Pony bolted :'( daughter in hospital

[LoobyLou2709]

Ok, I'm sat here stressed as hell wondering where I go from here and after some advise! .. please be kind as I'm feeling terrible, helpless, guilty and sick in my stomach of what could have happened!
Brief back story!.. new pony purchased October for my 10 year old daughter, pony ticked all the boxes a proper first ridden, safe as houses, had references, loads of videos of pony ridden by very novice girls, viewed twice, had 5 stage vetting, he wasn't cheap! I'm experienced but admit I've been out of the buying market for a while! my daughter is a polite neat little rider and is keen but not brave, so stressed it had to be a very safe more woah than go type etc, we have been gradually getting to know him over the last 3 months, and apart from a few annoying things that we have managed to deal with, he's been ok. today riding in the field, (was told he's amazing in open spaces, saw videos etc) he full on bolted with her, flat out there was not a hope in hell he was going to slow down or stop! It was like a switch went off in his head, My daughter managed to stay on (I don't know how!) and he came back to a walk, I then walked slowly over to him and he fuc*ed off again before I got there, sending my daughter flying in to a post and rail fence and landing on her head knocking her unconscious for a few seconds. 6 hours, lots of bruising and a CT scan later they are keeping her in hospital for obs, I'm distraught, I feel likes it's my fault and kicking myself thinking what I could have done to prevent it happening, I feel physically sick to think how much worse it could have been. I don't know what I'm asking really, just wanted to vent, my first thing is to get his teeth and back etc checked to rule out pain but I honestly don't think I'm going to let my daughter get back on him, would you contact the previous owner? I know she'll just deny it happed with them, I'm just feeling numb and helpless right now :'(

I hope your dd makes a swift recovery.

Check that the saddle isn't tipping forward and pinching if she leans forward when riding

Completely stop giving treats and the head barging should stop

Good luck

You mention references

how many did you obtain? And did they have children?

apart from a few annoying things that we have managed to deal with

what annoying things?
when did this happen op?

How awful. I do hope she'll be absolutely fine. But any pony or horse really can do this at any time. It's a risk of riding. You can never truly eliminate all risk.

Something similar happened to my DD (now 10, think she was just 8 at the time) with her absolute fuckhead of a pony - except they were out hacking on a country road and he did a dirty stop in front of oncoming traffic. DD was fine after an overnight stay in hospital - pony then went through a period of a few months being an arse, refusing to lower his head for the bridle, trying bad manners in the stall tacking up. We did all the usual (teeth, back, tack, different bits, vet checks etc etc) then out of the blue he just stopped being an arse and went back to his usual laid back, too cool to canter, self. To this day I’ve no idea what caused it and no idea why it stopped.

to some extent, I believe ponies can be little buggers who take it into their heads to be difficult, to see if it gets them out of work. Not a lot of fun for the small person sat on top, or the parent watching on the ground! If everything else checks out, yours might be being similar ‘let’s see what I can get away with in this home’ type stuff.

i hope your DD is better now and will be back in the saddle shortly. We kept DD on a lead rien for a few weeks when hacking out after our ‘incident’ until she built her confidence back up. I think the first couple of weeks we just spent literally walking in circles and establishing that he had brakes and she knew how to use them! Keep up with her lesson / pony club instructor as well.

give it time and I’m sure alI will be well!

even the quietest horse or pony has the potential to be dangerous, they are sentient being and evolutionary are flight animals, just because something is a proper first ridden doesn’t completely remove the potential for this to happen.

I would really recommend a full work up, my friends completely idiot proof horse went from
idiot proof to virtually unridable in the space of a fortnight, did everything sideways, would piss off in canter, increadably spooky and vertically reared a number of times with no warning. Her teeth were horrific. Once those were sorted she was back to being perfect

Like previous posters have said, it doesn't really sound like a true bolt - more a spook at something, or a young horse pushing its' luck with a new (nervous?) rider on its' back.

However that doesn't make it any less scary. Any fall off a horse can knock your confidence - I fell off a "bombproof" riding school pony who lost his footing in canter and couldn't right himself - I couldn't canter him again for weeks as I was so scared.

I would recommend a full check over including teeth, back, saddle and ulcers - but it may well be nothing physical - just a horse pushing it's boundaries.

@LoobyLou2709 I hope that your daughter is feeling better today! It's a terrifying thing to have to watch when you witness a child be bolted with. When it happened to my daughter, I felt compelled to lead her for some time afterwards until she (and I) got our confidence back about the pony. As others have said, no pony is 100% bombproof all the time but it would be worth getting his teeth and back checked and also a different saddle fitter to the one who supplied the saddle!

There may just have been something in the air this weekend as my dad did a dressage comp on his 16 year old mare who is usually as placid (exhausted) as anything after her test - on Saturday she was doing a passable imitation of a fidgety and very strong giraffe as I untacked her and never really wound down until she got home and in the field!

I'm so sorry to hear this OP, how is DD now? Better I hope and no lasting damage done which is the main thing. I'm not sure it's helpful to spilt hairs about whether this was a 'true bolt' or a 'taking off', either way it was clearly a frightening experience and not one you'd want to risk having repeated. And without minimising this at all, this is the risk you do take with riding, all horses can be unpredictable, there's no such thing as a totally bombproof animal who would never take off under any circumstances sadly. And I'm not sure pursuing some kind of 'case' against his old owners will get you very far, assuming they're private sellers it's usually caveat emptor, by all means contact them to ask if he's ever done it before (could be something as simple as certain feeds send him loopy) but like you'd I'd expect that to be answered in the negative...

I think a full vet work up including back check, saddle fit, teeth is a good first step and may or may not give you an explanation. Do you have the option of riding in an enclosed area at all or just the field? Even if he's been previously good in open spaces, being ridden next door to their grazing area and their friends would be a big trigger for a lot of ponies, and it could be that combined with slightly more nervous/novice handling was what set him off (and like a PP said horses are funny, they can start with just feeling a tiny bit uncertain, that leads to a minor spook, nap or speeding up, but if the rider then doesn't immediately take charge and de-escalate they can quickly end up genuinely panicking themselves and then it's all a vicious circle as of course the rider in turn then panics more), so it sounds as though that could possibly be what happened here?

Does your DD have regular lessons? How is she feeling about riding him again post-accident, or riding at all? Would she feel happier having a few lessons on quiet riding school ponies?

I wonder if as well as getting someone else to ride the pony which is a good idea whether you're going to keep or sell him, and going back to basics with him (keep them on lead rein all the time for a while if need be) a good approach would be to focus with her in a calm, controlled environment on core strength and balance so she's less likely to fall in future? And also trying to teach her what to do in an 'emergency' like this, i.e. so she knows that most horses taking off uncontrollably in an enclosed area like a field or arena will stop of their own accord eventually so to try not to panic, how to quickly grab her neck strap or a handful of mane and sit up, keep her weight back so as to try and stay on in the case of a skiddy stop, turn or spin which is what it sounds like got her off? Most people of any age, never mind a child, do naturally panic the first time they ever experience a horse moving off with them at speed (whether a blind bolt or mild 'pissing off' doesn't really matter, both are scary if you don't know what's happening) and will instinctively collapse themselves forward around the horses neck to try and pull up and/or throw themselves off the side door, neither are the best idea in reality but I don't know how you really drill in what to do without totally scaring the child, other than like I say work on her balance and strength in calm situations?

I noticed you posted on Saturday. Was the hunt in the area? I can't ride mine if the hunt are within a couple of miles - well I could if was happy to sit on an unexploded bomb piaffing across plough, but I'm not.

It wasn't raining was it OP?

DD's pony is mostly well behaved but bucks badly when first ridden in the rain.

Also, just saw in one of your replies that the people you bought him from were showjumpers and that with you he's in light work 2 days a week only - one thing to consider is whether in his previous home he was being worked a lot harder and in a stronger routine than with you? I know some semi-pro SJers and while their kids' ponies are only really ridden to be pottered around on by the novice kids at the weekends, so on the face of it do very little 'work', in fact they come in and out of the fields when everything else does, get chucked on the horse walker with the big horses daily, often lunged or hand walked out or led on roadwork from a bigger horse as well, just all part of the normal busy competition yard routine, so in fact they are kept quite busy without their owners really making anything of it. Is it possible your lad has gone from a routine like this to genuinely only doing very light work a few times a week and turned out the rest of the time? While this sounds like the life of Reilly some horses just don't do well with this and seem to need more of a 'job', the fact he's a native type doesn't necessarily mean he's not a worrier or needing daily work?

Another thought, but is the pony used to being ridden alone? If he's used to having a companion horse he may just have had a crisis of confidence.

@countrygirl99 , your post made me laugh, I was once out on a point to pointer, who would be prone to tanking off and would just jump hedges you pointed him at if you didn't get.him on a circle soon enough. I ended up being carted along with the hunt that was going through the neighbouring field with the secretary galloping along asking if I'd paid my cap, 😅😅

Anthropomorphism at it's finest.

Op, there's always a reason for something like this, the problem is working out what it is. Pain, fear, learned behaviour... whatever it is, they are just horses being horses, they don't think their way through situations the way humans do. Could you get a good professional in to assess the situation for you? Is the pony small enough to be ridden by a small adult?

We used to loan a lovely native, gorgeous boy, who was 99.9% perfect but prone to tanking off. Always if at an event with other ponies (would have to lunge him first to take edge off), and even occasionally he’d just bomb on a known canter track. Definitely affected DD’s confidence, but owner just said was normal pony nonsense. Seems mad now reading the responses here !

So sorry this happened OP! So scary!

But I don't think there were necessarily red flags from previous owners from what you posted.

We actually own a cob that my daughter got as a first confidence-giver pony that she used to do everything on. However, my daughter got into show jumping quite seriously quite quickly and our cob was not a jumper. So within about 12 months we needed to find her a competition pony who could jump higher. We still own the cob, but if we wanted to sell her, we would have also only owned her for about 18 months. And she has a fantastic temperament, has been ridden only by kids (my daughter and her friends as well as very novice sharers) for the past 18 months, is amazing on the ground, to hack out etc etc. It sounds similar to the situation your pony was in.

But I agree with PP that absolutely no pony is bomb-proof. We actually had an adult sharer try out our cob hacking in the woods and she fell off! And our pony is normally a saint who gets ridden by really novice kids who take lesson her. So you absolutely never know.

Horse riding is an inherently risky pastime. You take your chances 🤷‍♀️

One of the most insightful, profound and ultimately useful posts I think I have ever read on mumsnet.

@Carlycat

do you say that to your children if they ever come to you (do they?!) crying after falling off their bike? Skateboard? Scooter? 😞

@Carlycat has a valid point though.

Horse riding is dangerous. You're riding a massive, heavy animal and trusting it to keep you safe. And all the training in the world won't stop a horse from getting injured and bucking, or spooking, or rearing, or falling and tossing you off onto the ground.

It's also not really comparable to other activities in that those don't involve an unpredictable live animal.

I love riding and the benefits hugely outweigh the risks to me, but that doesn't stop it from being an incredibly dangerous sport at the end of the day.

Yes a sport that is higher risk than, say, football
but we can’t say a “dangerous” sport. Just more risk of injury.

and what actually is the point? Don’t allow your daughter to do it? Or don’t be upset that she hurt herself?

you say there’s a valid point. What actually is the “valid point” in the contact of this scenario?

Yes a sport that is higher risk than, say, football - but we can’t say a “dangerous” sport. Just more risk of injury.

I'd say horse riding is a very dangerous sport. Getting kicked or thrown off by a horse can be life-changing or even fatal. Horses are big, strong animals and can be unpredictable, no matter how well trained they are.

you say there’s a valid point. What actually is the “valid point” in the contact of this scenario?

That a horse bolting and you falling off is a risk you take every time you get on a horse. All horses will have a "first time" where they spook or are hurt and toss their riders.

That's not to say it's not terrifying when it happens, but it shouldn't be unexpected when you work with live animals. There's no such thing as a bomb proof horse or pony.

But in the context of this OP

East are you actually saying to the Op

essentially “suck it up”?

@coffeecupsandwaxmelts

do you have children?

Whether I have children or not is totally irrelevant.

Horse riding is a dangerous sport, so to an extent, yes, you do have to suck up the risks if it's something you want to participate in. It's why lots of parents won't let their children own horses or ride outside of riding schools - to try and minimise the risks.

That doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for OP or her daughter as it's horrible when you take a tumble and you see your horse panic and charge off, but it's part of owning animals - there are always going to be risks involved.

I've taken a tumble off one of my riding schools "safest plods" - he lost his footing and his balance and I went over his head. My instructor was about six feet away and totally baffled by it. Luckily I wasn't badly hurt but I could easily have been.