Help! I have a horse share, riding an athletic warmblood gelding once a week. He is mostly lovely and great to ride but he spooks very easily, mostly at things I haven’t even noticed like a branch or stone. Occasionally it will be something more understandable like a plastic bag or deflated balloon.
He has 2 types of spooks. The first is a completely out of the blue, dive to the side kind of spook which is over almost as soon as it’s ended. The second comes with a bit more warning: he’ll stop, raise his head and then might either dive and run, or spin and run. He will most certainly spook during the course of our ride each week.
So far I haven’t been unseated but 2 other riders have come off him, one ended up in hospital and no longer rides him. Naturally this concerns me but I don’t want to give up on him. Does anyone have experience of WB? Are they spooky by nature as I have been reading? Can it be trained out of him?