Most ridiculous thing your horse has spooked at?

[dopeysheep]

Today mine went all jelly legged and snorty becausea bunch of daddy long legs flew out of the hedge at his face height. Sigh.
A bit later on he sauntered past a lit up fire engine and some council workers in hi viz with petrol strimmers. Absolutely fine.

Nothing! Literally, there can be nothing there......next thing.....spook

A leaf lying on top of a drain.

The haylage bales. Which are always in the same place and were not doing anything at all interesting.

Horse I used to ride was fine on the road with lorries, buses etc. But spooked at a wooden bench

My first horse was fantastic ,you could have ridden her on a motorway but she wouldn't walk through even the smallest puddle and if anything was written on the road used to stop to read it .

The horse I used to ride refused to open his eyes in the rain. Made getting him home after a hack quite complicated . Even his own personal umbrella holder a la pampered celebrity wouldn't have worked.

That is brilliant mignonette! "it's raining I must immediately close my eyes"

Dopeypony often spooks at familiar things if they are in a different place. A wheelbarrow by the gate instead of by the stable is immediately terrifying. Same with rugs over stable doors, cones, wellies, grooming kits . . .

Funnily enough my old dog also had an aversion to the rain. He would blink, side step any puddles and whinge the whole time.

I agree with the same thing in a different place spooking them. A wheelbarrow not in its usual place immediately takes on a malevolence....

DMare jumps shadows and if the sun is reflected in a puddle you would think the world was going to end. Purple flowers are bad too but trucks, tractors, vans and motorbikes are no problemo. She is very strange.

My old loan horse spooked at a copy of Readers Wives left on the bridle path. No lie. Mind you, her tits did looked bit saggy...!

Also, DHorse spooks and shies coming in/going outdo the field. We've been at our yard 3 1/2 years...

Leading my youngster out whilst riding him ^ he spooked at something (lord knows what!) and nearly knocked DBabyHorse and the girl walking with us. DBabyHorse had no idea what it was and is so much braver than DHorse even though there's 11 years between them!

His shadow!

The newly painted lines on the road.

Mine spooked and refused to go past bunting the other day. I could understand except I've been desensitising him to various hazards and he's had bunting hanging round his shelter for months! Perhaps it was a different shade of pink...

Butterflies

Dhorse1: A pile of bricks

The same one that had been there a month.

Then ignored a tractor, a motorbike and a strimmer.

Dhorse2 actually bolted at the horrific sight of a chap with a spirit level?!

This quote from The Brogue by Saki is my favourite, and so true

According to the Mullet family, he was not really road-shy, but there were one or two objects of dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby called the swerving sickness. Motors and cycles he treated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows, piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives, turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of the zigzag course of forked lightning. If a pheasant rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Brogue would spring into the air at the same moment, but this may have been due to a desire to be companionable.

A man with a camera. Not so strange perhaps except 30 seconds before the Red Arrows had flown over so close I could see the pilots faces. Not a flinch. Man with camera taking pictures of them though = terrifying.

Any vehicle a long way away always seems to upset my horse. He is absolutely fine on the road, being passed by lorries, vans, tractors etc. A tractor 2 fields away though is terrifying, and makes him do a very good impression of a scared giraffe! Odd beast!

a shetland pony, we were at a show and a cute little shetland was there for showing and my dhorse would not go anywhere near it

I used to own a horse who was seriously laid back and unflappable. He was as near to being bombproof as you would call any animal, apart from ...

Pigs or sheep that had escaped from their field - safely behind a fence was not a problem and he would happily pass close by without turning a hair, but if one was the wrong side of the fence they were suddenly to be feared.

He also hated any sort of horse drawn vehicle - I mean, how undignified!

Any when he was young (although he did grow out of this by the age of about 7) The Colour Yellow. Anything yellow would get snorts of suspicion. I ended up painting most of my jumps yellow to get him over his aversion.

Low flying birds. Like you don't get many of those on a rural property .

Today,they both spooked at sheep-they have shared a field with sheep before and see them every single day.
A leaf falling off a tree.
New pony spooked badly at nothing at all today,there is a corner we pass on our hack and he doesn't like it,usually he speeds up a bit,today was a major spook.Yet he ignored the alpacas a mile down the road.
Who knows what goes on in their tiny minds?

Maybe the corner is haunted...

I did think that Pixel.The corner has the gatehouse to the manor on it and he really doesn't seem to like it.I daren't mention ghosts to DD1 in case it gave her nightmares.

Ha ha, yes that'll be all you need, a spooked up daughter as well as a spooked up pony!

My first pony used to live behind a pub in Tooting , until I got her . Nothing worried her . Shopping trolleys with missing wheels being dragged , sirens , fire engines . Articulated lorries , fine .

But then she moved to the country and met a donkey . Pulling a cart no less . She actually froze to the spot , because she couldn't work out whether to eat it , or run away . She got taller and taller until she reached about 18 hands , then did all but breathe fire . Loopy .