacker and my horse took off going a bit sideways. I was able to stay somewhat relaxed and gave a hard pull to the left rein and she slowed enough that I could transition to a quick trop and stop. I love the horse, but I'm really wary of her reactions. Exciting though draining.


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## ZombieHorseChick (Jun 5, 2014)

Ahahaha, spooky horses... That takes me back to when I was little and riding a insane and most likely dangerous mare named Suzie... Though my worst spook on a horse was probably in 2011, mostly because I got a concussion from it! My sister was officially teaching me to canter after years and years of begging ( been riding on my own since I was 4! I had the best little mini name belle) anywho, it was pretty chilly out and I hadn't been able to ride consistently for quite a while, considering I didn't have a horse of my own ( but yet we had 12 horses?) and my sister was extremely picky about people riding her mare. 
I lacked confidence an was a bit nervous, we went out and it was cool and a bit windy, she was riding my other sisters horse, who is a hard head and also green broke, he loves to run. And my sisters boyfriend was riding our huge Belgian mare, all went well the majority of the time, till we started home galloping along the wood line in the corn field, some deer popped right out in front of us and my mare turned sharply to the right, and I went left... Stupidly, I wasn't wearing a helmet, and took a huge rock to the temple, and sustained permanent nerve damage in my right calf cause she somehow kicked the it while I fell, surprisingly I jumped up and caught her, got back on and rode home! I hardly remember it though cause when I got home I started repeating myself every 30 seconds, I got rushed to the hospital and it took the doctors forever to figure out that I had a very severe concussion, I kept repeating myself that often from 11am to 10pm....

Later that year my sister gave that mare,OT, to me ( my sister moved to Arkansas... We live in Indiana..) an now after plenty of work my once spook crazy mare is now my dead head trail and show horse, I love her to bits ^.^ and totally know that my concussion was 100% my fault lol


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## ZombieHorseChick (Jun 5, 2014)

Bondre said:


> I have a pretty laid-back horse and she's only spooked and bolted twice in the nearly two years that I've had her. Both times she caught me totally unawares, because she too was totally relaxed instants beforehand.


Sounds like she might have been lightly zoning out, my mare does that every so often if I'm not keeping her mind busy, she just gets so relaxed, and isn't paying much attention to her surroundings, that when something that they should of seen just pops out at them and startles them.


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## aclassicalpaint (Feb 11, 2015)

Ooh my worst spook had to be a few weeks ago. Luckily, I wasn't riding my mare when it happened. Anyway, I don't have a trailer so I walk my mare a mile up to the community arenas. 1/3 of the way there, a motorcycle came up towards us and began slowing down (we were standing right next to a stop sign). I don't know why, but it scared the daylights out of Misty. She totally disregarded me - lost her mind! She rushed forwards into the road, turned on her haunches, reared up, bolted past me, jumped up on the dirt bank behind me, slid off, reared up on my other side and finally calmed down enough for me to take her to a safer area (we between a two lane road and a hillside). She did a full circle of crazy around me. I was shocked but didn't make a big deal out of it. Later, two motorcycles past us. She didn't bat an eye. And then yesterday two dirt bikes came racing down the hillside and sped off in front of us and she wasn't worried at all. My horse is crazy. I guess she got all the fear out of her system lol


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## jenkat86 (May 20, 2014)

When I was a weakling beginner I was trail riding alone. My saddle began slipping when we were on a narrow trail, so I pointed my horse towards a row of hedges and got off to tighten the girth. When I went to get back on, I put one foot in the stirrup and as I started to swing over, a deer stepped onto the trail. My horse bolted to the left, I went right over her back, from her left side to her right side. Landed BETWEEN two logs on my back, and somehow my right hip ended up being my horse's launch pad. I didn't even realize I had been stepped on until I got home and found a PERFECTLY shaped horse hoof bruise on my hip. You could see the frog and everything in that bruise! Thank God she was barefoot. 

The second one is not a spook- it's a lack there of, which I was very grateful for. My husband had bought a very green horse. Very flighty. I was lunging him in a round pen and decided I was going to try to ride him bareback. I propped the stool up next to him, lifted my leg and the stool gave out. I landed on my back directly under him. I immediately curled up in a ball because I just knew he was going to stomp me. I laid there for a minute and nothing...so I looked up and he was still standing over me, just looking down at me like, "what are you doing down there?" Chill as can be. So I got up, went to pat the dust off of my butt and then he spooked! Lol. The calmest that horse had ever been was when I was laying on the ground under him!


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## apachetears (Oct 27, 2014)

*Freedom*

We had a little Morgan horse/pony that was my son's named Freedom, her owner's husband got drunk one night and he and his buddies got in their truck and chased the mare around the pasture to see how fast she could run. Ruined her for hwy riding, she spooked at every vehicle.
Once she got loose and took herself up to the local volunteer fire dept where a horse savvy teen girl was called to rescue her. I went out there to get her and slapped a saddle on her with a worn out thread cinch.
As we rode back on a two lane country road here comes a car, she danced around, rared up bucked a little yet I was able to calm her down till she stood still and everything got quiet.
Then....the rotted cinch popped apart and she made a 90 degree turn and headed back to the teen age girls house faster than I thought a horse could travel.
I found my self still in the saddle, feet in the stirrups and sitting on the ground watching her butt disappear down the road.
I remember thinking...Dang that's a pretty horse.
She later became a good horse for the son but she never got over cars, I wished I could have had a word with the owners husband, but I never did.


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## apachetears (Oct 27, 2014)

*Rye's spook the worst one*

The worst spook/wreck was Rye "Rhiannon" as we completed the circuit I ride around to the old Church and swamp area and were almost home on our first ride off the property a Crotch rocket motorcycle came roaring in and blew through the stop sign ahead of us and came past at 90 mph.
Having a Bi lateral hearing impairment from my military days as a youth I never heard the high speed engine till too late.
The mare went bronco, loco, bucking, sun fishing and frog hopping till she decided to run back the way we had come, I decided to bail out and kicked free of the stirrups and landed on my heels in a roll back on my butt.
Then Rye ran over me, hitting my left side ribs with her hoof as she ran by busting three of them. then my last sight of her she was attacking the saddle as if it was a cougar on her back.
I had no helmet but my George Strait hat once again survived, I wear a helmet now. 
I got up and followed, picking up stirrup, reins, canteen and other such bits and pieces of saddle as I walked looking for her.
She stopped two miles away at another house with horses and the lady there held her till I walked and got the truck and trailer to fetch her.
Once we got her she loaded and turned around so she faced backwards out the trailer, in pain at that point I said OK girl you will just have to ride that way.
Once home I turned her out, dumped the saddle in the yard and drove myself to the emergency room where I stayed for four hours.
Hydrocodone and x-rays, three months off a horse which I turned into 30 days.
I have since broken her from spooking at ATV's, Harley's and other bikes and from cows, bicycles, flocks of horse eating chickens and such but I've never broke her from Crotch rockets since I don't have one or know any idiots who drive them.
An Amusing note, the crotch rocket rider hit a white tail deer right in front of our house and almost killed himself, and did kill the deer.
I got to say, "Boy your gonna kill your self on that bike" which was all the satisfaction I got out of the wreck.


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## DuckDodgers (May 28, 2013)

My horse was never a particularly spooky guy, but (like many horses) he'd have his moments. He never got me off during a spook, though I have fallen off during a couple of bucking incidents that were not spooking-related. 

The worst was probably this past September or so during my first lesson with my new trainer at my new barn. I waited a couple of weeks to settle in and ride before starting lessons, so both me and the horse were already fairly accustomed to the routine and setting. I had previously told the trainer about where we were in our riding, about my horse, and told him that he's pretty quiet and laid-back. About 40 minutes into our lesson with zero incident we're trotting along nicely in a circle and one of the barn employees starts the tractor next to where we're riding. He had been around tractors and heard them start up about 1000 times in his life, but was not thrilled in the slightest that day. Went from beautiful trot going to the right to doing a sudden 180 and going full speed the other direction. I was so not expecting it and got slightly unseated during the spin, but did manage to sit back up and stop him. Trainer just said "Well, I wasn't expecting that..."

The most amusing with that horse was one day when I went to grab him out of the pasture to ride. He was in kind of a strangely shaped pasture, and of course I had to walk all the way to the back to get him as he couldn't see or hear me. While walking out I saw the dirtiest, mangiest, most disgusting possum I've ever seen in my life walking by. I thought "cool... possum." and carried on with my life. Kept walking, got horse, tied the halter off and hopped on bareback to avoid walking through the mud again on the way back. About halfway out of the pasture the possum decided to make another appearance doing its funny little possum walk. Horse was not pleased by possum's presence. I don't have a good bareback seat and he's trotting sideways in either direction as though he's tap dancing or something while I'm sliding around. At this point the barn manager was watching and I could see her laughing at us  

One day I was riding in the back pasture with two of my friends. One friend on her horse, the other on the BM's horse, and me on the first friend's other horse. I'm walking in front with the other two behind me, and one of them starts talking about how they love how laid-back their horse is. Says that if she's walking through the woods, goes through a spider web, and starts flailing that the horse doesn't care, and then attempts to demonstrate such flailing. I'm up front so didn't see exactly what happened, but next thing I know her horse is galloping off into the sunset in front of us without her. I turn around and she's just sitting up on the ground with her legs out in front of her. Next thing we know her horse decides to come galloping back. With him he brings the three brood mares that live out in the pasture, so she's still sitting on the ground and there's four horses running full speed towards us. Her horse comes to a halt next to us, and the mares keep running past us. Good thing, because two of them are known kickers. At this point my other friend's horse is now doing the rocking horse bucking/rearing in tiny circles. He finally stops, she jumps off. 

Luckily, the horse I was riding only spun around once and trotted a few steps. That's good, because I'm 5'3 and he's 17hh- I wasn't sure how easily I'd be able to get back on. The friend that jumped off is holding both her horse and my friend's horse, and friend that fell off says that she isn't feeling well. I get off to go help her, and the second my feet hit the ground she says "Ok, I'm alright!" and gets up. Ugh. Now we're all three just standing there in a circle holding our horses, nothing left to do but laugh about it and go back to the barn. We all remount (me being particularly proud for being able to ground mount the tall horse  ) and go home. On the way back friend that fell off is riding in front while we go over the little bridge. The bridge has always seemed quite stable, but on this particular day one of the boards was slightly loose. Horse that spooked stepped on it, jumped two feet in the air, and bolted clear across the bridge before spinning around to look at us. Other friend and I decide to just walk through the ditch  

The spooks that I've fallen from were when I hadn't been riding too terribly long and was riding a fairly spooky mare. It was when I was first starting to get serious about riding rather than just a kid playing around. That mare did teach me a lot, but I really didn't have the experience necessary to ride her looking back. Usually her spooks would be very minor and I'd ride through them, but not always. One day during a lesson with a friend the friend's horse (who had a bucking problem... both of us were poorly matched) bucked her off. My horse spooked a little, but I rode through it and had a smug feeling inside me. Later on while cantering along she farted, spooked at her own fart, and dumped my butt on the ground. My first fall, and I fell off laughing. The second time I fell off her was when I had just gotten on for a lesson and was walking around. We went around about half of the arena quietly, and then she suddenly bolted. I fell off into the fence, and it wasn't too pleasant. They decided not to use her as a lesson horse after that point.


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## Gabby7783 (Jun 28, 2015)

I've never really had a bad spook, but the worst one was when I was riding a lesson horse for warm up and a bird flew right in front of her nose...lets just say she ran from the end of the outside arena all the way to the front within seconds, and my barns outdoor arena is huge. So ya I fell off but was totally fine after.


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## bkylem (Sep 21, 2013)

My horse spooks easily as you even have to tack her in her stall as she will break through the cross ties. You also have to be careful cinching the girth. Really skittish.

Anyway I was in the ring with her a few weeks ago when a moron started up a weed whacker and she took off. I was able to rein her in with a hard left, but I think I was probably more spooked than she was. She is an eccentric horse, but I really love her.
I'm always ready for a fall.


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## squekers998 (May 29, 2012)

My first horse Lacy was a percheron, she was the most sweetest girl in the world. It was a summer day in 2010 and we were in the indoor because it was HOT, we were cantering around then the neighbors(who don't understand how horses act to loud noise) decide it's a great idea to start turning on their bikes and start racing down the small road that's next to the barn. Well as you would know it Lacy got scared, started to canter faster, the saddle slipped to the left, and I fell off. When I got up the saddle was upside down on Lacy and she was standing in the corner, a lady that was there saw the whole thing and ran into the arena, she also said that Lacy was a few inches from stepping on my rips. For a few weeks I was scared to canter, but now I'm fine. I'm so happy that it wasn't worse..


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