Poll: What's your worst horse experience?

Question

Poll: What's your worst horse experience?

Answer 1

Wow...whoever actually gave you the whip and spurs was completely dense and ill-informed...I'm glad you are more knowledgeable now.



My worst experience actually didn't even happen to me. At summer camp, we were doing team penning. One of the counselors was asked to herd the bull back out to the front pasture because he was too aggressive for the campers to handle, or anyone for that matter....



As she got the bull to the gate, the bull charged her little Quarter Horse (named Squirt). The bull's horn speared Squirt's left shoulder and the force from the charge threw Squirt and his rider off the ground. The puncture was deep...she took Squirt immediately to the wash stall and cold-hosed it, and had the vet out instantly to treat it.



It was horrible...but Squirt made a full recovery.

Answer 2

Thankfully I have never had a really bad experience riding *knock on wood*. Just some scares and spills unfortunately.

Picking out I will have to say a couple weeks ago actually. My horse hurt his stifle a long time ago in his competitive years and where I live right now the weather is going from hot to cold within a couple days and it's really taking a tole on his joints etc. So he has been lame for a few weeks and I have been riding my trainers horse. I was kind of nervous getting on him because I have heard some stories about him rearing and such but figured the experience would be good. My trainer set up a small cross rail and had me trot it a couple times. Well she told me he is the type of horse who will always go long... as we approached the fence and because it was tiny I tried to fit in a extra stride... low and behold he took it a good stride and a half away. I was dumb and tensed up which made him freak out.. he bolted and didn't pick up his feet so he tripped. I lost my reins and my feet came out of the stirrups and thought I was flying head first into the wall. He got back up and started to run off.

Haha thankfully I somehow managed to pick back my stirrups and reins and bring him to a walk....

Two minutes later I was jumping him again ;)

Answer 3

i got dumped in a river the first time I introduced my horse to water. He ran upstream , wouldn't go near anybody and I lost him for 3 hours. though where we were crossing was safe, there was known quick sand far upstream where he was headed. The banks were lined with sharp bamboo. Many people including my friend and a ranger tried to find him. i sat on the riverbank stringing up some of my wet clothes for 3 hours until finally I started hearing splashing. I thought it was the ranger, but it was my horse. I screamed out his name in anger and relief and he began running at me. I ran out of the river onto the bank and he followed me out.

For a month he could barely move as he had worn out every muscle in his body. His brain was fried for about 8 months.

Luckily we have conquered that river now, along with the ocean, mountains, deserts and every other terrain possible. But that was bad, not knowing if I had lost him. however, he has a bad case of separation anxiety if I leave him anywhere strange without me around. :-( Here is a slide show of his post river experience:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFS8wt-EPM&feature=related

we have now healed!

Answer 4

1

Answer 5

Hmm, mine would probably be tack failure. I was riding my little arab bareback and I had invited my friend over to ride him as well. He was, well, still is quite green, so, since i was the more experienced rider and he was my horse i resolved to ride him first. He was doing excellent, so i kissed him to a lope, which was fine. Then my headstall broke, the screw holding the bit. The bit flung out of his mouth and hit him in the head, and like any sensible horse, he panicked. I am far more comfortable in a saddle and i had only learned bareback about two months ago, so I was immediately off balance. I yelled whoa and tried pulling back on the reins, but I only succeeded in swinging the bit around. I was soon bucked off and found a large rock with my hip. How is this funny you ask? The entire time my friend was laughing her @$$ off and didn't even ask if I was okay for about a minute, so it must have been humorous. At least she went and caught my horse. I am not sure what is worse though, that she is still one of my best friends or that i still use the same headstall with the same screws.

Answer 6

ive been lucky not to have too many bad experiences with horses. my biggest one was probably when my horse Coliced I was SO scared I was going to lose her ! I spent the whole night walking her and crying. shes ok but it scared me so much !



Last summer we had just bought my gelding when we had a tornado pick him up. He was beat up pretty bad. Hes legs were all cut up something hit his eye and it was all swollen (it still looks swollen we think theres permanent damage with that) he had welts from the hail and really we were both scared Sh*tless. no one reslly knows what happened to him he was just found outside of his pen. we got to the vet and he said something about his back and I thought we were going to put him down and I fought so hard to keep the tears from coming out. THANKFULLY! he didn't have anything wrong with his back or anything that would require us to put him down, but he was out for a good 5 months due to it. again hes ok now, causing just as much trouble as ever That would be my worse by far.

Answer 7

When I was 8 I got my first horse. He was 16.2hh and I was 4'2"!!!! Well I happened to be an ex-race horse and of course I wasn't a very good rider at the time. Well my mom insisted I lope (canter) and I was very nervous. But I wanted to anyway. She started to lope first and then I followed. So, being an ex-race horse, he apparently wanted to race and went into a full gallop. I was a tiny little thing so I was flopping around and was screaming for my mom. I tried to pull back and my reins were really loose. So still hanging onto the reins, I fell of and was dragging on the dirt/gravel road. My mom carried me up all the way back to our house after the horses ran away. I took off my helmet and it was all gouged with rocks and there was a huge deep gouge in it. Well, I ended up breaking my leg (fibula, and tibia) and had a gash in my knee. As for my horses, they were standing, grazing by their pasture. I couldn't stop riding while my cast was on, but it took me a while to begin to canter again.

~Lexi~

Answer 8

Wow ok no offense but that was just stupid on your part.

My worst experience was a few months ago when I was on a fairly green paint horse who decided he didn't like me riding him very much. Things were going fine, I got to the far side of the arena and he just stops then rears up and I thought he was going over backwards (everyone else thought he was too) so I slid out of the saddle and have been scared to ride him sense. A friend of mine has been working with Corona sense and is getting a friend to buy him so that he can take Corona with him over the summer and finish training him.

Answer 9

I fell off last summer and landed on a cross country jump, I have been terrified of cross country ever since and am having trouble jumping stadium now as well

Answer 10

There are several that stick out in my mind.



I think the one I feel the worst about was Casey. He was a REALLY nice gelding, but he had been turned over on a saddle and his back was badly injured. I rode him bareback and couldn't ask for a nicer horse. I brought another horse in for training and had the two on opposite sides of a six feet tall pipe fence. The posts are set in cement and rod run through the posts. Nothing goes through that fence. The gate is the same. They were being a little squeally across the fence at each other. I wasn't worried, that fence wasn't going anywhere. A few hours later, they were both eating their hay and I thought all the excitement was over. We left for a social obligation. When we came home several hours later, Casey had reared up OVER the fence and managed to break the guard over the gate hinge, hooked his pastern in that gap and fell down. He was hanging upside down with a broken leg kicking at the fence, and he'd been there awhile. We had to get the cutting torch and cut the fence apart to get him out before we could even have him put down as the vet couldn't get to him safely to kill him. I guess I could have shot him, but I wasn't thinking straight.



Another bad one was the kid that was drug to death in the arena in Pueblo, Colo in 1987. I was in the arena with a lot of other people warming our horses up when someone threw ice over the fence and hit his horse in the face. His tennis shoe slipped through the stirrup and he fell backwards. His head and right arm were scattered all over the arena before they got the horse stopped. Nothing any of us could do. When his horse went nuts and he started screaming and the blood started spurting, all the horses did what horses do and panicked. I don't let anybody ride in tennis shoes unless they're riding bareback.



I lost a friend to anorexia. Her horse fell with her and rolled over the top of her, but it was the anorexia that killed her - she didn't have any body reserves to deal with the broken ribs and bruised innards. It should not have been a fatal accident, but because of her eating disorder it was.



Then I lost a haflinger because we misdiagnosed a claustridia infection for a colic. Oops. I saw the head tremor, but I didn't get on the vet about it when he said "colic". That infection kills them in 12 hours or less, and that's about what it took. Huge doses of antibiotics is the only hope, and because we were treating her for colic, we killed her.



That's enough bad memories for one night.

Answer 11

Well, at least you know better now.... :p



My worst horse related experience was probably whenever my mare tripped (she can trip over her own shadow at times...) and went on her knees and face planted into the ground -- while I was riding her no less. So, since I didn't even have a horse under me, I proceeded to fall down her neck and ate the dirt as well. We both got bloody noses and I also had a lovely busted lip. It wasn't the worst fall I've taken, but it just really shook me up and I'm not sure why....but in any case, I got back on and rode her and she was great the rest of the ride. I learned a lesson: never try to ride your down-hill jumper like a hunter while she's on the forehand....DUH EMILY!



It's kind of funny. Whenever I first went to see my mare and I was talking to her then owner she had told me the only time she'd fallen off of Margo was whenever she (Margo) actually fell down (a big truck scared her so bad that she like collapsed!). So it's funny that the only time I've fallen off of Margo in the years that I've owned her was once and it was that time above. ^

Answer 12

Riding at the racetrack, a dense exercise rider passed on the outside as I was galloping (with no warning, both of which are HUGE no-nos at the track), and then let his horse drift right into the front end of my horse, going in towards the rail. No surprise that we clipped heels, and went down. Thankfully both myself and the horse I was on were o.k. (I only had bruises, he only strained a muscle in his shoulder)... but I've never reamed someone out quite as badly as I did that rider when he came off the track. He's lucky I didn't beat the living crap out of him. It could have been a MUCH worse situation than it was.

Answer 13

Mine was only a couple days ago (im new)

i am riding a stubbern thourgh bred mare named pepper anyway last weekend i was told to jump her at a trot(i thought that was pretty easy) so anyway we were going over the jump when she pushed her hoves into the ground and bucked

i was thrown off then just bearly missed landing on the next jump AND then i was almost trampled by pepper :( when my teacher finely caught her she looked at me and said "get back on the horse"

i was freaking out

Answer 14

I'm not sure if it's my worst, but it was pretty scary. It was when my POA mare was our only horse, and we had just gotten her to our house (another bad experience...she wasn't supposed to be at our house, but since the lady we were boarding with was bi polar....lol). My brother, mom, and I were all out in the paddock, picking up poop. We had a little trailer that attached to the back of the ATV, and that's what we used to pick up the poop. Well, the cart was getting full, so we opened the gate so my mom could drive out and dump it out. Before we had a chance to close the gate, Pocahontas (the pony) wandered out, and began to nibble on some grass. Soon, we realize that Pocahontas isn't in the paddock anymore! We look over, "oh good, she's right there, I'll go get a lead rope". Figuring she'd stay close by for the grass, I just walk up to her. Nope! She goes trotting around the yard, and soon into the woods! The three of us (and my dog) all go chasing after her! I was wearing shorts, and my legs were bleeding from the prickles. I stayed close behind Pocahontas for a while, tried to grab her when she stopped for some grass, but she would trot or canter away from me. Soon, I couldn't see her anymore. I started to cry, because I thought I had lost her. I couldn't hear my brother or mom anymore. I'd hear my dog bark every now and then, but soon I couldn't even hear her. I kept chasing after her, where I thought she had gone. I had no idea where I was. I think I had gone about 1/2 a mile to a mile when I noticed what looked like a field through the trees. I headed straight for that as I knew my fat pony probably noticed it too! I came to the field, which had a small tree house, and I thought I saw a fence above the hill. I ran up the hill, and saw Pocahontas eating grass, noses touched with another horse on the other side of the fence. He was a chestnut I believe, poor thing was COVERED in bugs. I grabbed Pocahontas' fly mask (thank the lord she had it on, because I think my mom or brother had the lead rope), and tried to lead her down where I thought I saw a house. It took a few tries, she would bolt off back to the other horse, but finally, I made it to the road! That's when I knew where I was, and knew how to get home. It was a little while away, and it was a struggle, Pocahontas trying to take off and push through me. She had a short history of being horrible on the trail with me. I found out later, my mom and brother were back at home, waiting to see if I would show up. They called my dad, and then they almost called the police. =/ Eventually, as I was walking down the road, an old man looked out, and noticed I was having a hard time. I probably looked like a mess, my legs covered in blood, my hair full of twigs, and a horse trying to kill me. He asked me if I needed a rope, and I said yes! So he came out with a dog leash, and was trying to put it on. "Oh, there's no where to...", he said. Then he went inside again. He came out with a rope, and we tied it on her head, kind of like a halter. Then he said, "Is he a donkey?". lol, I didn't get it, but then I remembered her fly mask was a little big on her. "No, but she acts like one", I said. I said thank you, and he said sure, just to get the rope back to him at some point, haha A little while later, I finally got home! My mom and brother were relieved, and so was I! I washed off all the cuts on Pocahontas and I, and went inside to resttt! After that day, we began a horse search to keep Pocahontas company! Pocahontas has been great on the trail ever since, however, she always turns and says hello to everyone at the barn where her chestnut friend lives. =)

Answer 15

My horse tripped and fell with a saddle under his belly. Luckily he was okay. =)