Ride 19: When a Calm Horse Spooks Hard

An interesting ride.   Instructive in multiple ways.   The goal today was to ride around the East Grass, not right on the perimeter but in clear sight of all of it, for Rags’  awareness of place and routes.  To start with, mounting went much better except for one little glitch (mine.)   I was able to mount and get my leg over him in a continuous movement, first time.  The glitch was in turning the stirrup the wrong way and thus driving the edge of the stirrup leather into my calf–not comfy.   After getting into the north horse lot, though, I was able to get Rags to stop and stand still while I took my foot out of the stirrup and turned it back around.

We went up the Near Meadow towards the highway, on the south side of the Old Ditch.   There are a couple of spots where the banks have softened, and crossing doesn’t involve a steep in/out, and we crossed to the north side at one of those points, then rode toward the highway from there, avoiding the bigger, rougher rocks near the culvert, and went upslope toward the north fence on the least rock-studded ground I could find.  This area was burned last fall, so it’s easy to see how much soil is there.  We arrived at the gate to the highway, turned left to ride along the trees of the north fenceline, and headed toward the dry woods.  Close to them is a stockpile of posts and pipe line-braces; we passed those and started down the mowed path near the woods edge, a trail Rags has been on several times before, both ways.  He was alert but he knew he was headed back home, the lower part of the field and the Near Meadow in view (for me, maybe not for him, but he knows the trail.)   Happy pony, thinking “This isn’t so bad–this won’t take long.”

Then he threw up his head, shied full bore, whirling and backing, focused on the woods.  I hadn’t heard or seen anything but after he shied (and I got him stopped) I heard a noise in the brush in front of us–there’s a lot of stuff that makes a crackling, dry-stuff breaking noise in the Dry Woods.  And I saw just enough of a deer rump to know it was a deer moving, but by then it too had frozen.   Rags was rigid, nostrils wide, ears not just forward but full-on pricked and stiff.   I had started talking to him even as he moved…a calm voice can help sometimes…and kept talking to him for the next stages of this little adventure.   “Steady…steady…it’s a deer.  You’re OK, good boy, just stand and think about it…it’s a deer.  It’s more scared of you than you are of the deer.  You’re fine, you’re with me, I won’t let it get you….” and so on.  Patted his rigid neck, rubbed it a little, let out a breath audibly.  “OK…you’re OK now.  You’re being a good pony.  You didn’t rear, you didn’t buck, you didn’t bolt, you listened to Mama.  Good boy, Rags.”  After he’d stared for a time (I wasn’t looking at my watch!)  I asked him to “Walk on.”  He backed up instead.  We were about a horse length from the trail, maybe a little more.   Then I felt his back relax a tiny bit under me and though he was still focused on where the deer was (or had been.)   His ears were a tiny bit less stiff.   I gave him an encouraging nudge and turned his head toward home.  “Walk on.”  So he walked into the taller grass (what hadn’t burned last fall) , still obviously scared/worried, and trying to watch the woods more than where he was putting his feet, but he was paralleling the side of the Dry Woods, and every once in awhile he’d flick an ear back to me.   I kept talking, encouraging and praising him.

When we started, I kept him on a fairly short rein (a steady contact, but with relaxed elbows, back and forth with his head) and as he calmed down, I gave him more and more rein, bit by bit.  Some yards further on I got him closer to the mowed path, and finally on it; he wanted to speed up and rush back, but his head had lowered and he was clearly not in panic mode anymore, so I said “Let’s just walk…just walk…” in a soothing voice.  Turned him west on the wide mowed strip just on the north side of the Old Ditch, and we re-entered the Near Meadow at the grassy dip through the ditch.  Once we were “far enough” from the Dry Woods, he relaxed completely and though he wanted to get home (which he always does, like a normal horse) he let me guide him without resistance.  Dismounting wasn’t as smooth as mounting, but I got it done.

I will take him there again, and again, until he’s calmer about crackling brush.   Besides staying calm about it, the other good thing  on my end was that his panicky moves didn’t even begin to unseat me…I did grab mane, since his neck was right there in front of me, not lower as usual, just in case he bolted, but he didn’t.    He probably would have, if I’d tried to move him toward the brush right away, or did something that made him feel more endangered.  Or if I’d turned him all the way away from the brush, so he could see escape handy and whatever bothered him was behind him.  Some horses would rear up, some would buck (or bolt and buck, a common reaction in a horse that feels threatened.  Suddenly the person on their back hits the “that’s how predators attack” button.   If a horse shies/spooks hard, and it’s safe (with open ground around us, the brush only on one side)  letting the horse stand and stare while you talk to it, give it encouragement to calm down.   But as soon as possible, get it moving at a walk, under control, while still getting whatever praise you usually give when it does the right thing.   The spook wasn’t the right thing, but not rearing, bucking, or bolting (or all three) WAS the right thing.  Listening to me, obeying my aids to just stand there, was the right thing.    He was really scared, but he showed that he trusted me enough to hold his ground.   And I read the degree of his fear accurately enough that he could do what I asked him to do.   (Illusion, the big half-warmblood I inherited from Kathleen, on the same trail,  did not trust me enough when something I never saw or heard spooked him.  He whirled, half-reared, and leapt into a gallop; I came out of the saddle and was hanging off his side as he ran faster and faster.  I bailed (there being no way to get back aboard.   Rags is a VERY good boy to behave better than a fully trained, mature, dressage horse.)

So that was the 19th ride of this cycle.  Tomorrow, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, I’ll be back on him and we’ll go ride around the perimeter of the dry woods at whatever distance Rags can handle.  Deer rest in there a lot; they can see out but are in cover; they can find places out of the wind but in the sun on a sunny winter day, and the shade on a summer day.  He needs to get used to them.

8 thoughts on “Ride 19: When a Calm Horse Spooks Hard

  1. Poor Rags, but how lovely that he was able to trust you enough to stand quietly while you helped him get over his panic attack. I hope he will learn to tolerate the deer, and not be scared of them any more.

    1. I think, with his overall personality, he will tolerate “something’s in there” eventually, but I have to remember, as well, that we do have predators. Feral cats, foxes, coyotes, and the occasional mountain lion. And sometimes stray dogs. A horse’s prime command is “Don’t be eaten” and their primary defense is “RUN!” Secondary, especially if something lands on their backs, is “BUCK AND BUCK AND BUCK UNTIL IT FALLS OFF, THEN RUN.” Horses have excellent hearing, different eyesight than ours and much better in dim light and for picking up movement, and an excellent sense of smell. This time I’m sure I saw the tail end of a deer. But not all Rags’ moments of fear may be deer. When I first rode him out to Cloud Pavilion, a domestic cat emerging from tall grass scared him. (On a more recent trip, he passed by a similar cat without showing concern.) I can’t expect him to ignore a mountain lion smell/sighting or a coyote family. And his alertness to horse dangers can be useful to me…as I really don’t want to ride up on a mountain lion.)

  2. Glad you stayed on. Rags is a good boy and with your patience he will become an even better boy. As for being better than a dressage horse, a lot depends on what a horse has been introduced to. We did a joust demo at a dressage show and a LOT of the dressage horses wanted to leave town when the knights went clanking by … but then one of the horses that was fine with jousting, flag passing, etc. would NOT go in the arena until we moved one of the letters (it was going to eat her).

    1. Horses…they each have their spooks, don’t they? At least until they get exposed to enough things enough times in enough places. Ky wasn’t bad about shying, that I remember. Rags is fundamentally steady-minded, but boy those vultures really scared him. And I’d startled and stiffened up. There were two horses I thought about getting–one that the people where I bought Tigger wanted me to at least try out, a very pretty mare who probably wouldn’t have tried to jump that fence in a panic–but both of them were said to be essentially ring horses and didn’t enjoy being outside a fenced arena/ring area at all. I’ve read about another, who “just stops and won’t move” because the outside world freaks her out. That’s so sad. There’s a difference (as you know) between being buddy-bound or barn-bound and actually scared of larger spaces. Tigger would, I think, panic at clanking because he’s freaked out at trailers (not horse trailers, utility sorts of trailers) that clang and bang even blocks away. Both of them got upset Monday because the solar power guys *backed into the front yard* while the horses were on morning hay, and the truck kept up that beep-beep-beep-beep backing up noise. They tore through and out of the barn (I’d been picking up the overnight piles) and all the way down the south horse lot.

  3. I loved to read Georgette Heyer in my young days, in “The Nonesuch” there is a conversation about carriage horses with a young girl who is said to have a profound mistrust of even the sleepiest cart-horse. She says “You can never tell what they mean to do next! And if you pet them, they twitch.” She goes on later and says “if they think you mean to hurt them, when they are for ever being cosseted and cared-for, they must be perfectly addle-brained!” The hero who is a noted whip says “I’m afraid they haven’t very much intelligence.” I didn’t have the opportunity to be around horses much as a child so didn’t learn to ride. I thoroughly enjoy reading the adventures of Rags and Tigger and I realize I missed a lot. Recently we found a photo taken in the early 1920’s of my grandmother and her older sister’s family, Granny was standing next to their open carriage drawn by a large black horse, the picture was torn and doesn’t include the horses head. It would have been taken in southern Oklahoma. Only photo we have of their means of transportation.

    1. I was apparently born with the horse-crazy gene; it seems to have run, though not as strongly as in me, in her father’s family. My cousin Ann Lou, 8 years older, was also horse-crazy as a young person, and as an adult took a long horse-trekking trip in New Zealand once. I don’t know if she ever had a horse of her own. My mother enjoyed riding, but we couldn’t afford a horse. There were no riding schools or riding stables within hundreds of miles, either. I got to ride in the big park when we went to San Antonio, 250 miles north) for medical stuff. She would go out with me, and she was a good rider. But she remembered her father’s very fast little mare, that she and her brother rode sometimes while he was at work (the mare bucked the kids off when she got tired of them, which was usually after a good run; they were always riding bareback.) She told me once that the first time I was close to a horse, at about two, I pointed and said “Up! Up!” The owner laughed and I was put in the saddle and instantly did not want to come down. Ever. I have a memory of the delight of going from seeing adult legs around me to seeing *over their heads* when on the horse. (It was a tall black horse, saddled for a parade.) When I was eleven, someone tried having a riding stable closer to us and I got to ride maybe once every few weeks until it went broke. There were a few other times when I got to ride regularly for a few days or a week…and it was always heaven on toast with jam.

      Horses as individuals with personalities…not just bigger, smaller, faster, slower, easier, more difficult, prettier, plainer…is something that becomes clear only with more experience with them, or reading books written by people who actually enjoy horses. Their social life has overlaps with humans, but also larger areas of difference, where the human needs to figure out how horses feel and think. Their brains aren’t very large, and don’t contain all the parts that ours do. Their sensory apparatus is different (less binocular vision, more monocular; better vision in dim light; better ability to detect motion in confusing circumstances like woods), keener sense of smell, keener hearing, different sense of touch (they can shiver any part of their skin without otherwise moving, “shaking off” some insects and their whole-body shake can dislodge the less competent rider, the same way they can shake rain off their coat. They feel a wasp landing on them before it stings.

      Within the social order of “natural” herds (not necessarily feral, but in a large enough pasture, left to work it out themselves) there’s the alpha leader (mare, usually older), a range of subordinates, from “helpers to the alpha” down to the horse nobody wants to be near. The alpha’s dominance comes partly from her alpha attitude, but also from her knowledge: in a big enough pasture, she shepherds the others from one patch of good grass to another (often different grasses), then to water, then to a safe resting area. She watches while others rest (secondary leaders, in large mare band, may also help), calls alarms, and generally is a good protector even without a stallion for that role. There are grumpy horses (including mares) that don’t want company and are left out of the main herd structure…friendly horses that approach newbies to make friends…horses with close friends that try hard not to be separated, others that are relatively friendly but don’t have tight bonds. Friends separated grieve, and if they ever see their former friend again both are much happier. “Buddy bound” horses are often inconvenient for humans, so many people try to separate them when they notice the bond starting, so they can work them as individuals or sell them without the newly miserable horses “acting out” their depression.

      Horses differ in personality by breed and within breeds by bloodlines or strains (QH derived from the Hancock/Blue Valentine line are known as hard workers and occasionally also very difficult…not people-oriented, work oriented; Arabians with a lot of Crabbet breeding are known as exceptionally people-oriented, friendly, easy to train. There are QH of other strains just as people-oriented and easy to train as the average Arabian, and Arabians as un-people-y and difficult as a Hancock-bred QH.) People breed for they characteristic they prioritize, not that they always get it. Physicality and personality are not tightly linked but there are associations: horses bred and trained as performers at the high end are often not that interested in being friendly to people. One famous barrel racing horse doesn’t like humans petting her, doesn’t have a particular horse friend, but needs her own pet sheep or goat. Is it the training for performance, or that horses without too much desire for friends survive as performers? Some race-winning Thoroughbreds are easy to get along with; some are stinkers from the word go. TBs that are super friendly but don’t win races make fine personal mounts and can bond to people as well as herdmates. If they do win races, they’re kept in racing until they quit doing so well.

      Anyway…there’re also the smart horses and the less smart, and that shows up in training–some learn easily, some are “slower,” some can’t remember what they know (of the training) if left un-worked for a month.
      The very smart horses (Ky and Illusion, of the ones I’ve had) learn fast, never forget, and are capable of something horses aren’t supposed to be able to do: several-step planning in novel situations, in a way that humans find eerie and unhorse-like. They’re in a minority, the geniuses of the horse world. Some are inconveniently smart but not that level. They can model smarter thinking to other horses, some of whom will also learn it. I watched a video of one horse who’d learned to shed a halter while standing tied in a row by rubbing his head on the pipe he was tied to. Horses tied next to him watched and some of them tried it; they weren’t all as successful but the owner quickly removed the demonstrator from the area. All the horses (7 or 8) of different breeds in a Swedish stable learned to “tell” their grooms when they wanted more blanket, less blanket, or no change using three displayed geometric signs after training–some learned very quickly, all learned within a week of daily practice, and their choices made sense to people–the hairier, stockier breeds didn’t want a blanket at temperatures where the leaner, less hairy breeds were asking for the blanket…all the horses wanted more cover in cold & wet & windy conditions, none of the horses wanted blankets in warm weather. They all learned an alien-to-horses way of communication (touching one of three geometric signs with their muzzle) to indicate what they want. My guys “tell” me when they’re hungry by going to their feed pans as if to eat; Rags even picks up one of them. If I feed hay and they don’t like the hay (current situation) they go to the feed pan again, look at me, nose in the feed pan again. “This. Right here. Put something in it I want. Not that stuff.”

      Finally, no horse every forgets the Prime Directive: *Don’t Be Eaten: Horse-eaters are Everywhere.” It’s in the evolutionary history of all prey animals, expressed in different ways in each species. Humans have predator eyes (binocular vision forward: hunter eyes) and those who eat meat smell of it. Our output smells of it: sweat, breath, and of course excretory products. We move like predators, even those of us who haven’t ever killed and eaten what we kill. So a horse still being worried about being hurt, even though “coddled” with feed, water, shelter…is not “addle-pated” for a prey animal. It’s smart. Maybe its human/s aren’t going to hurt it or eat it, but those others??? Best stay alert and ready to escape…to “not be eaten.”

      I might (might) be able to give a hint about the breeding of the big black horse (by comparing it to the carriage size, and its shape, at least know if it was a large draft, medium draft or “chunk”, or a “lightleg” one of the dual purpose saddle-and-driving breeds. The head’s helpful but height and build can tell a lot. Oklahoma not so much because people imported horses from near and far and bred horses there.

  4. I have a real steady “Eddie”, a draft quarter mix that is usually the lead horse and who really helps with other horses on the trail that are nervous and gives them and the rider confidence. Big trucks and motorcycles will fly right past us and he never bats a eye. Rides along or in a group. Do a lot of trail riding as I live where there are communal trails and currently doing drill team as which he excels. If he ever sees something that is spooky and this is not often, I make him walk up to it and smell it/touch it. My problem – he spooks very rarely and is an excellent horse, however, when he does spook, it happens so fast, you are literally a projectile. This happened yesterday while with two other riders of which I was leading and he was calm and relaxed as usual, when literally I was flying through the air and I was flying along the ground so fast that I hit a tree with my head (thus stopping me) or I would have still kept going. I had no warning. Evidently what happened was this according to my two friends. A deer popped up out of the grass to the side and kind of to the back of him and started huffing as I think her fawn was there. According to my friends, there was no way anyone would have stayed on him as for a big horse, he is incredibly fast and athletic. After picking myself off the ground, he is standing just a few feet away with his head down and waiting for me. He does not run away. Again, there is absolutely no warning but this happens maybe once or twice a year and I have never been flung so hard before. This horse has even participated in the hunt and this is not how he is 99% of the time but I would prefer he spook in place and not do a 90 or 180 degree turn. Help. Suggestions.

    1. Yikes! I’ve come off other horses in that kind of spook, and yes, they can be unridable no matter how good your position. You’re going to need a trainer who can evaluate how he spooks and work with both of you–and someone with more experience than I have of analyzing spook patterns. There are several basic spook patterns (and probably more I’ve never seen.) Two things can be improved for almost any horse/rider combination: the horse’s reaction to a sudden fright that triggers the “Don’t be eaten!!” prime equine directive, and the rider’s ability to stick on. Work on both increases your chance of not being ejected.

      Horses I’ve personally been spooked with have had these ways of ejecting, or trying to eject, a rider in reaction to something: buck-and-run, straight bolt ahead, spin-and-run (any rotation on the spot, from any degrees to a full 180), drop (pull up all four legs preparatory to a sudden movement) and leap 4-6 feet in any direction by hitting the ground again with all four legs pointing somewhere else–produced a level but impossible to predict sideways or back leap. What they typically use is one or two of these depending on breed, conformation and the degree of panic they’re feeling, so ask your friends for details of his spook again. Did the hind end come up (to kick out or up) before he bolted? Did he swing his hindquarters to one side (start of spin) before jumping ahead? Was it a straight leap forward and then run? A straight “buck jump” (all four come up, all four come down, but without rotation of either end and aiming the same way?

      This is not an insult on your riding but my experience is that riding a steady Eddie all or most of the time, leads riders to relax some of the riding habits that help keep you aboard when Eddie does spook…and big horse spooks are harder to handle just because there’s a lot more power and weight (Force = Mass x Acceleration). And taller horses (like most half-drafts) create a more dangerous fall because you have farther to fall and that split second longer before you hit the ground adds to *your* acceleration from gravity. So though you’re clearly an experienced rider, I’d suggest some advice from a good instructor on riding sudden changes of speed, direction, and even “bad behavior” (spins, backing up, etc.) After my latest concussions, I find both spins and backing up daunting even at low speeds, though I’m improving. Regular jumping with emphasis on cross-country body-leg position (not the same as American “hunt seat) through grids can help you react quicker if his spook type includes straight bolting–which usually starts with a series of forward jumps to accelerate. Riding with a neck strap and having it in hand when riding in areas where there are deer (if deer have been his trigger before–I’ve had horses spook at dogs, rabbits, cats, and deer, is a good precaution as well, and so is not relaxing too much when riding…check your position, ride in “safety” even though somebody’s going to pull a dressage complaint on you…you don’t want to be in full chair seat until you need it, but you also don’t want your leg behind you and you don’t want your upper body too far forward.

      Working on a usually safe but occasionally dangerously spooking horse is harder than on one with more spooks, because it’s harder to provoke the minor spooks you’d usually use for training them to be less spooky. However, you can train him (possibly alone in a safe area, but preferably with at least an observer and ideally an instructor) to be more alert to *your* signals: work on those movements related to whatever you find hardest to ride at full speed, and on keeping a balanced, upright, position in all gaits, turns, changes of gait, and maneuvers such as turn on the haunches and forehand, sidepass, backing up, etc. Try to insist on his performing these quicker than he usually does, and teaching any that he doesn’t do yet, because all of them are common (at much greater speed) in shies and spooks. The horse turns and backs, or turns and jumps forward, or the turn comes after the back, forward, sideways movement. Once he can do at least a medium spin on command, stopping exactly when you ask, take off at a gallop instantly and slow quickly on command, go through a grid or other jump training exercise that forces him to pay *close* attention to your signals, to focus on you, you can begin asking for those while riding outside–get him used to the fact that *at any moment* YOU may demand a sudden move, or stop one. The more he focuses on you, the less he will be distracted by other things, and the more you focus on him, the less you will be surprised by what he does. When you get one of his “easy” spooks, you can use them to teach a one-word command for “stop this instant.” I use “Steady” for that (and “Easy” for a horse that wants to speed up when I don’t want him to.) If you’ve already taught a voice command for each gait, with a falling tone for the next down and a rising tone for the next up, that can help bring him down, along with a deep seat, supportive legs, and the reins (which only works if you’re still in the saddle, of course, but it’s a goal to work toward.)

      There’s a video online right now that I frankly found scary and unpleasant to watch, in which a dressage horse lost his brain before a grand prix freestyle and came totally unglued–and his rider stayed on, and gradually, by riding through all the wild stuff that would’ve had me on the ground pretty quickly–an emergency dismount if nothing else–settled the horse enough to move quietly in the ring, at which point she rode him quietly out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_8bYOL4k6c I think the horse hated the music or had something hurting him, but one of the comments states that they had a thorough vet check afterward and were still evaluating what might have happened to him. Anyway, look how balanced and calm that rider stayed. She kept trying to remind him of his training until he finally recovered himself somewhat, and then got him out so he could remember that *last* part, where he was calm and doing what was asked, not just the panic he’d been in.

      If your saddle twists at all while the big spooks happen, you might consider a breastplate of some kind to help hold it in place better, and use less padding under it–and wear full-seat riding pants that give you a better grip, even if you ride in a western saddle (which I find can launch me a even easier than a good, fairly deep-seated, all-purpose or dressage English style.) If his spook is a little less powerful, and your riding a little better, and your saddle and riding clothes give you a little more stability…then you’re far less likely to be ejected like a ping-pong ball, even if none of these elements are perfect.

      Anyway, that’s the sum of my ability to be helpful here except to say I’m glad you’ve got an *almost* 100% Steady Eddie, and I hope you can find some better help local to you–friends who are willing to observe you and him in calmer circumstances, perhaps a good instructor for trail horses, someone who might have some additional tricks to try with the horse. Wishing you many safe rides and no more head-to-tree contacts. (Oh yeah–any time your head gets bonked, get checked out and don’t ride too soon. Been there too many times, ignored stuff because “I know I’m fine….” and now have the brain damage and four years of very slow recovery & inability to write fiction to prove it. Find a sports medicine doc who deals with concussions on a regular basis and commit to not making my mistakes.

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