C’mon, ‘Fess Up!!!
Oct 07 2011
Since we’re having so much fun pointing out other people’s stupidity, let’s expand and make fun of ourselves.
What is truly the dumbest thing you’ve ever done on a horse and what was the end result? I double dog dare everybody to go deeper than “I forgot my helmet.” I’m talking, green horn, idiotic, don’t want to think about it, butt-stupid decisions that put you and your horse at risk.
I’ll go first. I’m not shy.
I did a lot of dumb things as I grew up in the horse world, feeding bags of grass clippings, taking bitting advice from the guy at the feed store, buying a cheaply made Mexican saddle and giving my poor horse a fistula the size of Pikes Peak…
I could keep going, but those were mistakes made from ignorance. I was lucky I didn’t kill my horse, but my intentions were good. So I’m not talking about those.
I’m talking stupid.
Through my teen years I boarded my horse at a little pasture down the street from me. There was one other boarder, a girl my own age and a fellow horse nut.
We went to different schools, and separate, we were pretty well behaved, responsible kids. Together we were gasoline and a match.
We didn’t drink, do drugs or commit crimes. We were crazy dare devils on our horses and would push each other into trying insane stunts without regard to our safety, and unfortunately, with way too much trust in our horses.
Not only were we helmetless, but in the summer we rode in cutoffs and our swim suit tops most of the time, sometimes in our bikinis, and we always kicked off our shoes (tennies) the second we swung up on our horses.
One summer we came up with the idea we wanted to ride like the Indians. I think we were inspired by some Hopi friends of my parents, that stayed at my house during the annual powwow at Garden of the Gods Park.
This group of folks were wicked story tellers and filled our heads with all kinds of ideas.
One of which was to learn to ride like their former enemies, the Navaho, and be able to do the acrobatic stunts they did on their horses during raids on the Hopi sheep herds.
So my friend and I cobbled together war bridles and began terrorizing each other with water pistols.
The goal was to be able to hang off the sides of our horses and shoot at each other from under their necks.
We got there. Starting from a stand still, to a walk then a trot, we could hang on and shoot each other. We fell off a lot. Banged, bruised and bloody, we didn’t care, we thought it was funny.
This was dumb enough. We could barely hang on at the walk and trot and we hadn’t figured out how to get back up.
The afternoon we decided to try our stunt at a lope, we put our single string war bridles on our horses, stuck our water pistols into the back of our cut-offs, kicked of our tennies and rode to Palmer Park. We lined up our horses on the dirt road that led to the overlook and took off.
I don’t think either of us would have gone for it if we hadn’t been together, but neither of us ever backed out of a stunt in front of the other. Ever.
I slid down on my horses side and my friend slid down on her horses side and we clung like monkeys as the horses loped down the road.
I thought we would pull it off, we had figured they would stop at the overlook.
Unfortunately we forgot we often raced our horses down this road and we were both completely without control. The horses sped up and were soon flying down the road.
I don’t remember much after the horses began to race. I remember hanging on with everything I had and starting to slip. I remember thinking I’d be damned before I’d come off before my friend.
I remember my horse hitting the end of the road and beginning to buck. It might have had something to do with me sliding back far enough to be digging my heel into his flank. Or the frantic handfuls of hide I had grabbed as my fingers slipped from his mane.
I ended up hitting the ground underneath him and getting clipped pretty good by his hooves, even though he tried to jump over me.
My friend hit the ground about the same time. We never did figure out who came off first, but we were bloody, scraped up messes and our horses were gone.We would be picking gravel out of our elbows, arms and legs for days.
We began the long, limping road home and lucked out, the horses had stopped to graze instead of running all the way back to the barn.
The dumbest thing I ever did on my horse? We caught them and climbed back on. Then we did it again.
144 comments to “C’mon, ‘Fess Up!!!”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment. Not a member? Registering is free, and you do it here!
Dumb things:
Rode while drunk. In my defense, I will note that I was eighteen years old and rode while drunk…with my trainer. Who was also drunk. I had no adult role models to tell me riding while drunk was stupid and it was in a culture where the ‘stirrup cup’ was expected. I wouldn’t do it now.
Tied a horse to an unbraked flatbed trailer. THAT was stupid. He’d never pulled back in his life, of course, until i did that…
But neither resulted in injury even though the riding while drunk was repeated several times and involved flat out gallops.
The stupidest thing I ever did that resulted in a fall was learning the hard way to ride the course you walked at a jumping show…turned my horse right into a puddle and all four hooves slid sideways out from under him. But I wouldn’t call that abysmally stupid, just…a little careless.
And I turned horses out in barbed wire, but that was ignorance. And my parents not letting me move to a more expensive barn.
Those pedestrian bridges that go over busy roads?
My friends and I rode across one. Horses don’t seem to like cars going 50 mph underneath them and when the 1200 lb TB starts prancing it makes the bridge shake. I honestly thought my poor mare was gonna try to jump off the side through the fence and chuck us both 30 feet down onto the highway. Suffice to say we never felt the need to try that one again.
One yard we were at most of the hacks involved going out over a motorway bridge, except our motorway speed limit is 70, so of course the cars are often doing well over that with the lorries doing around 60. To start with they did find it pretty scary but we started out with one of the horses who was used to the bridge and definately hand walked them over for a while until they were totally comfortable and they got used to it and walked over without any bother after a little time.
Try a railway bridge, in the days of steam, and the brickwork came level with my stirrup!!
I was always terrified, rode down the middle of the road and made the cars wait.
The horse wasn’t bothered!
I’ve done some dumb stunts, including my best friend and I dressing our horses up as a bride and groom and holding a horse “wedding” with yards of tulle everywhere. Never got hurt doing anything interestingly dumb though, that I can remember. I usually got hurt doing what I was told to do in the arena.
On the other hand, I did tempt my mom into something dumb. When I was 12 we boarded at a barn with pretty relaxed practices, which gave us a discount on board because I fed, turned out, and mucked stalls for everyone in the mornings in the summer. Every day when I let the horses out to pasture I would climb bareback and halterless on my appaloosa, who was trained to turn by a touch of my hand on his neck, and head out with the other horses following him. He was lead horse so it worked out fine. It was a huge property, and I’m not sure exactly how far it was from the barn to the back pasture but it was an uncomfortable distance to walk, especially in the hot summers. Somehow my usually-sensible mom found out I was doing this, and instead of telling me to cut it out or at least use some method of control, she was jealous of my mad horse whisperer skills and wanted to try it herself.
So… did I mention my mom was an overweight re-rider with nerves and not the greatest seat in the world?
I gave her a leg up, and off she went. My little appie was confused by having a different rider and started to speed up and bop around. She tightened her leg from nerves and leaned forward from poor balance. Off they went! And with the whole herd following it pretty much instantly turned into a day at the races. My mom clung to the mane and bravely stayed on until they reached the pasture gate, which he stopped at with a sudden sliding stop and swerve. Off she went into three strands of barbed wire. (Did I mention this barn didn’t have the best practices? Barbed wire fences everywhere.)
I was already running after her and reached the pasture in time to open the gate and shoo everyone through it before they dispersed. My mom picked herself up, torn, battered, and bruised. And insisted she was okay, didn’t want to tell anyone. I saw the hematoma from the fence post later. But she was too embarrassed to tell anyone what happened and swore me to secrecy.
that’s hilarious. My parents made sure that they or my coach kept a really close on on me when I was around horses so I didn’t get much opportunity to be a bone head lol. Stupidest thing I did was in my adult life, just last year actually. I stole my boss’ retired stakes horse who earned about $900,000 and had quite the reputation for dropping riders and we went for a trail ride. Getting to the trails requires riding along side a highway for 10 minutes and crossing a railroad, luckily our place is beside the highway and the railroad so its nothing new to him, but it was still a really dumb thing to do on a really expensive horse with a tendency to buck and run off. It ended well and the horse really enjoyed himself. Our trail horses live in the same field as him and now that he knows what we’re up too when we go catch the others its impossible to get rid of him. The boss found out and thought it was awesome, he told me too keep doing it. Too bad he told his wife who shit a brick and won’t let me take him anymore lol.
My story is caused by pure laziness and bad ideas. I saddled up our colt that had ground work, but only about 3 rides on him. His last 2 rides he was walking and trotting well, along with stopping and turning. You had to use alot of pressure still to flex latterally, we were just starting to work on that from his back .(had been doing it from the ground before) I walked him over to the small arena, and noticed that I forgot my reins clear over at the tack shed. Being the genius that I obviously am, and being a pro at laziness, I picked up 2 peices of the plactic type bailing twine and fashioned myself a quick pair of reins. I figured they would work fine for a short walk, and some flexing. Well the first thing I noticed was that to pull him around to flex REALLY hurt my hand with the bailing twine, like ropeburn, but not too bad. But we worked on it until he was giving into the pressure quite well. Then I decided to trot him in a big circle. All was fine until he got a burst of energy and went into a lope and was throwing in a crow hop here and there. I grapped up my crappy reins and tried to pull his head out from between his knees, and wouldnt you know it……bailing twine NEVER breaks , especially if you want/need it to. (Think of cold nights opening a bale, You cant slide the twine off and no knife with you, you try to gnaw on it, you try to cut it with an old horseshoe laying around, but nothing works.) Well after that colt started to hop around, I tried to pull up his head and the near impossible to break twine BROKE! The colt felt the instant release from pressure and took that to be his cue to be a blazing blur running around trying to immitate Secratariat on his best day. All the while I am hanging on for dear life, acummalating a horredous rope burn, and no way to convince this colt to stop. So I……………..bailed. Like a big wussy. Colt 1 ; Tonika 0 ; twine 50 scratches, burns and bruises. Would have been so much better to have walked the 30 yards back to the shed and get my reins.
oh well, you Live and learn, then you tell others and they laugh, then you laugh when they dont listen and it happens to them!
Has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever done.
Next time I will know to use the string kind of twine, not the plastic, lolol jkjk, no twine for me ever again!
I can’t tell you how many times I did the same kind of thing….baling twine, the dumb kid’s duct tape.
HAHAHAH!!!!
“baling twine, the dumb kid’s duct tape”
That should be on a tee shirt! lol!
That is HILARIOUS. I am a genius and a pro at laziness too…
Here’s a tip I learned just a year or so ago: Slide an already cut piece of baler twine under all three (or 2 or however many you have) strings on your bale. Pull it til about a third of it is out the other side of the farthest string, then lay it back over the top of the strings toward you. You should now have a loop enclosing all the strings of the bale, with one end in each of you hands. Slide it back and forth in a pulley fashion (pull on top and give on bottom; reverse) This will create enough heat to melt the strings on the bale without melting the string you’re pulling. As each string parts, either take a closer grip to begin on the next one, or step back to maintain the tension. Et Voila! Open bale!
Oh my. Your description of you and your friend is way too familiar. If I didn’t know better, I would think you were talking about me and my friend Emily when I was 16 and she was 14. So many stunts, so many stories…It’s amazing we lived through it all.
The worst thing we did… I hate to remember it. We were never hurt, but the horses… god we were lucky.
Growing up in Del Mar, California (northern San Diego) there weren’t many trails. With no way to trailer to areas, we were forced to discover trails on our own. After years and years of the same old short loop and polo field track, I was desperate. Everything else was roads, expensive mansions and golf courses. But damnit, I was determined to find more. One day, my brilliant 16 year old self determined that there must be more trails somewhere up a busy road cutting through Rancho Sante Fe (one of the richest communities in the US). The locals knew the curvy, twisting two lane road to be a perfect highway for their ritsy Corvettes, Ferraris and Mercedes. No one drove below 55mph, and 65mph was normal…slow, even, to some.
We headed out on our “moderately” rode-broke horses (known only to jump toward the road if there was an errant fire hydrant or red curb…sigh), me on my five year old green broke Egyptian Arab gelding and her on a spastic 13 year old Appendix mare.
After two hours of walking, trotting and cantering along the eucalyptus groves lining the bank of the road we came upon my dream come true- a huge nature reserve park! Complete with trails and MILES of open country. We headed downhill for about two miles, slowly descending in to a canyon by a steep dirt road. Four hours of exploring later, we decided it *may* be time to head home.
By this point it was after 4:30pm, and I knew it would be dark around 7pm. The light was already starting to fail.But the horses were so tired… it just wasn’t fair to make them carry us up the canyon. I proposed an idea to my younger friend- I had been learning so much about endurance riding (at the time we were training for our first LD). I saw pictures in a book and on the endurance.net website of ‘tailing’- where your horse walks up the hill and you follow, holding his tail for support. We trusted our horses, what could go wrong?
Everything. My little Arab began walking up fairly calmly, but my Emily’s mare didn’t even hesitate. She felt that pull on her tail and she was gone, ripping the reins out of my friend’s hand. My Arab took off right afterwards- I had dumbly put the reins over the cantle of my english saddle, so I couldn’t even hold on. In a deathly pall of fear I can still remember today, I watched our horses run. Blood drained out of my face as my hands began to shake, tunnel vision narrowing my view to their vanishing tails. They were galloping home. Straight to the busy road. They were going to get hit by a car and it was all my fault.
“COME ON! RUN! NOW!” I remember vaguley yelling. We took off at a dead sprint, screaming for our horses. The road was so steep, my boots and half chaps so heavy. Blisters forming and bursting, raw with pain. We both had asthma, and our lungs burned. Tears streamed from my eyes, blinding me. But we couldn’t stop. For the whole two miles we ran- straight uphill with no relief. I remember trying to comfort Emily, trying to decide whether I should call the cops to report loose horses on the road. Trying not to think of my parents, her parents, her horse. My horse. My best friend. My fault.
At the top it was as if an angel had answered my desperate, hopeless prayers. There, right behind the teeny two foot car-blocking metal rail next to the road stood a man and his older son. They had just happened to be driving by when they saw the horses come barreling up the canyon. The man, who had a horse when he was a kid, pulled over and grabbed the horses just in time. They couldn’t believe it when they saw us- they thought we were hurt or dead for sure. He was dialing for the cops just as we showed up. My god, we were lucky.
Wow. I guess that guy was your angel that day!
I can’t even begin to count how many dumb things I’ve done because I had “seen it in a book” somewhere. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Yeah… when I was 12 or so I read an old book of short stories from the 40s or 50s. One of them involved a girl who had to race her horse to town to get the firemen to come, and there was a barbed wire fence in the way. So she threw her sweater over it so the horse could see it, and they jumped it.
Guess what trick I thought would be cool to try? Yep, I was tossing my jacket over barbed wire fences and jumping my 7-or-8 year old Arab mare across, so I could ride in the neighbor’s cow fields. I was supremely confident that because I’d made the fence visible with a jacket, it was COMPLETELY safe to jump.
What an idiot! That horse was amazing.
I remember that story. I think it was called “Dark Horse” or something. The horse was a crazy thing that loved only the girl…
Was that the gray horse she found and hid? I think I remember that book. It’s that books fault I love grays*L*
Oh you know…. riding our horses through the McDonalds drive through when we were in Middle School/High School…. Trotting on roads, jumping things that were not meant to be jumped, racing through orchards, crossing busy roads… riding to the middle school to watch the baseball game… oiy..
Probably the worse one was back in high school I was riding a friends horse and she was riding mine, and I bent down to check his cinch… well apparently he did not like that and took off bucking.. I got bucked off.. he took off down one of the busiest streets in town… and then down ANOTHER busy street, hauling ass back home.. as my friend takes off on my horse, galloping down these streets… chasing after her horse!! And I hitch hike back… I was so embarrassed and terrified at the same time! Thankfully everyone was alright in the end!
Mugs, I’m after you again because this rescue needs to be outed! Indiana Horse Rescue has been taking in horses that they “Cannot afford to feed” and shooting them, burying them in mass graves. Just recently, they approved a home, took the womans money and then told her she couldn’t adopt the horse, it was ‘too dangerous’ and now the horse is scheduled to be shot as well.
Images of the starvation, abuse and neglect IHR inflicts on their horses, also first hand volunteer stories:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2049476877182.2100859.1252279426&type=3
The initial article (do take notice how there are no veterinary records stating these horses were fit to be euhted):
http://www.tristate-media.com/pdclarion/article_3818c25e-ea44-11e0-ba3c-001cc4c03286.html#.ToT78B0k224.facebook
I’ll look into it today….
I would be interested in how this pans out, because I donate yearly to IHR. From what I read at the links though, I would have to say the following:
1. I have no way of knowing which horses used to be fat and are thin, which ones have a medical problem, based upon a series of photos on facebook. It’s just not a reliable source of proof as far as I’m concerned. Neither is going on Facebook and saying, “Well so and so said Blah Blah.”
2. Euthing horses that are using up extra resources that could be put toward healthy horses who would cost less to maintain is good business sense. I’m not sure I have the guts to go through with that type of plan, but it’s an honest decision that many rescues need to make. Shooting, if done correctly, is one of the fastest ways to PTS a horse or other animal.
3. A mass grave…. this isn’t the Holocaust. I love my horses, but if I had to bury them, I highly doubt I would insist upon 19 different graves, which would tear up more land and create a huge expenditure just to create the damage. If it helps your own personal bent of mind, please remember that horses are social animals. Maybe they like being buried in herds…
4. The report of the vet is much more concerning. I’m not so concerned with self-care, because after a certain number of years most horsemen DO vet a lot of the problems with their horses. Let’s face it, there is a point at which we have seen enough of the common problems that we know what needs to be done. What is a concern is hearing that the owner of a rescue thinks he knows more than any vet, and that he is running ‘experiments’ on horses. That isn’t normal, healthy, or legally okay.
Overall, the main point made in all this, regardless of what is found out about this rescue, is that if we don’t want to see horses put down, then we probably need to be ready to step up with some cold hard cash to adopt and care for the sick, old, and lame. We can’t sit around and point fingers at rescues who can’t afford to care for all their horses if we are likewise unable to step in and care for them.
You have to read the comments on the images… most will show a fatter horse during IHR intake, and a much thinner/sickly horse after the horse had been at the rescue for a few months.
I used to work at IHR, and I can tell you first hand that things are not being done with your money the way they should be. The horses aren’t worked, money isn’t put towards new and upgraded gear, instead (at least the division I worked at) it was being spent to feast of steak dinners 4/7 nights, the rest of the nights were restaurants or take out. Now I can understand having a licensed veterinarian there to say “Yes, this horse needs euthing” etc. But in this case, there were none. At the division I worked at, the Vet did not bother with telling the rescue management what to do with the horse… the vet would tell me, and I would soon learn why.
We intook a horse who had a gashed open canon, the bone was also fractured. The horse had foundered and was underweight, thus hungry, and had tried to climb stairs to get to the hay at his old place… So we fixed him an extra thick stall, and the vet dressed his leg and did what he could – he gave me the antibiotics saying “he needs this many ground up and fed to him twice per day”. He had told the management that the horse’s leg needed dressing daily. I left the horse alone for the day, expecting one of them to come out and redress the leg – it never happened. So at 9ish at night, I redressed the leg (the horse was a saint, thank god) and put him up… I did this for the better part of a week before the management decided “Oh well we better redress his leg!” I then informed her I had been redressing his leg, and she never brought it up again. I can’t imagine how long that horse would have gone on with a disgusting bacteria ridden bandaged for days and days and days… not to mention the stalls were disgusting when I arrived, so he would have been standing and lying in crap and urine.
So now would you like to defend IHR?
Would I like to defend IHR?
I’ve never been there. I’ve never worked there. I’m simply pointing out, as someone who KNOWS, that posting a bunch of pictures on Facebook that claim to be before and after pictures, and posting stories without any substantiation, isn’t the way to get help for horses at a bad rescue.
I could post on here, for instance, that I’ve been to your farm, seen your horses, you never clean your stalls, your horses never get fed regularly, and you wear mismatched clothes on Saturdays. It means nothing. (and before you panic, I don’t know you from Adam, and I don’t even know if you have a farm)
Get video. Get photos that are dated, that do NOT show free choice hay. Get eye witness depositions from someone who has a real name, and who clearly doesn’t have an agenda. For example, saying, “I managed to take these undated photos before I was kicked off the farm and fired for being late,” isn’t the testimony of a person without an agenda.
I totally get your frustration– it’s pretty clear based upon the fact that you attacked me and accused me of ‘defending’ a rescue whose property I’ve never even visited. I’m not your enemy, I’m simply someone who is pointing out the problems with the ‘evidence’. You (if you are indeed the one going after the rescue) will need to fix those problems if you intend to take this into the realm of legal prosecution.
It’s not just me, I didn’t even know about this until a local friend on FB had it posted on her wall. Well, you know how the proverbial sh*t hits the fan. Stories surfaced from the grave. I do however feel extremely sorry for the family that wanted to adopt the horse, had done their ‘homework’ per say, were experienced horse people, then denied because she was ‘too dangerous’… People have tried to get IHR to defend themselves or give a reasoning statement – and they have failed. I think what people want more than anything is a vet record stating that certain horse is a good candidate for euthing – but since IHR likes to play vet, it’s no good.
There’s also a new report by a veterinarian when she had visited IHR, in hopes to expose her students to large animals and help out a rescue at the same time.
http://www.in.gov/portal/news_events/files/10.29.2008.pdf
There is a “rescue” just like this in Washington State. Nearly all the volunteers and board of directors walked out and tried to get the authorites to do something. Nothing was ever done. We had photos, proof of rescue mares being bred and foaling while being house on the property, money being spent on new vehicles and property upgrades that did not benefit the horses, donations being deposited into the founder’s bank account, personal horses being fed hay that was donated to the rescues, etc. Fugly is even friends with former board members and the woman was never outed. The IRS never came after her. NADA. She is still stealing money from people and thinking no one can touch her (looks like she is probably right). To this day I have no idea why people will donate large sums of money to a rescue that have have never visited and know nothing about. You can not trust someone based on their website! This whole rescue business makes me irate.
I suspect I know that rescue…I was a board member at a “revolving door board” rescue. The place is still going, appears to have swapped out board members, but they never keep a current list of who is on the board. There have been some changes to the pens, re-arrangement of fencing, etc… But the overall look is just the same as it ever was.
If we are talking about the same place, I can assure you that a number of us did report the place to the IRS, the state attorney general, animal control and major donors. Not that it did any good, but we tried.
One of my biggest frustrations was that with all the things that _could_ have been reported, people often attacked on exaggerated stories, or dug up old, out-of-date information and ran with that when there was plenty of current stuff going on to raise a little hell with.
Yep, it is the same place. Although I’ve been banned from going on the property after I asked too many questions about the finances, I stopped by over the summer during one of their “events”. You are right, fences have moved, horses have come and gone, but everything is mostly the same. I counted over 30 horses on 9 acres and I didn’t even go in the barn to see how many were in there. The place is a disgusting mud pit with a manure pile the size of Manhattan.
Around the time I was banned, the director implemented a “no pictures” policy. Sounds like she had a lot to hide if she’s prohibiting photos. After two years of fighting the battle, I finally gave up. I have no idea who is on the board of directors now or how much rescue money the founder is spending on her personal horses. I do feel bad for all the horses that end up there – the old mares that will be bred and the younger horses that will die due to sub-standard care.
Would that be the rescue formerly know as CBER?
Exactly, and there aren’t enough “good” rescues out there to save what is now available. People are going to have to step up to the plate to make it happen, or not.
I hope something is done about this rescue. I reported them a year ago and nothing was done.
I have heard people talking about this up here in Illinois, but what people have to realize is, hay IS very expensive up here and there is less of it to go around right now because more and more farmers are planting their fields with corn and soybeans, due to the high prices of those crops. This is just one consequence that happens when we use our food for motor fuels. Please don’t tell me they can get it cheaper in southern Indiana, yadda yadda yadda, because they are facing the same problems there that we are here with unwanted horses being turned loose or left starving, going for next to nothing at auctions if they go at all, and high hay prices. People just aren’t going to adopt horses with strings attached by a rescue when they can get one for next to nothing or free and maybe be able to take it on a trial before doing so…if they take any at all, which fewer and fewer people are now doing. So one of three things is going to have to happen: either the slaughterhouses will have to reopen, the problem will continue to get worse and drive the market down even further than it already is, or people will have to pitch in and quit being onlookers and start being doers and donors. There really aren’t any other options, because the economy is NOT recovering.
While you have a slightly valid point, I disagree. Just because hay is expensive, doesn’t mean that people (and especially not rescues) are right in starving horses. If you can’t afford to feed it, don’t take it in. Rescues have the option of euthing a horse – anyone who can’t afford to do that can have a meat renderer come out, shoot the horse and take away the body. It might not be ‘butterflies and rainbows’ but it sure beats letting a horse starve or die from an illness or untreated injury.
I have a rule – I rescue one at a time. No, it’s not getting MUCH done, but I’m still helping and I know I’m not getting overwhelmed. I COULD take in a few more, but if a huge vet bill came up I would be screwed. When you work with animals, you need a very clear budget with room for emergenices.
Another thing I really disagree with is the fact that people should stop being onlookers and start being donating. Sure, to a good rescue – not to one that appears to be starving animals. If it was only finances that were the problem here, then the people responsible would have said “This isn’t working – we need to stop taking in so many or quit altogether”. Obviously there is more going on here – especially considering that someone who volunteered there just said that they are getting money, but spending it on shit that doesn’t help the horses. You may have been talking about rescues in general, but it sounded like you were saying “Hey, if you want this rescue to stop starving animals, donate!” Sorry if that’s not what you meant, but that’s how it came across.
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
Okay, this is embarrassing. I used to ride my horse over to my best friends who was about a 45minute ride away. My horse is very flightly, but besides that a pretty good natured guy. Usually I would just visit with my friend outside, but today i decided that i would tie my horse up to the picnic table outside (it looked like a pretty big sturdy picnic table). I tied him to the beams connecting the seats from the table. This was on lovely lush green grass, so of course he lowered his head to graze. when I was sitting up on the deck I looked out to check on my horse to see that he had stepped over his lead rope. I ran down, but by this point he had already tried to lift his head, found it was trapped under his leg and start to freak and pull back. I never realized how strong the horse was, until he took off up the hill dragging that massive picnic table by his head without any effort. Finally the leadrope broke and he took off across a busy road and down another. Luckily he made a wrong turn and we were able to catch him before he ran all the way home (across 2 more busy roads, one with a blind corner) He only had minor rope burns on his front leg and a small cut in his mouth from biting his cheek. I was so lucky he didnt break a leg.
Well, I left a 3 month old rescue puppy tied to a chair in the kitchen once (a heavy wooden chair, not a plastic one) and she managed to drag her way over to the hall and only stopped when the chair got stuck against a round table. Luckily, she managed not to flip the chair on top of herself.
Mugs, your story just brought me back 30 years. I had a friend in high school and together we were dangerous. It was that same ‘dare you’ dutch courage that neither would have without the other. There was a full moon one night she was staying at my house and we decided we wanted to ride, except that the horses were 3 miles away. We made camouflage clothes out of burlap bags (still don’t quite get that) so we wouldn’t be seen by passing cars, jumped out my bedroom window and walked to the barn hiding behind telephone poles when cars passed. I only had 1 horse (large pony) and since there was a barn-full of horses we sort of borrowed one for her to ride. We went through the trails directly behind the owner’s house praying nobody would hear us and rode to a big hayfield where we raced, bareback under the moonlight. I remember that night like it was yesterday.
When we were on our own horses, we’d ride about 3-4 miles after school to meet up in the center of town. We would ride our horses up the stairs and onto the gazebo, dismount and hang out. We drew a lot of attention and what teenage girl didn’t enjoy that? Riding to and from her house was a lot more fun. The route took us through the local small-plane airport. Did we ever piss those guys off when we’d race alongside the airstrip while their arms were flailing, screaming at us to get the hell out of there. It’s not like they could catch us. Oh to be young again…..
There’s a full moon coming this Wednesday and I’m already scheming if the weather holds. I may be getting older but part of me still refuses to grow up.
I would spend the summers with my Aunt Donna and her brood of Arabians in the middle of nowhere, in the deserts of Eastern Washington. Moonlit rides on full-moon nights was a regular thing. One of my favorites!
Oh geez, stupid. I have to narrow it down to one, eh?
I think the scariest was when myself, my younger sister and a friend of mine saddled up and headed up the logging roads, as usual, but decided to go on one that we had never been on . . . one that was brand new, fresh clay instead of gravel and small sections of clear cut right up to the edge of the logging road. I lived in Cottage Grove Oregon and rain was the norm 9 months out of the year, so there was run-off on either side of the road. We had ridden up a good two to three hours from the main driveway. We were laughing and jumping our horses from the road, over the run-off into the clear cut mess and back over. We had done this a couple of times. For some reason, that I can’t remember, I stopped my 5 year old Morgan/Arab and turned around to watch my sister catch up. Miles, the Morab, backed up close to the edge of the road . . . his entire back leg sunk, disappearing into the ground. I felt him slowly sit down. Confused, he just sat there. I stood up and stepped off. It took a whole minute of me just staring to figure out what happened. I still don’t know why it happened. A sinkhole of some sort. I pulled on the halter part of his bridle. I got behind him, into the wet red clay and pushed him, but he wouldn’t even attempt to get out. Just one leg was in the ground. I took his saddle off and instructed my sister and my friend to head back to the house and get Frank, the man that owned the horse my sister was riding and the land we kept them on. They galloped off in the direction of the main drive. It took about 10 minutes for Miles to figure out his buddies were gone and he whinnied and got anxious, finally pulling himself up hard enough to free himself of the sticky clay. I remember I was wearing light colored Wranglers that were forever toned red, from the clay, after that. Stunned, I set the saddle on Miles’ back and hand-walked him down the logging road, avoiding the sides. Close to an hour later, my friend and my sis showed back up with a neighbor and his truck and trailer. Miles was walking fine, so I walked him home the rest of the way and thanked the kind neighbor for his time. He ended up with a sore leg but the vet said it was just minor. We were riding within two weeks of that.
I have so many “stupid” stories. Mainly just thinking we were invincible and riding like it. Jumping downed trees on my friend’s poor obese Mustang gelding. I’m surprised he didn’t dump our butts and just head home for more feed. Riding horses that were WAY greener than I was experienced. Cottage Grove wasn’t huge but big enough and we would ride all over town. We thought about heading over the swinging bridge, but we finally came to our senses and let that one go. It was a narrow, wooden bridge that was suspended by cables . . . and, yes, it swung dramatically; spanned over the river there. And we did that all without helmets. If I had a daughter that rode as much and as many different horses as I did as a kid, she would be wearing a helmet! =D
Great topic! Great stories!
I still love riding in moonlight but have only done it once as a ‘grown up’. I hope the weather holds and I get a chance to go again. My friend looked at me like I had 3 heads when I suggested it but she’s game. We’ll stick to the easy trails and the dirt roads though. We don’t have all the clay that you do but with this rainy season, we have a lot of black mud holes that’ll suck a leg in (or shoes off). The problem with those sticky situations now is that I’m older and wiser and know how ugly things can turn if they panic.
Coming from an extremely long line of farmers (since the beginning of time) I have a few stupid moments, but only one major as far as my safety was concerned. I had a little run in with a thoroughbred mare I wanted to buy, and the old man who owned her (who she hated) that almost killed me…I was doing ground work and I trusted him to keep her on the longe while I went in the saddle. Well, he didn’t. As soon as I was up, and she quieted, he unsnapped the lead, HIT her HARD with it all hollered YAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! cowboy style. Well, she took off like a rocket down the drive and down the dirt road heading for the highway at the speed of light… I got her calmed and circled her about in the neighbors alfalfa,(he was NOT impressed) and (stupid stupid stupid) rode her back toward the driveway. I should have got off after she was calm and hand walked her back. I would have if I had known that HE was standing at the end of the drive laughing, SHE saw him and exploded, heading for the barn. She would fit under the doorway, but not me! I bailed. I caught her, tied her, untacked and groomed her. I then walked away from the sale even though I had invested a lot of hours in ground training for her at that point.
Another one that almost killed me, via my mother striping my legs with a “keen switch” was painting her team of grey percherons with mulberry juice 3 days before she was to exibit them in a competition that was costly to enter and non-refundable. I was only 6 and my sister (who had the bright idea) was only 8 but BOY was my mother MAD! It took all summer for the smily faces and handprints to wash out of those pretty grey coats.
I’m sure I’ve done stupid things on a horse but can’t think of any off hand. As a teen, a group of us would groom at horse shows and always rode in the trailer – one of the great big ones pulled by a transport type truck. One of the horses had a bad habit of trying to go down in the trailer, it was our job to keep her from doing it. Probably not the brightest thing we did, but we survived and all continued to ride together well into our 20s.
Many years later, (I’m now 45) I decided it was time to buy my own horse. Lots of good talks with my riding instructor, poring over horse ads, I decide to go with an OTTB through a placement group that frequently has horses that the owner/trainer wants off the track NOW! Plenty of horses are given more time, so I’ll go with one of those, instructor will go to the track with me, we’ll end up with a great horse. Perfect plan!
One horse listed captures my heart, I book appointment to see her….on the day my instructor’s family leaves for the trip. No problem, I’m a smart person – I can do this by myself! I go see her, pat her, feed her a mint, she licks me – I buy her. And a friend ships her to the barn. Of course, everyone thought she was gorgeous and since I knew enough to have a vet check….ugh, I knew I should but didn’t…well, you had them trot her so you at least saw how she moves…no, she licked me so I bought her. There were a lot of sighs, deep breaths and eye rolling! Even more when the barn owner came home. lol
Now, as it turns out, she is sound, sane and vice free just like the seller promised but wow! that could have turned out so differently. I even know that nobody in their right mind buys a horse that raced 3 days ago because they licked you! (And yes, had one of the other people done what I did, I would have thought they were nuts too!)
Bought a horse at an auction :-0 It was the Mid Ohio Draft horse sale, an auction held twice a year with over 1000 horses coming through during the week. We had never been to an auction before. My husband and I went through the catalog and marked all the horses we were interested in seeing. We settled on a very nice 3 yo Percheron Standardbred cross gelding, broke to drive. Watched the owner harness and drive him, arranged to drive him the next day before the sale. He was gentle, friendly, not too big and well put together. We went up into the stands and waited for our horse to come in. I was on adrenaline overload – perched on the edge of my seat with money burning a hole in my pocket. In came the pretty gelding. The bids were fast and furious, and I threw my hand up as the price neared our limit. The bids kept coming and he finally sold for twice our budget. At least I knew we had made a good choice! But there we were 8 hours from home and it was pouring rain. I had a solitary horse at home and I was simply not coming back with an empty trailer. The next horse came into the arena – a 2yo gelding “broke to drive” but hadn’t been driven at the sale…and I bought him without even. Turned out okay, we like him a lot; but he is HUGE and apparently still growing after 2 years.
Sometimes it works out
When I first got my horses I was a newbie with a year of lessons under a Parelli trainer. In some ways I was way too timid and in other ways I was ridiculously stupid.
One day I was going to ride my mare (the one that was still bucking me off on a pretty regular basis) to state land and pony my old gelding. So while I was leading them out of the pasture, I had tied the gelding’s lead rope to my mare’s (cheap, poorly made) saddle horn. Well, something made the gelding suck back, and when he did, the entire top half of the saddle came apart from the skirt.
Gelding freaks out and spooks, saddle chasing him in the air, still attached to his leadrope. I’m pretty helpless to stop him at this point, because I’m holding the poor mare who is now wearing this loose saddle skirt/girth thing with screws and nails poking out of it everywhere. The gelding made a few rounds of the yard before he finally came to a stop in front of me, wild-eyed and trembling.
That’s not that stupid.
Stupid would be going back and buying another saddle of that make.
I have fed grass clippings before I knew better, I also turned out in barbed wire and I once fed a horse grain right after a huge work out – all out of ignorance. In the area I grew up, almost everyone had barbed wire and some horses were lucky to be checked on once a week, so I didn’t know any different.
No disastrous consequences – although, with the barbed wire:
I started reading fugly and going on yahoo and once I realized horses shouldn’t be turned out in barbed wire I ripped it off and changed all the fencing. A little while later, my mare got herself tangled up in the fence – how she did it I don’t know. It was pulled reasonably tight and we think she rolled too close, got her leg in between strands and then went to stand up and put her leg back through another strand =/
I remember thinking how lucky I was that I started reading up on proper horse care – my mare very well could have been dead if I hadn’t.
One of the biggest scares I had was actually because of my mother. She’s good with training and riding, but is not the most safety conscious person and seems to have the “She’ll be right” attitude. We used to let our horses wander around the farm during the day and put them into a smaller paddock at night, but they stayed down one end of the farm by choice. One day my mum decided to leave the farm gate open while she went home for lunch and as Murphy’s law would have it – a huge group of riders and horses came past, which caused our horses to bolt to the other end of the farm, out the gate and away they went. The riders came and told us what had happened and I was furious with my mum, we jumped in the ute and they were unharmed, but it was a terrifying experience.
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
We used to all line up and play Red Rover. Not a very safe game crashing through the opposing line. I rode a Shetland at the time and he was very good at finding a spot to get through. Absolutely no helmets, probably no shoes, and usually bareback.
Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Julie right over!!!! LOL
Mugly – Your story is great. I love it! I have to admit that I’m even a bit jealous of it. I never had the chance to be a stupid kid around horses since my dad was afraid of animals and my mom was a total Be-ach and wouldn’t let me have anything. I didn’t get my first pony until well into my gray-haired years.
The dumbest thing I do now is take my horse out riding in a halter. What is wrong with this, you wonder? We ride at a meadow with a 1/2 mile long stretch where he loves to run. He frequently takes off at a full gallop and won’t stop until he’s good and ready. He always slows down before the end of the stretch where it drops down a ravine full of blackberry vines. There have been days when I wonder if he’s going to stop, or even slow down at all.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, does all kinds of stupid crap around the horses. One day we trailered out and the above mentioned horse was on edge. There was another horse in the parking lot that had him quite excited. The horse was tied to the trailer staring intently in the direction of the other horse. Boyfriend quietly walked up directly behind my horse (the horse never saw him coming) and touched him on the flank. I have NEVER seen a horse kick so fast. Boyfriend took the full impact of the horse’s hoof to his right thigh, about 3 inches from his family jewels. Not sure he learned anything…he’ll probably do it again.
So, there was this little movie that came out back in the day. I’m sure everyone’s heard about it. The Black Stallion.
Well, thanks to Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Walter Farley’s masterpiece, I placed myself in many-a-risky situations involving horses.
Because, what horse-crazed pre-teen girl doesn’t fanticize about galloping down a beach…sans saddle and bridle? And barefoot. And what pre-teen girl doesn’t fanticize about riding in the race of her life?
Luckily I had a QH gelding who was the sanest, sweetest horse I’ve ever encountered. Since I lived in the middle of the desert and boarded in an urban environment, galloping on a beach was out. But I did tear around the arena sans saddle and bridle. And he never unseated me. Luckily. Years later I tried the same thing with my Appy gelding (and I was old enough to know better). As soon as I settled on his back, he flicked his ears and took off bucking. I bailed. Not quite my fantasy.
Oh, but I too had a “nothing but trouble” friend who was also obsessed by The Black Stallion. And this was also around the time of the Easy Goer/Sunday Silence rivalry. She boarded at a place that was adjacent to open desert. So we’d say we were going on a “trail ride”, get out in a nice straight arroyo, pull our stirrups up as far as they’d go, and re-enact every great race we could think of.
But, by far the dumbest thing we did was tie the reins around the saddle horn, turn around backward in the saddle, and take off at a gallop through the desert. Stupid.
Oh, and all of that… without helmets.
Also, one of the stupidest things I ever didn’t do was insist on a perimeter fence when we finally moved away and obtained horse property. The horses got out once (one charged over my mom through the pasture gate and the other followed) and ran through two neighbor’s front lawns before finally coming back home. That could’ve been so much worse.
Oh Lordie… your story about riding backwards reminds me of our “Around the World” races. Basically you rode point-to-point across the pasture and had to turn 360 degrees in your saddle before you crossed the finish line. So turning in the saddle at a gallop.
Thing is… this wasn’t a dumb thing we did for fun, it was my riding instructor’s idea of a good time.
I grew up in Wyoming and used to spend a lot of time with my male cousin who was 2 years older – and pretty sensible. We used to ride our horses around the back side of a huge bluff/cliff, ride to the top and rear his little white mare on the very top (think “Hi ho SILVER”). There were lots of canyons to ride in and often we forgot the time. One day we had been goofing around on the way to the top of the cliff and by the time we got there we realized that we were supposed to be home – our moms were the kind that didn’t spare punishment if you messed up. Basically, they took the horses away for at least a week – as punishment.
From the top of the cliff, we could see his house. He looked at me and told me we’d have to ride down the face of the cliff or we wouldn’t make it home in time. At 12 years old I trusted him – with all his wisdom at 14 …
The horses didn’t refuse when we urged them off the side. I remember having a sick feeling when I looked down so I squeezed my eyes shut and just let them pick their way. My dad used horses for his work as a government hunter and I remembered that he told me to trust the horse in a tough situation – because they’d be looking our for themselves and take care of ME by doing so. My gelding was a big buckskin and very trustworthy but the slope was so steep that several times he just planted his feet and slid until he could get his footing. One of those slides went on forever and I thought for sure we were dead.
When we finally hit the bottom both kids and horses were shaking and sweating. We allowed the horses to rest a bit before we headed to my cousins house like nothing had happened. When we got there I saw my mom’s truck in the yard and as we passed the house BOTH moms came boiling out. Turns out my aunt had been watching us with her binoculars – and called my mom who came over immediately.
We both lost the horses for 2 weeks, we weeded, we cleaned chicken houses, painted, and generally slaved like dogs as punishment.
As an adult I have looked at that cliff and wondered how on earth we made it.
Well, At least reading through the current comments make me not feel like too much of an idiot. I didn’t grow up with horses, well, I took lessons once a week for about 8 years. Then got into leasing, then found my niche in exercise riding. When people start paying you to ride, you get stuck with some pretty interesting horses. At 26, I still don’t own my own, but have rode and worked more than 82 different horses since I started riding 15 years ago.
I guess when I started I didn’t even charge, I was just a poor college kid that needed to ride or she’ll kill someone. I trusted owners likely more than I should have when they told me the condition and training of their horses. The majority of the time the owners were afraid of their horses. Rode more bucking broncs than dead heads. Then again, I came to soon learn that the only time I really fall off is when I make that choice rather than the horse. Then word got around that I was a problem solver, which I guess you become a problem solver by not letting the horse win… who would have thunk this concept was so hard to grasp? Meh, now I charge, still not as much as I should, but i have two big barns I work at which pretty much keep me fat and happy.
I find myself saying more recently, “I do alot of stupid shit, its a wonder how I haven’t broken any bones” You know, its only stupid when you look back on it. You know, I KNOW I have said it alot more than the memories I can conjure up, I think I blocked some of them. I have learned quite a few lessons on horses NOT to ride, the woman I work for is notorious for getting cheap horses and fixing them up – but someone has to have the first rides.
1. As soon as you see that the minis have escaped. Get off your previously abused and currently terrified of her legs being touched horse. Don’t stay on and wait for the minis to go under your horse. Bailed when I saw the tack shed getting closer… and closer.
2. Regardless if you were told that she was a parade horse, but has sat in the pasture for 5 yeasr, if she is only 100$ it doesn’t really mean that she is safe. Guess who shit her pants when a turkey flew out infront of her – this lady here, horse didn’t flinch.
3. After getting done telling me this formerly nightmare horse is broke to ride, who I don’t trust as far as I can throw her (and I can’t throw a 1000lb horse…) I agreed to get on her if my friend ponied me around. Tested it out, got on, immediately reared… directly into the tack shed. Not around it, no some idiot forgot to shut the door, The mares back end was entirely inside so when we went up… fml.
really have to learn how to say no.
But seeing your life flash before your eyes is kinda fun.
Not from that barn but,
4. Accepting a job at religious day camp where they expected you to ride, evaluate, fit saddles and bridles 15 horses in 4 days without knowing, age, training, or name. We eventually learned that the horses werent trained for kids, or trails but still expected us to take the kids who didn’t steer on trail rides because it was more important to go on trails then to learn in the arena how to control your horse. It was stupid that I stayed for half the summer, but I got smart and quit and am collecting information to report them to the ACA and ASPCA next summer. Since they will just run the same shit again, without fail.
I
My most “your an idiot” riding adventures happen on a obese haflinger I lovingly call “Lady Lumps”
She resides at the barn that has all the nutcases afore mentioned. I’ve been told she is mine until I graduate, which, don’t tell my folks, may be keeping me in college for this long. She is so fat that she lacks withers, so I have been riding her bareback for nearly 3 years. We seldom use a saddle. I’ve taken her through rivers, bushwaking to find trails, through snow up to her shoulders.. Though, my favorite thing to do with her – is to piss her off. Thats normal right?
She has a quirk, every time you kick her, she’ll kick back. Then have a tantrum and go on our way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fdc4TXI7IM
I was fairly convinced that if she ever did get me off, she’d stomp on my head so I couldn’t get back on. She only succeeded in getting me off once. Nothing too abnormal, the only thing that changed is that my friend (also sometimes an idiot) decided to take a little paint pony who is a green horse out on the trails.
I always ride with my dog. All of the horses are okay with this, but my friends mare spooked when my dog came out of the woods and into the hay field we were riding in. Of course, lady lumps spooks by association. We both check them and well, then I am on the ground watching my lady lumps run away. I was thinking in my head, I wonder wher….as see a flash of brown and white cross over me.. thats right. She ran me over with her horse. Then I see her fall off too.. army crawl over to me and ask me if I was alive. I say “You ran me over with your horse!” she says “Well, I steered her so she didn’t run over your head, that counts right?” We find our horses munching on grass on the side of the other pasture. Conveniently lady lumps was already in the ditch, so I just hop back on and away we go.
In closing, falling off is good for you.
http://livinginthesaddle.wordpress.com/
Who would have guess that my torn ligaments came from working with goats, and not horses. Still have no serious injuries.
Galloping up a tarmac road. Round blind corners.
Granted, I was 11, and there were adults riding with me who should have said something.
It’s a good thing that the pony was nearly 30, so he was more or less bombproof, and like most Barbs, smart. Nine years on and he’s still going strong.
Hmmm… single most stupid decision I made which comes to mind almost instantly:
I was giving lessons by 18 years of age, and I was teaching a young (10 yr old or less?) girl how to ride. She was doing brilliantly, really advanced and great seat, etc… so I pushed her. Come on, kid, you can canter. You’ll be fine. He’s a quiet school horse, you are riding fine, go on, try it, go for it….. You get the idea. I will NEVER forget seeing that little girl panic, scream, and reach forward and wrap both arms around that gelding’s neck, which frightened him and confused him as well. He loped halfway across the arena before she fell off, and he quite nicely stopped then, but I had terrified and could have seriously hurt or killed a little girl who trusted me to keep her safe and keep her FEELING safe. All because I didn’t listen to the number one rule of instruction: If they say they can’t do it, then do NOT try to make them do it. I always wonder if that little girl ever did keep riding, or if I ruined her for horses for life. Regardless, at least I didn’t get her hurt or killed, and the lesson I learned that day has stayed with me ever since. It’s just too bad I couldn’t have learned that one BEFORE someone was put at risk.
That’s the only really clear stupid thing I’ve ever done. Mind you, I’ve done tons of stupid things (btw, if you tie the baling twine in their mouth under their chin, it will stay in better
), but usually I’ve escaped with nothing worse than a sudden recognition that once again, the Powers that be decided to keep me around a bit longer. They tend to blend in and become learning experiences, which have led to me being pretty savvy about seeing trouble coming.
OOoooh, I see that ALL the time: kids getting pushed to do stuff before they’re ready. Not only can it make a fearful kid even worse, it’s also a great way to screw up a decent solid equitation foundation!!
Cantering is kind of like making love: there’s a rhythm to it, and you’re just not going to get it figured out if you do it before you’re ready for it!
Very true, and of course while the instructor may be sure that the student is ready to canter, it doesn’t matter. If the student is hesitant, we are totally risking their safety by pushing them. I’m just so relieved, even years later, that the little girl wasn’t injured in her fall. It was a hard (yes, STUPID!) way to learn that pushing people beyond their comfort zones isn’t a good idea, unless you are 100% certain you can control the result.
Simple enough.
The horse I was leasing wore a stud chain to be led. I was trying to lead him into the “scary” concrete wash stall when he balked hard and the old, worn clip came loose, separating the stud chain from the rope. So, instead of being smart and tying the “clipless” rope to the halter (or just leading with the halter, duh), I tried leading my horse with the 6 inches of stainless steel stud chain still dangling from his nose.
Two hand surgeries later …
I laughed at the end of Mugly’s tale. And Alliecat04, I really really identified with your mom!!
Riding my first horse when I was 13 years old, a grade palomino mare across chest high water in a raging thunderstorm. My only concern was that I might get the saddle wet!!
Decades later, using a new mesh saddlepad on my problem horse, by myself, and I step into the stirrup, in the barn, with concrete aisle way. The next thing I see is his belly and his rear hooves, as the saddle slid beneath him and my backside hit the concrete, and he went ballistic as only a whacked out Arab nutcase wearing a saddle upside down can! No injuries, and saddle undamaged. Never used that pad again. It was filled with the potential for disaster.
My favorite story of stupidity is this:
Went on a pack-in trip in a wilderness area–the Eagle Caps. Beautiful place. Two couples so 4 horses, all broke to hobble and carry packs, good there. Camped for a couple of days, rode the mountains until one day we come to this stunning high mountain meadow with grass belly high, a crystal clear pond, running stream, wild flowers. It was time for lunch so we stopped and took off the packs. Nowhere to tie in the middle of the meadow and of course, we hadn’t thought to bring the hobbles along….with belly deep grass, good water, they would just stay and eat, right? So we loosened cinches just a bit, unbridled, hanging those and leads securely over the saddlehorns and left them to eat. Then we had the lovely idea to go a good quarter mile away to this cute pile of boulders to eat. One high-pitched mare squeal and good kick, which startled a heron out of the pond later, and we watched in stunned silence, open mouthed as four horses left the meadow at a combination of Derby speed and NFR bucking…a good four hours by horseback from camp, 8 hours of riding from the trailer…
We packed up lunch and followed the trail of divots and hoof prints, heavy packs over our own shoulders, picking up the random bridle, stirrup, lead rope, saddle pad, full fender, and one horse shoe which oddly happened to not be from one of our horses we later found out…five hours later we found our horses tied to trees about two miles from camp with a note, “Found these wandering, will check back later to see if you found them, haha.” Some nice guys had been riding through and caught them, used their own leads to tie them up for us…they came by camp later to get the ropes. Two of the horses had saddles on their bellies when they found them–hence us finding the saddle pad–I hadn’t even been smart enough to check that the non-horsey husband’s hadn’t loosened the cinches too much. Not a single horse was hurt even a little bit. Not scrapes, soreness–well, not the horses, heh. Lucky. Stupid.
I have a billion of those teenage stories too, but that’s the one, as a full-fledged adult, that sticks with me.
five hours later we found our horses tied to trees about two miles from camp with a note, “Found these wandering, will check back later to see if you found them, haha.”
Thank you so much! I laughed so hard I nearly piddled!! Love the haha at the end!!
I only took some cursory lessons as a kid, and got into horses as an adult, so I’d like to think I haven’t done anything TOO stupid. Of course, I didn’t start out well, because I rescued a yearling colt, so when I started riding him we were both green… and you know what they say about green + green = black and blue. But I did at least have the wisdom to get a wonderful trainer, who started him and then switched to giving me lessons, so we’ve made it through a lot better than we would have if I hadn’t had that foresight (or sheer dumb luck).
The dumbest thing I’ve actually done was to climb on my horse’s back when he was lying in the pasture, and then NOT immediately bail when he started to get up. I thought it would be like in the movies. Ha ha. As soon as he got up, he started running, at which point I realized I had no steering and no brakes. I fell, of course, and of all the falls I’ve had that’s the one where I was injured the worst — I torqued my knee somehow, and it was a month before it felt back to normal.
Not that it stopped me from riding, of course! Even when I could barely walk, I never hesitated to climb up in that saddle.
On the subject of dumb things I’ve done, never take knee injuries for granted. I have a tendon which can never be repaired now because I didn’t have a doctor look at it when it happened. My theory was, “Hey, I can walk on it, it must be okay.” Well, if by okay you mean the stabilizing tendon had ruptured, is now shriveled and can’t be fixed, so I will have a knee that goes out for the rest of my life.
Prompt professional care is crucial for knee injuries.
I could have written your story – right down to the cutoffs, swimsuits, shoeless, saddleless warbridle stunt. All of that and then some. I still wonder how I lived through my teens. My mom wouldn’t even watch through the window when I would jump stuff in the back yard – “just let me know if you need an ambulance” was all she would say. Terrifying that more of us were not more severly injured, because I was never alone in my antics. There were several broken arms and a few broken legs. I was lucky.
As an adult, I had an incident that has stuck with me and made me stop and check one more time when I am trailering a horse. I had planned to take my horse to a local barrel race. My boyfriends daughter wanted to go with me, so I picked her up and headed to the barn. I was talking with her while I hooked up the trailer, loaded my tack then loaded my horse. I did not do one last look at anything like I usually do. I started to pull my trailer out of the parking spot and when the wheels hit a little dip, it jiggled the tongue of the trailer, which immediately popped off the ball and the trailer tongue popped up. It was caught by the chains and the momentum of the truck and the tongue came back down – it was just enough to throw my mare off balance, but she was not injured. I almost threw up when I realized that I had not locked the hitch closed nor pinned it, because I was busy talking. I was so lucky it happened when and how it did, or it could have been a disaster. I now check and double check everything, then stop at the end of the driveway and check everything again – doors, hitch, tires, hitch, chains, lights, doors, tires – everything, before I hit the road. If I stop for gas or coffee or anything, I check everything again.
Those chains are fucking lifesavers. I cannot express my love for them strongly enough.
(Is it weird to have a favorite piece of safety equipment?)
When I was around 11 or 12 I saw my first trick riders. One trick they had was throwing things on the ground and picking them up by leaning down the horse’s side. Of course, I had to try. I got my pony who was probably around 17 or 18 going on 3 and saddled her up. I decided to start at a lope and while I missed the curry comb I was using I was lucky enough to not fall off, since I never wore a helmet.
Another thing was I wanted to be a jockey sooooo bad. My poor 7-12 year old self would be sad (im now 5’9 160ib.) One of my favorite things to do when I first got my pony was run “races” through the woods. Having to dodge trees, roots, and stumps? Nope, those are the other racers lol. I cant tell you how many times I got lumps on my knees from narrowly avoiding a head on collision with a tree.
I did so many stupid things with that pony. But she taught me good and now I have a velcro butt and more sense.
I grew up in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver so running races in the woods was the norm. At the time I had a gorgeous bay mare that was an ex-gamer (poles, barrels, etc.) and she LOVED to run. I thought that was great! I always won all the races. The only “flaw” was that I needed a long “run-way” to slow her down to a stop. So one day I’m racing my friends across a high mountain meadow, win the race, and find that I don’t have stopping room, so I just figure I’ll head for a tree and she’ll stop. WRONG! Next to the big sturdy ponderosa pine I chose for “braking incentive” was a large downed log and my horse figured, “Hey, cool! A jump!” She jumps the log and I get peeled off her back by huge heavy over-hanging pine tree limb. Scraped off like butter off of toast. So many bruises, cuts and scrapes, plus pine needles up inside every piece of clothing.
Of course, ala Mugly, I got back on and we rode for the rest of the day. Can’t waste a day of riding with your friends!
And Mugly, I live near Woodland Park so… “Hi!” *wave* *wave*
New to posting comments but when I saw this blog post I though maybe I should post for the first time. I did two stupid things with my own first horse.
One tried to canter a very green horse on a trail, she was trotting horses before and had no clue how. My saddle broke and my back probably should have to when I hit the ground. It removed all the skin from my back and my helmet was a piece of foam and a strap once all the plastic finished falling off.
Second I listened to someone else when it came to my horses health. And didn’t call the vet. My horse ended up putting her down six weeks later, when she could have been saved if I had got a vet out at the first signs of poisoning. In the end it was 5 weeks of end less tests to find out salmonella had managed to kill most of her liver and kidneys. I owned her for less than two years, and was my first horse.
I have a hot, hot, hot, super reactive Arab that was trying to break to ride. Because I was afraid to get on him in the large indoor arean, I thought it a better idea to get on him first in his stall. Because I wanted to just sit on him a few minutes, I stood on an upturned water bucket in the middle of his stall and jumped up onto him bareback. All was well. He stood still while I petted him. Since he was so good, I asked him to take a step forward. When he did, his back feet hit that plastic bucket and he came unglued. He raced around and around in a blind panic in his stall – with the bucket getting kocked around between his feet at every step. He’d stop long enought to try to climb up the walls, then would resume his blind panic. I knew I needed to get off him before I was thrown off, but I also knew that I would be instantly trampled. I picked my moment and jumped off him and the only thing that saved me was the fact that I was able to duck under his corner feeder. NO MORE MOUNTING SQUIRRLY COLTS BAREBACK FROM A BUCKET FOR ME! After LOTS more ground work, I hopped on him again. This time in the large indoor arena – but again, I chose to hop on him bareback ( from an actual mounting block this time ) and was wearing a slippery, crinkly-sounding, nylon snowmobile suit. Not one of my brightest ideas. All was well, until I asked him to take a step. Off we went again in a blind panic – bucking the entire lenght of the arena and back again. When I got off him, I had a big handful of his ripped out mane still in my hand. Apparently, I was hanging on pretty good. He’s finially broke to ride now. All I have to do is to stand on the mounting block and he comes running and positions himself so I can get on him.
Oh… that’s another good one. Never try to ride your gorgeous, freshly Show-Sheened (i.e. siliconed within an inch of his life) arabian gelding bareback while wearing your parachute pants. (Did I just date myself on that one? Yikes!) He was a saint, but once you start to slip, even just a little, there’s NOTHING that’s gonna stop you from going down!
Oh, that’s too funny! Replace the pants with jeans, and I did the exact same thing. My first horse (yes, I was an adult) was an Arab gelding. I was so proud of him, and always kept him groomed to a shine. I had just finished polishing him when I got the bright idea to toodle around on him bareback in the arena. He was standing stock still in front of the mounting block when I swung my leg over…and kept going, right over the other side. I’ve never had a horse find so much amusement in my stupidity as that one, and believe me, when he turned his head to look down at me as if to ask “why are you on the ground?”, he laughed at me.
I gave him plenty of opportunities to laugh at me at a new horse owner. He was an absolute gem, and the best instructor I could have had. (The fact that he hated my first husband just endeared him to me even more. LOL) He not only taught me, but gave me hundreds of memories and dozens of great stories.
My friend’s Fjord was laying in her paddock looking like a big yellow comfy couch, and I thought the smartest thing to do would be do swing a leg over and chill on her back as she sunned herself… I forgot that my friend had just bathed her and showsheened her entire back, so when my scrambling on to her convinced her that it was time to get up, no amount of grabbing on to mane was keeping me astride and I promptly slid down her butt to land in a heap behind her. Good thing she was used to being mauled by preteens! We used to triple bareback on her down roads, and when only doubling used to take her down to the communal cross country course and gallop over fences as well…
The stupidest horse-related thing I probably ever did was buying my first horse. I was 19, had never had a formal lesson but had ridden around on trail string horses every chance I got and read every book I could devour. Two geldings came into the rescue I volunteered at about the same time–a big TB/Belgian gelding and a Tennessee Walker. My friend, who was no smarter than I was and even less prepared, decided that she was adopting the big ‘un. I was jealous, so naturally, I signed up to adopt the Walker. I adopted him before I even RODE him, and I think I’d only groomed him a couple of times by then. Vet check? ahahaha.
As luck would have it, Beau was one helluva saint (and probably in his 20s, not 12 like I was told). It worked out for me, and in a way, also for him–as the owner of the rescue ended telling me he’d have kept him for himself if I hadn’t adopted him, and for MANY reasons I discovered over the years, I was sadly the better horse owner. I owned Beau until he died (of old age as far as we know) and like to think that despite my ignorance, I did alright by him.
Other dumb things: hopping on the back of a greenbroke mustang stallion; climbing into the pen of another, COMPLETELY UNTRAINED mustang stallion (not even halter broke) and trying to work with him a bit because as is no one was going to adopt him…oh man. I was lucky that stallion was the sweetest little thing on the face on the planet. I was trying to get him to pick up his feet and he casually flicked me off his hind and then turned to look at me. I wisely decided to just groom him from that point out. But yeah, let’s climb into this pen and coax a halter on this completely untrained horse! /facepalm I just did just to help him, though. He was such a cute little thing and the “rescue” wasn’t doing him any favors by not even being arsed to halter break him. Or, you know, geld him so that he stopped making cute little babies through the fence. Gaaaah.
Oh hey, I have a dumb one. I had totally forgotten this. It turned out well but was really dumb still.
I was about 16, fresh with my first driver’s license, driving home from the barn late at night after cleaning tack in the dark in the summer. Car broke down. Now, this road was a two-lane country road in N. Mississippi with a deep weedy ditch to either side where there were houses every few miles and a car would pass maybe every hour if that. No cell phones in that era. So I started to walk back to the barn, something between five and ten miles away, with little hope of anything other than a tedious walk and explaining to my mom why I was so late. Surrounded by fields of milo on either side.
That was when a strange horse came up to me. He was loose on the shoulder of the road, little white Arab. No halter, no nothin.
It was an eerie sensation like being in a dream… he was a beautiful little horse. Obviously I couldn’t just leave him on the road, so I pulled some long grass, made a rope, and put it around his neck and we walked on together. He was perfectly behaved.
Which is when I did the dumb thing… I hopped up on his back.
We rode back to the barn together, I put him in an empty stall, called my mom to come get me, and left a note on the blackboard explaining to the barn owner that there was a stray horse in a stall.
I didn’t find out the fun part until the next morning. Turned out my new friend was a stallion. An UNBROKEN stallion. He had recently been purchased by some redneck idiots who had him chained in their front yard like a dog – by what, I don’t know, since he had apparently gotten rid of his halter before I encountered him. They had called everyone around who owned horses hoping their stud had gone mare hunting and found him 10 miles away at our barn.
The story ends happily – the redneck idiots were more than happy to take advice and ended up leaving him at the barn for a month while they “built more suitable facilities.” They ended up selling him to a girl at our barn, he was gelded, and went on to a long and happy life as a children’s horse. He really was as pretty as I had thought he was by moonlight, and had a beautiful temperament as you can well imagine from how he acted with me.
Even so I would not advise hopping on strange horses in the dark by the side of the road. They might be unbroken stallions.
He was obviously so happy to find someone that knew how to communicate with him he was willing to try something new, like being ridden. I was 8 yrs old when I came home (single mom in duplex) with a stallion that had been MIA for a week. No body else could catch him, I just walked up to him and put the dog leash around his neck. Silly me, I thought “Finders keepers, losers weepers” was true. Hard lesson for me in a sad time of my life.
One Halloween, 3 friends and I decided to dress up as the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse and ride into town.
I was Death– so I rode in a big black billowing cape, carrying a mini scythe with an actual, sharp blade. Death does not wear a helmet– so I didn’t. I also couldn’t see very well, what with the hood and the mask and the eye-stinging makeup.
Did I mention our horses had been in town, like, once before?
We could have died soooo many times.
Dumb dumb dumb DUMB!
I love these stories. As a kid I did many of the same stupid things, including riding horses over train tresses because we didn’t want to get wet and getting stuck on a safety stand 35 ft over water with a train whizzing by inches from my back while I held my horse’s head. Stupidity of youth was trumped by trust and laziness.
This is kinda long, but worth it.
We live on a volcanic formed table type mountain. An ancient volcano has had massive lava flow in this area, and left a very hard crust. The river and water flow in this area form three connecting fairly flat top mountains. The terrain can be very rugged and the forest and undergrowth is often thick. The property we are on, was clear cut years ago, due to fear of fire, but there are a few areas that are fairly steep and volcanic rock jut through the soil cover.
Our drive is fairly steep, and runs about 340 feet from the road. At the top of the drive in the original trailer, fenced in. There is a turn to the right through a gate into the barn yard area, about 2 acres. The barn, is an open faced model that could fit 3 large RVs and an attached shop. Our house is on the far side of the barn yard, also fenced in. There is a large field in front of the barn yard, that goes down to the road. Behind the barn is an access area in front of one paddock. The main gate to the large back field opens on to a small paddock, then the large 15 arce field.
The horses run loose in the large field, but have access to the center paddock. There is a feeding stall, but the roof collapsed and we haven’t done the repairs. The horses are fenced out of that area. The only problem is that my old man doesn’t have a place to eat in peace and then let himself out. So we have fenced off the back yard, where he will have access to an overhang when it rains. This means he gets escorted in for evening feedings, and out after morning feedings so he can be a horse during the day.
Buck is a sweet heart, nearly as old as I am, total blind in one eye and limit vision in the other. He usually puts his good eye on you and follows. He knows where he is going and if the gates are open, will just go. So I got lazy and started to just open the gates and let him go.
Friday he decided grain wasn’t the most important thing in life. Instead of heading for the open yard gate he turned to walk along my car. My son intercepted him, but could get a hand on him. He just sat back and did the prettiest roll back. He shot across the back of the barn along the access, and out the barn yard gate. He crossed the drive and entered a little goat pasture that runs along the drive. I follow at a fast walk because he always come when I call him. Nope, he turns around, back out the goat gate and turns down the drive. Now, he has an extended canter that is just beautiful and his is using this to leave me standing in his dust. I continue down the drive, the boyfriend runs for a halter and the car. My boys are grabbing dogs left and right because now they want to go. Buck hits the road does a flying lead change and heads on down the road, neighing a challenge to everything. He gets to the property owner’s house, 1/8th of a mile down the road, mountain road, blind curves and idiots driving, skidds into their drive, turns around and races back. He turns up our drive (yeah, I can close the road gate), sees me and shifts over to the area beside the drive. This has down tree limbs, big rocks sticking several feet up and dense under growth. He jumps everything like a pro while my heart is leaping out of my skin because he is going to break a leg. He looks so happy and free. He takes the turn at the top of the drive at half speed, drops to a trot, crosses the barn yard into the backyard gate and his paddock.
I try to check him over and he has his neck all arched and prancing like a fool yearling. He was soooooo proud of himself. I have learned my lesson and will use a halter to move him from now on. Scared me half to death but I couldn’t help but enjoy his performance. He must of been stunning in his younger years.
I don’t want to break into the thread, as I’ve enjoyed reading alot of the “Stupid thing” stories.
In regards to some of Charms comments. At the time pics were taken I guess volunteers didn’t see the need to date them. However, they do depict that horses came in great shape upon intake and then a month or two later were thin. The free choice hay was few and far between. The draft in the one picture, he died shortly thereafter laying on the ground with the head of the rescue walking away from him as 2 volunteers were crying and trying to get him up. It appears it was choke. I’m all for rescues doing the basics on horses, and horse owners, we knwo the costs involved and for the basic things – why not. However, tubing horses, castrating horses who wake up during the process, spaying/neutering cats and dogs ona picnic table in a barn…hardly what a non-vet should be doing. Even floating teeth should be left to the professionals. The statements were all notarized and sent to proper authorities, for FB we took their names off just for their protection. Sadly because they spoke out the aunt of one of the former volunteers who was adopting a horse was told now she couldn’t as the horse who had been there 4 yrs was “dangerous” that horse is not most likely dead, just to spite those who felt the need to speak out. To many people are saying the same things, and to think all these folks got together to collaberate some rumors is just not true. They do a story in the paper tha tthey cannot afford to feed horses, so they euthanize them, but yet they keep taking them in. WHY? When a rescue doesn’t know their limits, that is a scary thing. As to the burial, maybe I can see the point of a mass grave but shoving them into it with a back hoe and not even buried properly, i.e. legs sticking out of the ground, not deep enough and a stench and flies like you would not believe, just wrong. Shooting horses when they come to you for grain….and in front of 14 yr old volunteers, wrong. Teaching them to think with their heads and not their hearts. Who could do that and be in their right mind and not have a god complex? Not many. I hope you start donating to a rescue who would do better with your money, and the horses would actually benefit. Oh, before the draft died shortly after eating that round bale – he and several others had no hay or grain for 2 days. Most volunteers are stating most of the time they got 1 flake per day, even those who were stalled. I don’t know many hroses that could come out good on that diet. Even the lady who donated her horse went back many months later only to find him thin and feet in terrible condition. You bring up great points, and I do understand the reasoning. There are many with high emotions on this particular subject since they were the ones to work with these horses, feed them, clean up after them, not the people running it. I work my butt off taking care of our rescues, I would never expect volunteers to clean and feed and sit on my butt and bark orders. That’s just me though. Anyhow, I truly hope something gets done from all the avenues past volunteers are approaching to shut them down. It’s been a long time coming.
The most thoughtless thing I ever did with my horse was back when I was 15. The neighbor girl and I would ride almost everyday, mostly trail riding, or riding along the country roads. One day we decided to ride into town. On the edge of the city the first thing we came to was the country club golf course. It looked so pristine, gently sloping hills and greens. It was a short cut (as the crow flies) to where we wanted to go in town – so we decided to ride across the course. Let me tell you, it was a fine place to gallop! Beautiful Summer day, sun shining brightly, and here were two 15 year old girls on horseback galloping across the back 9. It wasn’t long before we were noticed by some men on a golf cart, and not long after that, another cart with the greenskeepers came into sight with much hollering! Only then did it occur to us that we really weren’t suppose to be riding ON the golf course. We turned our horses around and made a mad dash out of there. At a full gallop, our horses dug up that turf like crazy. Dirt and sod flying behind us, we galloped until we were back on the country road and not far from home. This was in the days before cell phones, and had that been in the mix, we would have likely been caught and arrested for damaging property. We just were two teens without a thought of it being wrong, it just looked like a cool place to ride across. I still think of that day when I happen to drive by the country club. And I smile.
Everytime I see a golf course, I think how awesome it would be to gallop across it on a super fit Thoroughbred eventer.
Wow, you WERE lucky! I used to board at a stable in North Park, Pittsburgh and the trails skirted a golf course. Tempting, yes, but we were told the fines were $250 PLUS $50 A HOOFPRINT. We were extremely careful riding along the course….
But I am super tempted now to drive my Mini along the golf cart trails down here in Fort Worth… they look just made for us!
I’ve always wondered why communities will put in huge, perfectly manicured parks in the middle of the suburbs, and then make it off limits to everyone except a few people who have enough money to join the country club.
… oh wait. Just answered my own question. Damn the rich!
Oh man… when I was a teen, there was a nice network of trails behind the place where I boarded, and none of the property owners cared who rode on them. One of the trails went up to the country club driveway, where you could sit and wave at all the drunk golfers going home for the day. Another trail ended up by a green that had a drinking fountain: we would stop up the bottom of the fountain for our horses to drink, and of course we’d get drinks too.
We’d wave cheerily at the golfers, who couldn’t decide if were were cool (I was always most comfortable in boots & breeches, to some it might look ritzy) or just naughty.
*sigh* Those trails are now a subdivision $400,000+ houses. The trail that went to the country club is now a golf cart track. Too bad my parents didn’t buy that farm when they had the chance…..
I, too, have always wanted to gallop across a golf course!
When I was about 13, my horse had a filly and I used to lead her along beside my mare when we rode. Of course I rode bareback at all times. Well, one day I decided that I was tired of holding the lead rope and having little Pearl stop all the time. She would jerk my arm backwards then start walking again. I thought “Hey! I’ll just tie the lead rope around my waist! Then I won’t have to hold it. That will be way easier!” So I did. That worked great as we walked along in the road ditch. Yeah, she pulled a little, no biggee. Then we had to go around the end of the fence to get into the yard. Sugar walked right around the end like she had done hundreds of times. Pearl slammed on the brakes to check out the situation and I was removed from Sugar’s back neatly. Right off the rear end. She just kept walking, I didn’t. I hit the ground flat on my back with a 4 month old filly tied around my waist. Luckily, she was a nice quiet girl and just walked up and sniffed me. Sugar stopped and looked at me. I groaned and told myself “oh my god, how stupid can I be? I hope no one saw that!”
So there is my ultimate stupid moment. I have more, but that is one of the best!
Being someone who doesn’t have their own horse, generally the only time I ride is when I’m taking a lesson, so I’m rarely unsupervised (though I did have the opportunity this summer to do some training on an OTTB for a family friend, but even then I was still “supervised” in the sense that my mom sat under a tree and read – just so that there would be somebody there if I came off and hurt myself. Which did happen once, and luckily the barn owner came by a couple minutes later and was able to catch the horse, who was freaking out, and then “finish off” his training session for me with some lunging while I limped away with a bruised tail bone). I’m generally pretty responsible though, and actually tend to be even MORE careful when unsupervised or riding alone – I won’t do anything unsupervised unless it’s something I’ve done a million times before with that horse and I know that I can handle it.
But, there was one day that I was an idiot. And what did I do? Broke the cardinal rule: I got frustrated, and then I got angry. I was on a horse who had trouble with his leads. We’d been making some progress, but then his owner took her once-in-a-blue-moon ride on him and messed him up again (she had no concept of discipline or consistency, and didn’t see the point in lessons because she “knew how to ride”). So I kept asking and asking and asking, I had him on a 20m circle, then a 15m circle, then finally a 10m circle, with him bent as far as I could get him without making it impossible for him to get a canter, and still he was getting the wrong lead, or switching immediately to the one he liked if he did happen to get the right one. Unfortunately, my coach was working fairly intently with one of the other students at the time, and didn’t notice what I was doing. I must’ve been asking for a good 10 minutes, and finally stopped paying attention to everything, and ran him straight into one of the other horses, who had nowhere else to go because she was against a wall. He kicked, barely missed the rider’s leg, and took off like an idiot.
I got the lecture of a lifetime, let me tell you. I felt so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever apologized so much in such a short period of time, I was just about in tears.
Later in that lesson, my horse decided that he’d gotten away with that kick (because I just didn’t know how to react) and that he’d try it again. Two of us were cantering, he SPED UP to catch the other horse, and kicked.
He (with me riding) spent the next ten minutes being chased in a circle by my coach with a lunge whip, and I spent the next FOUR MONTHS dealing with his kicking problem for that one stupid mistake.
I do stupid things ALL the time that I would yell at anyone else for doing. For instance, my precious red mare has a wound on her fetlock from getting stepped on in the pasture and I have been cleaning and dressing it every day. Now my mare is not one to be trusted, ever, and yet, I’m hosing off her leg and her feet are dirty so I’m hosing off all her hooves and somehow end und walking UNDER HER to get to the other side before I even realize what a stupid thing I am doing….and I lived to tell the tale.
Yes, I’m blonde. Yes, I know better. Yes, I should be dead. And yet, I have lived another day to do yet another stupid thing. Which I will probably do tomorrow.
Many many answers in my 10 short years of horse obsession. Pick just one. Ok, so when I was 18, I had always wanted a horse, so I started volunteering at a local trail string. The owners were irresponsible to say the least, and had a bit of a drinking problem, not to mention that I, to this day, have never seen either of them on a horse. Well, being the invensible young dare devil I was, whatever they put me on, I rode. Didn’t matter. This meant that whenever they got a new horse…they called me to try it out. Now keep in mind, they don’t ride, and they got these horses from traders…so…yeah. One day they got in a HUGE (16+ hand…and I know what 16 hands is) gorgeous TWH gelding who had reportedly been a field trial horse and had a HUGE high step. So we had been drinking, which as an 18 yr old who never was a drinker, a few beers and I was 3 sheets, and they asked me to give this new horse a try. I saddled him up and off we went down the outside (yes outside) of the arena. Halfway back down the other side and this horse does the most unexpected hi-ho silver rear I have ever (not) ridden, and being that my balance was severely impaired…off I went backwards 10 feet down right onto my arse. Now here’s the dumb part. The Barn Owners…who were much older…30yrs and up, goade me into getting back on and trying again. I mean when you fall off, you can’t let the horse get away with it right? And I certainly wasn’t going to be outdone in front of the older more experienced owners! What would they think!!! So we do the exact same thing…2 more times!!! I mean, really?!? Did that actually happen. Was I that stupid?!? Yes ladies and gentlemen, I was. What scares me to this day is the thought of the many many many ways that could have ended in my death…
1) 1200 lb horse with TWH hip can’t hold his/my weight and flips over on top of me…in the hard dirt area around arena…death
2) One of the 3 falls from 20 feet in the air could have been on my head/neck instead of arse…death
Ok, maybe there are just 2 plausible ways, but since the scenrio happened 3 times in a row, I’m going to say there were at least 6 plausible possibilities for my death.
Though stuff like trail sprints and full moon races are still fun 10 yrs later.
I have not done TOO many stupid things, I always rode in proper riding shoes, only wore shorts to ride on the best horses.
My stupidest thing is probably never saying no to anything! “Hey, go gallop up that hill at full speed without a helmet on on the horse you barely know” and silly me, OK!
My first horse was also a very green little QH. I used to ho riding with my friend using a very broke lesson horse from the barn I boarded at. My girl was actually very great, for being green. She trusted me a lot, and was usually up for anything. Along this one little hill, I used to jump her up the ledge of dirt, and into the branch and stick covered ground above, and then wander around up there, while my friend waited alone on the actual path and looked on as I walked around like an idiot.
I also jumped on another slightly crazed horse with head shaking syndrome to the max, took her and two friends out, who were both green, and rode along. She tried to buck me off many times, but I stuck on, and managed to get me and my friends along the trails unscathed.
Ohh, and I took other friends out, both who had never rode, with me riding my silly green QH. Going up a hill we usually ran up, the horses got a little jiggy when they would not let them run. The two horses with the friends on them bolted off, I pulled my horse back to keep her from spazzing, and watched the two friends disappear over the hill… followed by a loud bump, as the one horse swerved and the friend came off into a tree.
Oh, we also enjoyed taking our horses across the 4 lane high way to get to the good trails. And went through the Tim Hortons drive through, riding down the same 4 lane high way…. and we galloped along that highway many times. I sure am lucky none of the horses ever swerved in front of one of the many semis driving down it! But it was all so much fun
I did plenty of dumb things as a kid. My friend and I used to race home after a trail ride and jump the fire gate at the end of the trail.. I rode an Arab mix and she rode a draft type mix (neither the best jumpers) and neither of us knew diddly squat about jumping. After the fire gate there was maybe 25 yards of dirt trail followed my another 25 yards of gravel then a busy road. Helmets and saddles were optional, and of course we rode in shorts. Thank god both of our horses were saints.
Other notable dumb things done in my youth – Chasing down rude bicyclists who came out of nowhere and spooked my horse. Forgetting to check the girth and having my saddle slip sideways in a hand gallop and eating arena dirt. Deciding to try out spurs (english) on my touchy arab without having a clue how to use them. Hello dirt again.
Recent dumb thing I did. Last winter I was leading my horse out of the barn. There was a horse in the cross ties by the exit. Rather than wait for the tied horse’s owner to return or even yell out “hey can I get by” I decided my mare and I could just duck under one of the ties. Bad idea. I know better. Anyway the cross tied got hung up in the horn of my saddle and my mare spooked. She reared slightly and leapt forward. I I had another moment of stupidity and thought I could reel her back in. Yeah right me versus a 1200 mare. Common sense finally kicked in and I let go. She trotted a few steps out the barn and calmly waited for me. She was fine but man did I have some nasty rope burns on both hands.
I am old….58-years. Always loved horses, but parents wouldn’t let me have one or help me find lessons in rural Idaho. When I was about 12 I routinely fed a couple of nice horses in a pasture near the road by my home. I knew nothing about these horses…never saw anyone ride them or do anything with them. One day I decided the mare needed to be ridden. I went inside the pasture, found some bailing twine and looped it around her nose with the long ends as reins. I found an old barrel and climbed on her bareback. I rode all over that pasture simply in Heaven. I pretended I was riding in the 4th of July parade and waved at all the flowers in the field and smiled as I was the queen of the parade. No fear and no brains. I rode her once or twice again and then her owners found out and moved her. I found out her name was Dixie and she was considered by her owners to be unpredictable and wild. She never did anything but plod along in the pasture when I rode her. I was lucky. I could have been bucked off, thrown into the barbed wire fence, and/or trampled to death. I pretended she was mine and loved her for that whole summer. Can you imagine someone doing that with YOUR horse? What a nightmare. (pun) I shudder when I think of how stupid that really was, but I also still fondly think of that lovely mare. Why she took care of me and let me ride her I will never know.
I think that “ride like an Indian” is in horsey girl DNA. Bridleless, twine “bridle,” rope looped over horse’s nose, been there, done that and of course was riding in cutoffs, bikini top and no shoes. By the grace of God never got hurt, and my horse was the most reliably unreliable equine ever created.
I also used to have the attitude “if I can catch it and halter it, most likely it’s ridable.” That is not the truth…
I have also done the “river deep and wide” stupid stunt. I’d been dropped off at the fairgrounds where my horse was being boarded in preparation for the county fair and 4-H horse show, a big deal to me. I was also prepping for a Miss whatever contest and borrowing a properly trained horse that I had to ride on her premises, about a mile and a half away from the fairgrounds, but across a river. This was during the rainy season so the river was quite vigorous. Paint Mare from Hell and I had crossed that river dozens of times without incident. It was raining, and I needed to go practice on the proper show horse. So I saddled up and headed to the river. PHfH and I quickly found ourselves swimming… and instead of turning around, we crossed the river. I practiced on the show horse, re-tacked PMfH, and off to the river we went AGAIN. This time we entered the water downstream from where we usually crossed so that when the current carried us, we’d end up where we needed to be.
Oh, and of course I neglected to tell anyone what I was up to and where I was going—AND I was old enough to know better. I was 16 years of age.
Oh lordy…….the things ive done.
My childhood was spent unsupervised on horses. bareback races doubling along forestry tracks. Jumping our ponys over the highest most dangerous obstacle we could find. My freind sound just like yours mugly. except their was 3 of us and we all road all pushed each other and were constantly trying to out do each other. one day we had two ponies between the three of us and went on an all day beach ride, we came across a nudest beach where we galloped right past the sunbathers flickign sand all over them they got up and chased us which we thought was hilarious. we all three had countless falls scrapes, tumbles and races and full gallop. it was always a competition to see who could ride thier horse down the steepest slipperiest hill to.
the dumbest would have to be when my mum used to picj me up from school in our old embarassing horse truck. i didn want to be seen in it so i climbed in the back w my horse, except just as i was climbing past him a car backfired. long story short i got trampled fracturing my skull and mum had to climb in drag me out unconcious and covered in blood in front of the school…nothing has ever embarrased me again, i learnt my lesson trying to be cool just doesnt pay.
I was an adult when I got my first horse, so I didn’t do dumb Kid things, but I know I would have because all my life I wanted a horse, wanted to ride a horse, wanted to look at horses, read about them…if I had been given a rank mustang off the range, I believed I could ride him, and I would have tried.
I was a married adult and my (now ex) husband bought me a green filly. She had about 60 days riding, the people who started her must have known something about the Dorrance brothers or Ray Hunt, because she was a very very nice, gentle, non spooky, green horse. I think my ex might have thought he would break me of the “horse thing” (or kill me) by buying her, but I was more determined than him, and found someone to give me lessons. A couple of years later I decided to take her to a horse show, gave her a good bath and shined her up with show sheen. I’m sure everyone knows what happened, after a couple of times around the ring the saddle and I slid off one side.
Well, I hope I have nothing to add to this later, because I plan on going out on a trail ride later on my big, green colt.
I will be wearing a helmet, I won’t be drinking any wine until I’m home, and then I plan on having a box next to the jacuzzi. I’m getting too old for this, this is absolutely my last green horse, I swear.
OK, speaking of being a laaaaazy teenager: I used to go out to the pasture to catch my horse with a wad of baling twine (the brown jute kind) because a halter & leadrope were soooo heavy. (Of course, at that point in my life, I was usually operating with a hemoglobin of 6-8, so everything was twice as hard for me. But I was also naturally lazy.)
So I’d fashion a little halter and/or reins, use the fence to hop up on my mare’s back, and ride bareback for the 100 yards back to the barn. If no one was watching, I’d ride on down the barn aisle to the tie-up place by the tack room.
I’m now eternally grateful that my mare was such a good sport.
The stupidest thing ever was letting her go when I was in college. Fortunately she had a very good old age. But she was truly exceptional.
Is your hemoglobin still low? Found out last fall that my hemoglobin was low(in the 6-8 range) and ended up on daily oral iron which made me feel better but tore my stomach up so badly I slept in a recliner most nights because of the reflux. Told my doctor I couldn’t take the stuff anymore and was able to get iron once intravenously and felt GREAT after for about six to eight weeks. Now I feel like death on a cracker again but want a better solution than oral iron. How did you solve your low hemoglobin? Just picking hooves wears me out so much I have to sit down and rest.
Well, I have Crohn’s, and got rid of my constantly-bleeding colon 15 years ago. Best thing EVER.
Funny thing… I was so run down before my surgery, all I wanted for months afterward was RED MEAT, ALL THE TIME. Fortunately it was grilling season.
Now my blood count is normal – I just have to go in for a Vitamin B-12 shot every 4 weeks. Get your B-12 checked – low B-12 has the same symptoms as anemia, and in fact contributes to it.
There are different iron supplements, too. If ferrous sulfate bothers you, try ferrous fumarate (I think). But anemia is horrible, and everyone thinks you’re just being a wuss.
Thanks for the information! No one has ever mentioned B-12 or for that matter anemia. The hematologist suspected a bleeding colon but the test came back clean. I only found out about the low hemoglobin because I had a knot in my leg just below my knee with a red streak going down to my ankle and it hurt a lot so went to the emergency room. The doctor at the ER told me I had a superficial blood clot, wrote a prescription and sent me on my way. Luckily I followed up with my regular doctor who ran all kinds of blood tests and I ended up at the hematologist’s office. He wanted to admit me to the hospital and give me a transfusion!
Very off topic, but wanted to share this.
)
For anyone in Ontario (or other areas of Canada, just will need to ship further) thinking of buying an off track thoroughbred or quarter horse please check out Second Start Thoroughbreds. They are a placement agency that does screen potential buyers and arranges for them to meet the horses. You will be buying directly from the owners/trainers usually at the track. There are no foster homes at this time. Now that racing season is almost over, these horses need to find homes quickly.
Descriptions are provided by the owners/trainers and are usually quite honest. In the past 2 weeks, 23 horses have been moved off the track!! Still more are available and more will no doubt be available over the next little while. Check them out on Facebook or http://www.secondstartthoroughbreds.org/. (If you look at the graduate page #4 on the website, Campfire Girl is the one that I bought.
Well… Several things come to mind…. The top dumbest:
.3 – bareback barrell racing. Oh yeah. It was going well until we got to the rundown at the end of the pattern. My trusty gelding planted all four and slid to a stop just like he’d been taught. I, of course, flew over his head and inbetween the arena rails. 6 inches higher or lower and I wouldn’t be typing this.
.2 – Staking my gelding out on the lawn. Yeah. Nylon rope. I shoulda probablly taught him to stake out first before I did it. I had to nurse the rope burn for about 2 months.
.1 – As a 10 Year old, I begged my sister’s dad to buy me a pony. So he did. Did I mention that we lived IN TOWN? Yeah. I rode that poor auction pony all over on the asphalt. Galloped him on it, and had totally no idea what I was doing. I let him run away with me, didn’t feed him like I should have, I didn’t even know I was supposed to get his feet done. If it weren’t for a friendly neighbor lady who knew about horses, I probably would have killed that poor creature. After about a year, the pony reached the point where I couldn’t ride him anymore, so we took him back to the enumclaw auction where he came from. He sold for about $110, which was a lot of money in the 70′s so I’m pretty sure he didn’t go to the kill buyer. I hope his next family treated him better. I still feel bad about that pony. I’m sure I shin splinted him and all kinds of stuff that I never understood at the time. A perfect example of bad parenting and lack of supervision combining to ruin a perfectly good pony. I look at pictures of him now, knowing what I know now as an experieced horse person I know two things: 1) He wasn’t much to look at – he had a big head and was clearly some sort of Quarter Pony/Welsh/mustang cross. 2) He was a saint. I was lucky he let me ride him as long as he did. He let me ride all over the neighborhood bareback for months without even offering to buck me off. It took almost a year of really bad handling for that poor creature to reach the point where I was too scared to ride him and even that wasn’t his fault. When all you do is gallop around, you can’t get upset when your horse thinks that’s his job. Anyhow, I would love to reach back in time to bitch-slap both the kid and the parent for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty.
I like to think that I’ve never done anything bluntly stupid with horses before. However, when I was in middle school (with only about 2 years of riding experience) I’d ride by myself all the time – and jump – on a temperamental 20-something TB cross named Danny, who I loved very much, even though he frequently took advantage of my naivete. Although half the time I didn’t really know what I was doing, I did know how to go forward (walk=kick with spurs, trot=kick with spurs harder, etc.), turn (pull rein and lean in), and stop (pull back as hard as you can and if all else fails make a circle). And as a 13 year-old girl, I didn’t have any qualms about racing around the uneven, branch-strewn pasture out back like it was the Kentucky Derby (whether I asked for a gallop, Danny just felt like galloping, or we were being chased by the great dane next door), and then setting up my own jumps in the tiny grass arena and rocketing over them like it was the Grand National. At one point I even took it upon myself to teach Danny to do a flying change. Needless to say he didn’t learn it, and we were quite frustrated with each other by the end of that training session.
Luckily neither horse nor I ever got hurt, although the horse probably had the revelation he could get away with anything and still eat treats in the end. But I do miss those after school evenings when it was just me and Danny. I like to think I was the last reckless preteen that ever rode him
The dumbest thing I ever did was try to go “swamp stomping” in a swamp with still water…there was what I *thought* was a sand bar leading out to a little island in the middle. I thought about how cool it would be to go and ride around on the little island. Many people in the Midwest might know that still water is often not safe water to ride a horse in…I didn’t. I started to wade my horse out and the silt mud that wasn’t sand made his whole front end drop out from under me submerging the saddle and all…he started to pitch to get back onto solid ground and threw me in the process, with me winding up under him in the water. I took in some water to my lungs and got stepped on in the process. No more swamp stomping for us…from now on, only clear running water with a visible rock bottom. Had that dropoff been any steeper and he had lost his fotting with his rear legs, we could have both drowned and no one would have ever found us. Loose horses have been known to die in another swamp not far from there, and have only been found by an aerial view weeks after the fact.
Fortunately, my dumbness was cured pretty much in one lesson. I got my first horse, a 2YO Arabian gelding in Sept 1980. I was 18. I never had lessons but I read every book I could get my hands on. We had all winter to bond and do ground work, and we did. But on day in March I decided to ride him, bareback. With a halter and two leads as reins. In the pasture. With his buddies still turned out. Yeah…. you see where THIS is heading…..
The first part was OK. We walked around and he was fine. Then his pals decided to run up the hill, and he went with them. I managed to stick on. We stopped at the top ad the little voice in the back of my head said “Maybe you should get off…” but… I didn’t. The turned around and RAN back DOWN the hill. Lead ropes attached to a halter do NOT stop a green Arabian running with his pals. He slowed (I believe…don’t remember!) at the bottom of the hill. I remember seeing his ears about where my knees were, then his hooves above my head, then… nothing. I don’t know how long or even if I was out, but I remember having the wind knocked outta me. And my back hurt… He stopped about fifteen feet away. I caught him and turned him loose and walked home (about a mile or so…)
Learned MY lessons: 1) Book learning does NOT teach you how to ride- that takes actual PRACTICE. I started lessons later that summer. 2) Green Arabians are NOT meant to be ridden with a halter and lead. Especially bareback. In an open field. With other loose horses. Alone. 3) Injuries as a teenager can and will haunt you the rest of your life. 31 years later I still hurt. 4) Green horses + green teenagers DO = black and blue and aches all over….forever.
That said: I DID have a helmet on. And have ALWAYS wore one, save for either horse shows or the occasional time I literally forgot to put it on. I wore a ballcap and knew I had SOMETHING on my head! I even had a oversized stretchy skicap that fit over my helmet I wore in the winter.
I logged on yest and am still trying to figure out the most interesting. Too many to choose from. Plenty of stories from being an unsupervised kid. We raced 5 abreast, swam the horses in the pond, climbed on board the untrained in the pasture and got the herd galloping, no bridle or saddle. Learning gymnastics saved my sorry ass even to this day. Tuck and roll from a race gallop ended up with pasture rash only.
My most recent stupid thing was riding an unknown horse at the place I was boarding my aged mare, had only been there a couple of months. Got on a hot QH that had been cowboyed big time. We survived and he certainly had training on him, but I hadn’t ridden like that, in steep terrain, in ages. Coming on to a very steep decline, going home, my vertigo came into play. He was head tossing and swishing his big butt hind end as I’m looking down at a dead drop, nothing to stop you for 50+ feet, loose dirt. My arms were screaming as he had been jigging the whole 2 hrs. The BO was poking along on a dead head. I had enough sense to remember my mount didn’t want to fall either so I took a big breath, centered myself and we got through it. I think I had to close my eyes for a few seconds. Did I mention he tried to run me into a low overhang of a barn before we ever left?
I did have a moment where I asked myself what the hell was I doing! I knew better. But when I got off and was safe on the ground, I was on such a horsey high. We made it home but I declined riding him again.
Okay, while living in Texas … I rode my horse to their house for a crawfish boil. After consuming a huge amount of beer — yup, totally tanked. I mounted up and rode my mare home. Thankfully, she knew where we lived and she dragged my sotted a*s home.
However, it appears as if in my bliss, I forgot to tighten the cinch and found my saddle pad in the middle of the neighborhood street the next morning.
I had a very green-broke Arab mare when I was a kid. The boarding barn was a QH-type of 4-H barn and they didn’t think much of my hot horse. One day they got a pony and pony cart from the local auction, and I was desperate to teach my mare to drive, using their cart. They said “no way!” and told me my horse was too silly.
So I respected that decision and employed the help of a trainer… No. No, I didn’t.
I bided my time until one day, when everyone was gone and I was there alone, I pulled out that cart. I didn’t have a harness to use (theirs was out for repair), so I buckled a longeing surcingle around my mare’s girth, and used BALING TWINE to tie the shafts to the rings. I doubled a longe line as reins, and off we went.
My mare was a SAINT to not have killed me. I had never driven before and neither had she. She’d never even seen a cart! And I had no idea about breeching or traces. How did we make it through that mess?
Happily, I ended up with my own pony cart and a real harness, and enjoyed the occasional drive (mixed in with plenty of riding) with my mare for decades to come.
Crazy Arab. LOL
Well, you had part of the right idea going…I’ve seen trainers use baling twine to start a horse in a cart, but that is usually used as a quick breakaway mechanism just for the initial putting-to and learning about the cart, sometimes after training shafts have alreadybeen used…never with a driver aboard! See, those Arabs aren’t so crazy after all!
I think this was my idea for a topic, back when Mugly took over for Fugly.
My stupidest horse move was with a carriage horse. I had been driving carriages for 10 yrs and owned my own riding horse for 7. My carriage horse and I were at a holiday festival and the horse trailer and the carriage trailer were a mile away. Yrs before we would ride the horses I’m full harness to the carriages, hook up and away we go! This time I hopped on my horse, and he bucked like a wild man! I stayed on for several bucks, but was afraid he would take off into the neighboring field. So I bailed. It was all good, til he stepped on my foot, knocked me over, ran me over stepping on my back and wrist. I jumped up and caught him. Walked the mile uphill, hooked up, and drove for hours. Afterwards I loaded carriages, and helped change a flat. Next day found out I had two broke toes and a fractured wrist. Stupid stupid stupid. Haven’t been on a draft since.
OoohKaaaay….I was riding a little tri-color mare named Cindy. I rode her all the time because the girl that owned her (at my friends’ barn) rarely rode her. Anyway, I was riding in North Park (County park in PA) by myself and decided that I did not want to ride all the way around the water-way and I wanted to get back to the barn before dark. Needed a shortcut. So I got off and led the mare across the top of the dam. It was a spilway-type of dam; earth with big flat rocks across the top (for the fishermen to stand on). The water cascading gently over the edge was about 9-10 inches deep. She walked beside the rocks and I ‘hopped’ the rocks as we walked along. The water was about 10 feet deep on one side and about 6 feet deep on the other. Overall clearance width for her was less than two feet. I realized my foolhardiness about a third of the way across. And I could not turn her around if I wanted to. I had to continue forward. Did I mention that I cannot swim? And that I am scared of water? We made it safely to the other side and the fellow on the bank who was fishing and watching the whole thing commented that he was frightened half to death for us. I told him not to worry because I would NEVER, EVER do that again!
I do believe you have one the “dumbest thing I ever did on a horse contest.” that just scared the bejeezus out of me.
YOU RODE ACROSS THE SPILLWAY? Were you freakin’ INSANE??? I used to ride North Park all the time and even on foot that place gives me the heebie jeebies….the dam was bad enough and THAT had a trail on it…. *shudders*
I’m telling you, she’s the winner…
I vote for the spillway walker as the winner! *shudder*
This is one of the quirkiest and funniest stories I have ever heard. The fact that you got back on just kills me, too funny. Well, Im glad you got it out of your system then and have learned from your adventures
I am forever grateful that growing up my trainer was a very strict, intimidating woman. She had strict rules about safety, and even though the barn was full of young girls, we would have rather died than get in trouble with her. Now, in my mid-twenties, I’m starting to realize what an impact she made on me in terms of safety and awareness. Bless you, tough bitchy trainers, bless you.
That being said, there’s always room for stupidity, especially when your trainer isn’t around. I was once talked into allowing my horse to be doubled-up in a slant load, meaning that he and another pony would be tied together in the same stall in the trailer. My poor guy bravely did exactly as he was asked, but the other pony immediately started to kick and bite. My guy tried to get out of the way, his lead rope snapped, and he toppled over backwards down the ramp of the trailer. He didn’t really go over, but he did sit down and sort of roll. I expected him to take off immediately, or have crushed his hip or SOMETHING, but thank God he just stood up, walked over to me and shook himself off. He was fine, though a little sore the next day or so. He even loaded right back up (though we hooked up an additional trailer – straight load this time). I’ll never forgive myself for it, but I’ll also never make a stupid decision like that again.
I’m in my 30s now and sadly haven’t been around horses in way too long (Gotta get a job, then I can get the money and get the lessons
. Three things come to mind (though I’m sure there have been more).
The most embarrassing for me was I got most of my experience as a “volunteer”/assistant at a pair of trail/summer camp barns. This was fine at the time because I couldn’t afford lessons (or even regular trail rides) I was mad about horses and loved everything from riding to grooming and chatting constantly with the farrier. When I hit 15 they started letting the pair of us who’d been there for almost two years lead trail rides of small people together. Because I was a selfish a** I led two people on my favorite trail where I proceeded to canter (but they said it was okay) and almost ran right into another group of trail riders. My horse spooked (I stayed on) and I discovered no one but the other group had seen it because I’d run off out of sight of my poor paying trail riders. I feel so bad about this to this day.
The one that could have ended up real bad but didn’t was later, after I’d left the barn because of barn politics (though I seriously deserved to have been kicked out after that first stunt I ended up leaving the second trail barn for the same reason as I’d left the first, I was being bullied, sadly this time it was one of the “leads” not a fellow “volunteer”.) A friend of mine from high school invited me out to her grandparents’ plantation. No kidding, it was the real deal. They were restoring it and they did Civil War re-enactments with their horses as a hobby. They were such awesome people. Anyway while wandering around my friend accidentally left the barn door open, and we’re not talking a regular barn, no. It was one of those real old ones with the small, raised aisle down the center and all the stalls were ground level and dirt floored (they kept their horses in the pasture during the summer unless they were injured so the stalls were clean but without bedding.) We come back around to pet the horses some more and discover one of them is missing–She’d walked right into the barn down an aisle about three feet across (she was a Clydesdale/QH cross). I make sure the aisle was clear then back her straight down and back into the pasture. I thought nothing of it because what else were you going to do? She was a sweet (massive) thing who was trained to pull fake cannons and let people fire fake muskets off her back. My friend was shaking when it was over and said “I cannot believe you just shushed the biggest horse on the farm back out like that.” She was literally shaking. That’s when I realized it could have gone so wrong for both of us (me and the horse).
The last thing is, well it was probably stupid, but I still think of it as a grand adventure. Our local zoo does trick or treating at the zoo events. One of the things they did was have a local horse person come in and chase a boat load of visitors on a train pretending to be the Headless Horseman. It was pretty simple and they gave you about a week to get the horse used to the tiny train. You stand behind a natural hedge, the train blows its whistle to tell you it’s coming then you trot or slow canter along side the train (flat well groomed land) then turn off before a sidewalk and head up a small hill to let the passengers “escape”. In the daylight it’s an easy ride with plenty of room. I volunteered two years in a row with two different barns. I made sure the path was clear, the other riders got food and cocoa to keep warm and I got to be the headless horseman. It was tons of fun (even the horses seemed to love it) but what you don’t think about is that you’re wearing a costume that consists of about six feet of cape and a chicken wire and foam cage strapped to your shoulders to make you look headless. Keeping your seat and barely being able to see because it’s poorly lit isn’t enough you have to keep the costume balanced too because it can pull you out of the saddle when you’re moving like crazy. And because it’s strapped to you there is no costume-bail option. That’s probably the wildest forty feet I’ve ever ridden. I am still crazy proud of myself that I never fell off in my stint as the Headless Horseman, because there sure were a few close calls! I tell you you NEVER forget that kind of ride…especially when it includes a horse smelling and hearing a lion for the first time.
I was a horseless, horse crazy girl of about 12 or 13. There was one horse in the neighborhood, a paint stallion that was kept in a 1 acre lot, fed grain, and otherwise ignored. All the neighborhood kids would feed him treats over the fence, which made him nippy. I had ridden once or twice at camp, but had no real skills. However, I decided it was a good idea to slide under the fence, make a war bridle out of honeysuckle vines (!) and try to jump on the stallion bareback. It is probably a very good thing that I never made it up on him….
Ironically, I am a teen. I bought my first horse as a weanling, and I was 13. Sometimes things do work out.. not as good as the would with experience of course… but reading helps everything. I’ve taught myself to knit, sew, save money,and a lot of neat little horse training tricks through reading. No one in my family were horse people. I really did read EVERY book I got my hand on. I still have them, over 5 giant moving boxes of horse books, fiction and non-fiction because bits of information are in both, plus multiple horse magazine subscriptions. These got me through the first 2 year of owning a horse. Of course I had lots of lessons in between,and sense then and ridden OTTBs and even worked with a green Shagya arabian when I was 14 years old. Self taught practically and I’ve came pretty far now, having horsey adults ask me for advice. Personally I love your story. We are all still making a mistake, and I’m an idiot, this is literally something I would do and then think about later…I just don’t like the over generalization that teens and green don’t go well together. I also don’t like the generalization that you need a bit. All my horses are started in halters and leads as not too damage their mouth during training and they turn out just fine and go bridless off leg when training is done. Control the nose and feet, you control the horse. Halter or bit… does not matter. However very cute story, made me laugh =]
You are a rare young rider. “Teens and green” is not a generaliztion I would make, it’s “green and green.” There are too many horses that are ruined, injured or killed by new riders. There are too many new horse people who are made fearful, injured or killed by tackling green horses before they are trained through knowledge and ability to train a young horse and shape them into what thy should be.
We need new horse people in the world, it’s important to keep them safe and happy on their horses.
You sound exactly like me. I got my first horse at 13 (now am 17) and had never had official lessons prior. The gelding was an abuse case combined with dishonest sellers. He taught me patience and the value of ground work. I am currently finishing a arab/appy mare who I broke myself. Books help and horses teach those who are willing to listen.
OK that’s hilarious, Mugs.
I was not fortunate enough to have a horse when I was very young- I didn’t get one until I was 19, and bought her myself. I never really did anything incredibly stupid or dangerous- by the time I bought my horse, I’d been working at the barn and taking lessons (in exchange for that work!) long enough to have picked up the basics. And I had a couple of teriffic friends/mentors who helped me avoid the usual newbie mistakes with tack, etc. The barn required helmet use. My horse was pretty sensible and forgiving.
I was also old enough to realize that I am mortal and thus not inclined to take big risks!
About the dumbest thing I did was climb up on my horse while she was loose at pasture- no tack- and then fall off when she got excited and took off. That pretty much ended my “horse whisperer” ambitions. I’ll ride with bridle and saddle, thank you!
I have a few stupid moments I am not proud of. One incident was back when I was about 13 years old or so. I was out in the pasture where our 2 large ponies stayed playing around when I got a realy dumb idea of experiementing with tails and thier tie-ability. The two ponies were standing next to one another and took thier tails and tied them together, and when I pulled they automaticaly slipped apart. I thought how intresting (why? I dont know). SO I thought lets try it again and feeling confident they would slipp apart again I tied them together. Well the largest of the two ponies decided he he needed to turn and face me……..well the tied tails did not slip apart this time and got tighter. So we have two ponies pulling two different directions attached by thier tials. My father saw this incident and ran down to catch one of the poines and I got the other before things escalated beyond control. My dad got the tails unattatched and wore me out royaly and I deserved it. Lukcily the two ponies were calm natured and even tempered and did not panic and cause serious harm to one another.
Another incident was when I was a young and horse crazy but not horse owning yet. My neighbor had a large Shetland pony stud named Tex. He was a stout little bugger and I being horse less was always watning to ride him. Well I got an oportunity to play and pet him when the owner asked if I wanted to ride him. Of course i thought this was grand but did not know that Tex was not ridden on a regular basis and could be ornery. The neighbor held him while I rode him and and things went just fine. The neighbor said I could ride him when ever I wanted. Wooooo Hoooo for me, right? I wasnt realy allowed to ride the pony via my father’s instructions. Well to heck with that the owner said I could and that was enough for me. One day when my father was running late from work I took it upon myself to sneak out and ride Tex. (back then helmets werent worm much at all and werent considered important) I didnt have a lead rope and Tex only had a halter but that is what the owner lead me around by and so I thought “dont’ need a lead I will just reach foward and grab the crown peice of the halter and I will be fine” right???. Yeah, genius here grabbed the crown peice of the halter and got Tex trotting and though my feet were bearily off the ground by a few inches it was enough to catch me off guard. Mister Tex began bucking like a wild man and I began listing to the left. Well Tex bucked to the right and darted to the right at the same time and off I went landding on my knees and one hand. I nailed a rock on my right knee causing a nasty bruise and roughed up hands. I thought it was funny in the beginning untill the realization of the rock nailing my knee came into play. That one hurt. I limped around for a couple of days and though dad asked me what happened Iied like a big dirty rug and told him I had fallen while playing with my goat. I had taken a few more rides on Tex after that but with permission form my mother and the owner was around to assist me. Who knew something that small and cute could be a devil in a small package.
I was bored one day and began to make, make shift stalls in the Tobacco barn of a large paddock lot where we kept and let the Ponies run into to get out of the weather durning the winter months. Well dumb dumb hear forgot to close the opposite end doors while doing this “construction”. and the two ponies escaped running down the paved but thank goodness country road onto the nieghboring cattle farm running down the gravel lane heading to thier back two forty. Luckily thier large gate by the barn leading to the back 240 was closed (they had just turned out thier beef stock 3 days before hand on this large acerage) and were caught up by the cattle barn. Lucky for me. I got the lead pony and lead her back to the paddock lot tobacco barn while the gelding followed along. I said not a word to any one about the incident and no one ever found out…..not even the neighbors. Stupid is as stupid does.
When I was 12 I decided that our wonderful new little (14.1 hh) Arab stallion was going to be trained by yours truly. He was just past his third birthday and all we had “in the neighborhood” for trainers were either cowboys or cowboy wannabees. I read this book…I had been riding since I was 3…I had already trained a really obnoxious half TW-half Arab mare who had pulled every nasty trick in the book (in those days, I still “bounced” when dumped)…and since we didn’t have a small enough “real” bridle I made what you might call a “war bridle” out of a very long piece of cotton fabric.
I had been secretly riding my guy bareback with a war bridle for about a couple of months, after school when mom was still at work, when she announced that her “new boyfriend” was a trainer and my great little Crabbet cutie was going off to horse school. BUSTED!!! Had to confess. OMG. GROUNDED for LIFE, at least at first.
And I LOVED it when the trainer sent him home after a week after having repeatedly backed out from under him at high speed!
Well, with MY “just a stupid kid” training we went on to win in almost every division at the Arabian shows in the sixties and seventies, we finally retired him in the early 80′s in his 20′s. One of the first Arabian jumpers who successfully competed against TBs (the breed of choice in those days for over fences work), reining against QH in open shows, trail horse against (mostly) QH in open shows, and even dressage where we faced monumental prejudice against Arabians as “completely inappropriate for dressage” (nevertheless gaining fairly high scoring at first and second level). We even rode to hounds, at least before someone “noticed” that he wasn’t a gelding, and I wasn’t a grownup…. I just wish this wonderful horse could have come along in my life in this day and age of Arabian Sporthorse competitions, what a fierce competition team we would be!
I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my horse life. (And in the unrelated to horses portion too)
I went racing with a friend at a stable we both rode at every week. Charging through the woods, no idea what the footing was like, I on a little black Arab, and she was on a leopard Appy mare. I pulled ahead as we went into a clearing and feeling victorious, reined in and was crowing about winning… as my friend, who hadn’t slowed, shot by me at Mach 5. My horse, offended by the idea of the mare passing him, launched himself straight into a run, and the sudden jerk forward threw me face first into his neck as he bunched the muscles to charge. I broke a tooth (again, that I’d broken years ago in a teeter-totter incident at a school event), and was in serious trouble when I got home.
I tied a gelding to a gate when I first started riding.. laziness and stupidity combined in that case, and of course… he pulled back that one time and yanked the gate free, almost killed me with it. Did I get out of the way? No. I went straight to him and pulled the quick release as he slammed me with the gate. That was the only thing I did in that incident that I am proud of. The rest is pretty shameful. It was dumb and I should have known better, but I was guilty of “He ties fine and it’s just for a second while I grab something in the tack room”.
Around that same time, I was riding a Tennessee Walker for a friend who owned a number of horses but didn’t ride. This horse was a totally relaxed, sweet, old guy, about 22 years old. I decided one day to show him off to my friends in the nearby subdivision, but the barn was locked and all I had was my dog leashes. So I snapped them onto his halter, hopped up using the fence, and off we went down the paved streets into the subdivision, with my horse wearing nothing but a halter and two dog leashes and one stupid teenager. Nothing happened, but I look back now and am amazed that I was so lucky so often.
There are plenty of others but that’s enough self-flagellation for today.
Enjoyed reading the other stories and knowing I’m definitely not the only one who made a lot of mistakes. I still find myself having the occasional “I should just duck under his belly” ideas and have to remind myself that I’m no longer young and bulletproof.
Green + green = black and blue for sure! My grandma’s neighbor owns a beautiful 18 hand black Percheron gelding. Trouble is he’s only four and only been ridden by a very small handful of people in his life with basic training. I knew the moment I met him I wanted to ride him. He’s very respectful on the ground and very even tempered.
I decided the day to ride him was a windy and chilly day after my cousin’s wedding shower. His owner got him all tacked up and ready to go. She needed to give me a boost from the mounting block so I could actually get on his back. 18 hands is a lot taller than you think it is, lol. So off we went into his little paddock. Things started out alright, he was a bit nervous but seemed like he would settle. He stopped at the edge of the fence and gave a gigantic buck. I managed to stay on, that’s the only part I’m proud of. From then the saddle slipped, I didn’t think to check the cinch since his owner had tacked him up and she’s a pretty sensible horsewoman. Shoulda done it. So, the saddle slipped and he spooked, taking off with me at a dead run. He ran towards the little stand of short trees in his paddock and I leaned back to not get caught in the face, my pulling back on the reins meant nothing, I was not stopping this 2,000 pounds of scared horse. I was off balance already from the crooked saddle and he decided a sharp right turn was where it’s at. He kept running and I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. I remember gasping for air and moaning like an idiot before my gran, sister-in-law, and Samurai’s owner rushed over. He was galloping around the paddock in terror yet and headed straight back to me. Luckily I was thrown by the edge of the fence and rolled under before he came over and his owner calmed him down.
Good thing I was wearing my helmet. I landed on my side, hip first, and the force rolled up my spine so my head smacked against the ground. I walked away from the incident with some bruises and two broken ribs. Not so bad when you think about it. I learned a few good lessons. Check the girth and save greenies for later.
Just another silly facepalm one. I was at my old riding barn, left due to an insane manager, and I was grooming Huilty before a lesson and was just putting him in the cross ties. I clipped the one side and had to let go to reach the other tie, wide aisles, and by the time I looked over he’d rushed into the open stall right in front of him. He didn’t pull on the tie once he was in, just looked at me funny. I hadn’t even noticed the stall was open. I got my butt chewed off by my trainer and learned to be a liiiiittle more observant.
Still no horse of my own so I ride whatever comes my way, sometimes for the better and sometimes making an a** of myself. It’s a learning process.
Hands down the stupidest thing I’ve ever done was ride a horse across a wooden rail road trestle bridge….complete with rotting and missing planks. Oh, yeah, it was also still being actively used and a freight train could have come by at any moment. I did this not once but twice!!! We could have all been killed.
Dumbest thing I can recall? The day after I took a hit from a horse head in the face and got a fractured nose and concussion, I still rode in several classes in a show the next day because I was convinced I had to prove myself as tough enough. I ended up nearly falling off on my final circle after a jump class because I got tunnel vision. That was the only time my boyfriend really laid into me, appropriately, regarding horse stuff, bless his heart.
OT, but I keep getting emails full of drama from Celeita Kramer and Crossed Sabers. WTF is going on over there? Is she still as apeshit crazy as she was? Anyone else have insight? Mugly?
Hmm… I’m going to go with the “stupidest” thing I’ve done that ended up badly. I’m sure there are dumber things I’ve done but since they turned out fine, they just didn’t stick with me
I kept me leased horse at a barn that did therapeutic riding for the disabled. My horse participated in the program and we were starting to play around with the idea of doing vaulting with some of our more able bodied riders.
Nothing too crazy – mostly getting comfortable turning around on the horse, riding sideways, and maybe even kneeling at the walk.
Well. I, as a very ingenious teenager, had seen the Flying Frenchman and other super cool and dying to be emulated instances of people standing on horses. I got pretty darn good at standing up at the walk.
So why not try faster? Since I could not even keep my balance to some basic moves at the trot, I figured the canter must be where it’s at! I strapped a two-handled surcingle to my patient arabian dressage gelding, put him in the round pen, pushed him into a canter, and tried standing up. To being, I had to get into kneeling position.
As soon as I got my knees onto his back, I started to lose my balance. But hey, that’s why then invented surcingles with handles, right? In theory, it might have worked out if I had tightened the surcingle as well as I usually did my girth. But, of course, it’s just a surcingle so I never double-checked. As soon as I leaned onto my right hand to balance, it flung to the side, catapulting me towards the ground and under some flashing hooves at an amazing speed.
I came out of it with just bruises (and a VERY confused horse), but OMG what a stupid idea…
Dumbest and most painful thing I ever did was ride my large pony mare, bareback, with only a halter and lead rope, in a 5 acre open field that was on the side of a large hill, when my sister was taking her mare off down the road to go to a friends house. We were half way up the hill when Lady McBeth realized she was being left behind and came unglued.
She turned and bolted down that hill, screaming hysterically (maybe that was me…screaming hysterically), heading for the gate. There was no steering that girl. I doubt she even knew I was on her back any more. I was absolutely certain she was going to go right through it so I bailed. And bounced. And broke. Opposing arm and leg. Lady of course turned at the last minute and, still screaming, raced along the fence line. I was in and out of conciousness but I remember at one point my sister brought Lady over and asked if I wanted to get back on. Ummm…that would be a no.
4 months in a wheel chair.
Coulda been WAAAAAYYYYY worse.
Oh yeah I was 12 and didn’t even know there were helmets.
Dumbest and most painful thing I ever did was ride my large pony mare, bareback, with only a halter and lead rope, in a 5 acre open field that was on the side of a large hill, when my sister was taking her mare off down the road to go to a friends house. We were half way up the hill when Lady McBeth realized she was being left behind and came unglued.
She turned and bolted down that hill, screaming hysterically (maybe that was me…screaming hysterically), heading for the gate. There was no steering that girl. I doubt she even knew I was on her back any more. I was absolutely certain she was going to go right through it so I bailed. And bounced. And broke. Opposing arm and leg. Lady of course turned at the last minute and, still screaming, raced along the fence line. I was in and out of conciousness but I remember at one point my sister brought Lady over and asked if I wanted to get back on. Ummm…that would be a no.
4 months in a wheel chair.
Coulda been WAAAAAYYYYY worse.
Oh yeah I was 12.
Helmets hadn’t been invented yet(JK it was the early 70′s though)
Apparently it left me with a stutter too!
As a teenager we used to have barn parties (at my friends private barn) which were really an excuse to sit in the tack room and have a few drinks without the parents knowing. Anyhow one night I got tanked and someone provoked me to get onto Thunder who is a mini. He is also a total jerk who was mad at the world because his grain got taken down to next to nothing. So I hopped on him with a lead rope not even attached to both sides and we don’t even get 5 feet before he runs me into the side of the paddock and smacked my head and leg into every wood post in the paddock before I fell off. He turned around and I swear laughed at me. My head felt like I was in hell the next morning and I deserved it. Sober me knew I was too heavy for him and when i woke up I gave him a cookie and said sorry.
My biggest regrets with horses were when I worked weekends at a handicapped riding center. My first was watching the draft cross get ruined by the so called director. I still wish I had pulled that idiot (the director) out of the saddle and made the mare I loved do what she knew how to do. I didn’t and when the new director came into charge she quickly sold the spoiled mare. They refuse to this day to tell me where she went so I assume it was an auction.
The second was not telling out the director when she left my handsome man out in pasture all night for several nights because he was afraid of the new turf in the arena (stalls were all around the arena). I heard he screamed for his pasture mates the entire time. It took me ten minutes to coax that donkey onto the turf and yea the entire week after that he ran across it like a tennessee walking horse but he did it.
I told the old director time and time again that I would buy either one of those horses or even both but she refused to sell. I left before the new director ever came in but I’m still kinda pissed the old director never told the new one how serious I was in buying the both of them. Instead I’m horseless and stuck wondering where the both of them are. If I ever run into either one of them I’m buying instantly.
Hey, once we’ve exhausted this, we should follow the other line of thought that kind of came with the last blog entry: When stuff goes unexpectedly wrong even though you’re not doing anything stupid. You know, those real “how did THAT happen!?” moments.
Anyway, when I was one of the more sensible teenagers in a group of young horse owners, we used to cobble together driving harnesses from spare bits of tack, ropes, lunge lines etc when it snowed, and attach those little wooden sledges to the poor horses…. There were success stories – the big old warmblood mare trotting alongside the main road and down to the beach with like, half a dozen girlies in tow, but then there were the also the terrified 3-year-olds bolting round and round in a big field with a tangled mess of harness and smashed up sledge whipping around them… no injuries ever, but I know my boy never completely got over his fear of stuff dragging on the ground behind him. Yes, I am ashamed of myself!
I can also remember the time a friend and I took our horses down to the beach on what was probably the first hot day of the year. Appropriately, it was April Fool’s day, and I know that just before my birthday in the middle of march I had been walking on the ice in the same place we went paddling with the horses… so yeah, that water was still COLD. So there we were, circling further and further out, until suddenly both horses dropped below the surface of the water at the same time. Completely, heads submerged and everything. The horses didn’t yet know that they could swim, and the humans didn’t know quite how low a swimming horse lies in the water, so I thinkall of us just panicked. I saw my friend bail out, while my horse found the ground with his back feet and reared so that I slid down his back into the water. I had this idea that I should let go of the reins, but the cold just made me hyperventilate and go rigid, and my hands wouldn’t do what my brain was telling them to do. My horse turned and waded back to the beach, dragging me by the reins until I felt the ground with my knees and my body finally decided to work again. My friend had caught hold of her horse’s saddle as he turned to the shore, so we were both very lucky. Once we had calmed down and were ready to go home, I discovered that both my stirrups had come off, and I had to go back in to dive for them. I only found one, but hey, at least I could get back on the horse LOL!
We found a better place to take the horses in the water after that, and the horses became pretty good (and willing!) swimmers.
Didn’t we _all_ do these stupid things as kids?? Riding in bikinis! No helmets! Bareback. War bridles. Riding a bridleless, bareback horse with a herd of other horses at full gallop (but in a large fenced area so it was safer…) Riding in town with traffic. Jumping on unbroke yearlings. (Yeah, that was stupid.)
How about: pulling off a friend’s horse’s one ear bridle? Smart, huh?
My dumbest thing I did was with my first horse, I was fresh with book knowledge and I even took some Lyceum classes about horses and went to some horse camps! (expert I know O.o). My dad took me horse shopping when I was 12-13ish BEFORE we got the property fenced in so dad bought a portable corral for the new horse. It was time to move the corral, piece by piece, to a new spot of grass and the new horse was perfectly content to eat out of the feeder on one of the panels so he barely flicked an ear at us. All went well until we had to move the feeder panel….it was only going to be a minute so we tied him to a rubbermaid trash can full of water (the big kind for outdoor trash). Well it didn’t take long for him to follow his breakfast, knocking over the makeshift water trough. Next thing we know the new horse was doing his best SEcretariat impression as he ran full out towards the nearest road and disappeared from view. Back then there was very few vehicle traffic going down the rural private roads but we were sure we were going to find a dead horse. We drove up and down the various roads, could not find him at all, I finally got out on foot and literally followed horse shoes on the road until I got to a driveway with fresh looking hoof prints. Talk about a way to meet your neighbors! Turns out that my horse had gotten himself tangled up in the fencing de joir of rural America: barbed wire and stopped. The neighbor was kind enough to get him untangled and freed from the bouncing demon chasing him. Fortunately there was just some scratches, no real damage done. But between the farrier visit and vet visit (I think in the first year of owning him we bought the vet a new truck *everytime he looked “off” the vet was called, sometimes it was real (pigeon fever) sometimes was no big deal (the horse was lying on his back with all four feet straight in the air, so he must be dead right? No he just had a cold and was being weird)) it was not cheap for my parents.
No tragic comedy but at the last show I had my best run ever. My reiner that has been a lot of work undoing all the damage done in his past life as an open futurity horse. Everyone has been following our progress from basket case to a whole new animal that can almost keep his wits through a whole pattern in the ring. We slid to a stop, score would have been a 70 great run. Then rookie me reached down, switched the reins to my other hand, pet his neck, scored a zero because he hadn’t come to a full stop. Still kicking myself, but looking forward to the next show.
Out of MANY, the worst was probably after I read, at the age of 11, a book on packing with horses and mules. So I thought it was really cool how they tied the pack horse to the TAIL of the riding horse. Experiment went fairly well, with hot, crazy shetland pony dutifully following broke, wise old mare. Except the part where she sidestepped going through the gate. Having dismounted saved me from grievious injury, but the poor pony was nearly dragged over the gate by the poor mare’s tail, and the carnage was only averted by the cheap lead rope snapping. I believe books got me into a lot of trouble over the years. But I did learn a fabulous trick from Ralph Moody’s “Little Britches.” I taught that same patient mare to drop her head, allow me to lean across her neck, and then toss me up onto her back since I could never master vaulting up bareback.
Loved reading all the stories, how did we all survive? Another tale: green, hot, fast shetland pony, outgrown. The answer: get a cart! Yay–driving all over heck and gone two weeks later, I pick up two unknown kids to take for a ride. On a narrow dirt canal bank. Pony spooks at an old water heater discarded in the bushes, and bolts at warp speed. Cart flips, spilling children everywhere, with road rash galore but no major injuries. Then the pony ends up in the filthy algae green canal water, tangled in his harness, so I jump in and get him loose. Pony was injured and required some expensive repairs that involved hauling him the vet in the bed of a pickup truck. I got terrible infections from the dirt and canal water. Apparently the sadistic nurse scrubbing the gravel out of my knees and thighs with a nail brush did not remove all of it. Still have some rough patches remaining since 1972. Might as well leave a brief list of the lowlights….
1. Galloping through another irrigation ditch, bareback, with a string around the jaw of the horse, not thinking about the discarded car parts, glass, bicycles, and other crap under that water
2. Galloping home down the jumping lane after rides, on a known bolter (gee, I wonder why?)
3. Galloping willy-nilly around the jumping arena, bareback, helmetless, taking jumps simultaneously with my best buddy–from opposing directions
What I would give for some of that raw, ignorant courage now!
Thanks Fugly/Mugly for this blog. It’s the only one I follow.
As a kid I lived just as dangerously – trick riding, cowboys and Indians you name it.
But the worse and luckiest one was as an adult. My flatmate (housemate ?) had gone away on holiday. Most horses here in NZ live out and wear rugs. I agreed to rug/unrug her horse while she was away. I assumed it would be like my horses and be OK with this being done halterless in the paddock.
Wrong.
I was very lucky that as per usual, I had undone the front strap first. I was lucky that the rug slid off over the horses rump. I was lucky that the horse sort of just stepped out of it as it was galloping across the paddock. I was lucky that the horse stopped before it got to the fence. I was lucky that the rug survived the experience.
Did I ever tell her. No way.
Ok, this is something that happened a couple of years ago and still makes me blush with deep shame.
I was lunging my horse out in the arena. I can’t really remember if I was just too lazy to put a proper lunge roller on her or if something was wrong with the girth area so one couldn’t be used, anyway, I had taken two lead ropes, attached them to my horses bit, run them under her armpits and tied them into a knot on her back. I had seen other people do this before and the ropes had those stretchy bits in the middle so I seemed a fine substitute to use, especially on my laid back mare. Well, one minute my horse was going around nice and relaxed, the next she was just fighting the bit for dear life, dragging at it, flinging her head around etc. Not normal behavior for her. Unfortunately one of the ‘old school’ trainers happened to be near by and shouted at me to ‘make her run thought it until she yields’. Even more unfortunately I took the advice.
When she finally stopped struggling and I allowed her to stop, her armpits were torn raw. There was not an inch of skin left on either side, only pink inflamed patches of exposed flesh – rope burns.
Later that week I had her mouth checked out by a vet and sure enough, her teeth were troubling her. Not only that, but the vet found a hole with the diameter of my little finger on the inside of one of her cheeks. She has probably poked herself in the mouth with something or (more likely) had bitten herself by accident. The cut was infected, full of puss and food and almost out the other side of her cheek.
Naturally it also caused her pain when the bit touched it.
My best friend and I were about 12, she had neighbors that had a huge paddock and 2 or 3 horses. We walked through the corn field with some bridles and without knowing anything about these horses (never even talked to the owner) we threw some snaffle bits in their mouths and went for a ride (bareback with no helmets) It was quick and went well but we really could have gotten killed (or hurt a retired or injured horse)
That was by far the stupidest thing I have ever done.
In my teen days rode drunk…rode after smoking pot too. Of course no helmet, shoes or long pants…or saddle. I got to ride for free if I got on the crazy auction rejects, so I did.
As a kid I decided standing on my ponies back and hula-hooping was a good thing to do. Then that graduated to trotting the pony while sliding the hula hoop over her head and thru her legs. We also jumped immovable objects, always bareback and a halter with a lead shank tied to it for control. Played a game that involved racing thru the stallions pasture while he furiously chased us. Getting on the grained up racehorses that were boarded at my friend’s barn and pretending I was Sandy Hawley. Riding beside the highway on a horse that would bolt. Training a 3 year old stallion (he actually turned out well!) with no knowledgable help or experience.
Wow there’s more…I would have to really think for a while……we did so many dumb things as kids and were unsupervised all the time. Lucky to be here I suppose
Probably the dumbest thing I did, that I totally cringe when I look back, is using draw reins & a twisted wire bit on my horse to get that “perfect headset.” I was a young, naive teen who blindly followed what the popular trainers were doing. The end result was an unhappy horse who to this day hates western pleasure. I’ve appoligized to my horse over and over again for being so dumb & he’s now retired & happily totes around beginners hwo adore him!
Whenever I see trainers like Randy Byers, I just want to slap them unconscious. I’ve learned & practice that less is more when it comes to training horses. Anything more is NOT NATURAL HORSEMANSHIP.
If you can’t stand people like Randy Byers, join us at his dedicated anti-fan page. Search “Randy Byers Under the Bus” on facebook!
This is by far the DUMBEST thing I ever did with my poor pony. I grew up with a 13.2 gaited pony mare. No idea what she was, bought the momma from a trader and she had a foal a couple months later. BIG SURPRISE!
Anyways, I broke her out when I was 12, had been riding her about 2 years. She wasn’t a saint like so many of the other horses in these stories. She enjoyed bolting and scraping you off in trees. But one day I had been out in the trails a couple hours with a friend of mine. We were about 13 or 14, and were riding, for the first time, with no one at home. We came back in for a potty break and to get the horses a carrot. I had been tying my pony up to a cinderblock that kinda stuck out from the back deck support. A week or so prior my horsie uncle told me to never tie her up by her bit because she might set back and it would scare her worse. I was only going inside for a minute and didn’t want to bother with putting the halter on, so dumb me clipped her lead to her breast collar.(But hey, if she set back, she wouldn’t yank her mouth and scare herself, right?) Go inside and hear a huge crash! Run outside to see the deck laying on the ground and my pony running down the drive dragging that block! I went running after her but my friend beat me there on her gelding. The lead had wrapped around her hind legs and yanked her down. I thought for sure I had cause her to break a leg! Went to get help from neighbor while sobbing hysterically. Kept saying, “Ginger broke her leg and its all my fault and now they’re going to have to put her down!” Get back over to my mare and my friend had taken the saddle off and was laying across her neck to keep her down. She got up and walked back to the barn without so much as a limp! (LUCKY!!) She did have a nasty rope burn on her inner thigh and a pretty bad cut on her pastern. A week in the stall with daily PCN shots and bandage changes while she was trying to kick my head off and she was good as new. When my grandpa got home from work that day he made me feel like the worst person in the world for getting her hurt. Took months of work to get her to trust us picking up her feet since she didn’t like all that stinging medicine and she’s still silly about that one 9 years later.
We went on to win tons at our local riding club. She ended up being a pretty decent gaming pony. And now she is a wonderful pony for another little girl. But that took a year of retraining when I was older and knew more about what I was doing. Not some horse crazy teenager having races with my friends
I have several stupid things I have done. Let’s see
First horse bought in 1990 Doc’s Midget a plain bay thoroughbred yearling. I was 19. Green horse green owner. I thank the powers that be for him. I learned from him things like patience with loading and how to use panels successfully to get a horse to load, also that many “chiefs” helping to load = upset horse and broken trailer lights. Never tie with a lunge line. Tie-downs should never be tight ! Not a nice reaction. Always stretch your horse’s front legs after girthing up(not fun getting bucked off while halfway in the saddle). Never allow your brother to ride without you ( he was doing sliding stops on the black top). Large windows are big and scary when you are reflected in them (stopped in the middle of a busy highway and he was blowing hard I got off and led him). No trailer and had to leave the barn we were at (some barn owners are major idiots). So we rode down the back roads about 32 miles on an overnight ride with only a full moon to see by. Just because the boyfriend says he knows how to ride doesn’t mean he can( Midget learned to rear that day) and along those lines if your co-worker wants to learn to ride refer him to a good trainer, I was trying to show Bud how to sit on a horse and just walk in a round pen. Walked to my car to get a drink look back and he has the reins at his chest trying to stop Midget, about the time I yelled drop them up and over Midget went. Bud slid off his butt and wound up with Midget sitting on him partially across his chest and just sat there til I grabbed the reins then he stood up. Luckily Bud only wound up with minor soring and bruising. I knew about proper feed, vet work, farrier work and never had a problem with those things. One other thing was that given the wrong kind of fence a horse will paw and get tangled, after the first time Midget did this I decided to hobble train him, luckily the man I boarded with helped me to hobble train him, which went surprisingly well. And not six months after the hobble training he managed to get himself tangled up into some field fencing ( I hope ya’ll understand the type I mean) and was there anywhere from 7 am when he was turned out to 1 in the afternoon when I got out of class,. I credit the hobble training for him not panicking and injuring himself and it kept him calm while I had to cut him out. He also showed me what an ass ( mild word ) that my ex-husband was when he had to be put down. The vet told me that it was one of two things twist colic or lipomas in the intestinal tract after fighting colicky symptoms for two days and that my only options were surgery at a university 2 hours away and he gave a less than 50% chance of survival with a hefty price tag upfront (2500 to even start). So I did the humane thing and had him euthanized and it hurt my heart, even to this day. I was a newlywed, college student and couldn’t afford the surgery. When I called my now ex that I had put Midget down he asked “Why didn’t you bring him to the sale barn instead there’s a sale tomorrow.” If it wasn’t for the fact that I have a wonderful daughter as a result of that marriage I would have more regrets of it than I do.
During the marriage I had a young daughter about 4 at the time that wanted a horse my ex bought her a cute little palomino pony she named Bubbles and 2 horses named Buck and Snowy. Bubbles was great no bite no kick no paw. Ex not so good,Bubbles only “bad habit” when she was tired of being rode she would walk to the gate and stop. Ex decided that daughter should make her go and was going to help so he got out his rope and started chasing Bubbles with daughter on her back. Daughter grabbed the top of the hurricane fence scared when Bubbles bolted and carries the scars of what that will to this day 12 years later. Snowy and Buck got pasture boarded with a cowboy type and Snowy was attacked by another horse (supposedly) and developed fistulated withers. Ex sold Snowy for 75 dollars at a cow sale and told daughter Snowy had a new home .Yeah right. Enough I had had it started looking for a way out. Wound up boarding Buck and Bubbles for a while at a good friends house after splitting up with ex. Decided one day when I was at the sale barn to try my hand at pushing some of the younger cattle around. Discovered real quick that while Buck knew what he was doing I was clueless on horseback, I could pen on foot but not on horseback. And that the misconception about yearling heifers being harder to handle than yearling bulls was WRONG when a yearling brahma x bull calf decided that Buck and I were number 1 target. After we finally found an open pen and got a gate between us discovered that somehow in the confusion the calf had gotten his horn under the girth and the saddle had shifted. Buck was now laid up for several weeks with bruised withers, but recovered quite nicely.During the divorce proceedings ex threatened to get both of them so I had a trusted friend and my horse mentor find good homes for both. His grandson took Buck to learn on and a family with children took Bubbles.I could not risk them ending up with my ex, he liked big rowel spurs I discovered.
Thinking of my mentor I had acquired a free Arabian type mare from a girl I knew . She had named her Hope, well Hope came with a coggins that called her Bitch along with old healed rope burns on her legs 200 pounds underweight and with a good case of rain rot. After close to a year of trying to work with her on such basics as leading and allowing a saddle blanket to be placed on her back I had my mentor come look at her. She did her normal exploding anything you tried to do with her was a disaster. She was spooky, scared and untrusting of people. He told me she was too dangerous to even try any further so I cried for a lost soul of a horse and had her euthanized. I couldn’t sell her in good conscience and when simple handling was not safe what more could I do?
Another short story I had recently run into an old trainer friend of mine. He was elderly and had just decided to get a new racehorse. Got a 4 or 5 year old claimer (Tuff Twist) and needed someone who could help condition him until thoroughbred season rolled back around. Offered me free pasture board and 75 a week to help. Was going good, light exercise on the lunge for Tuff , easy horse to work with. He decided he needed a rider at the time to give Tuff some slow workouts on the training track he had built up around the pasture. My now husband than boyfriend said he would do it. His size and weight were acceptable to my friend.He’s 5’6″ around 125#’s and is a decent western rider. So here we go. I saddled up Tuff and legged my husband up, on a exercise saddle never thinking to lengthen the stirrups. They are going around the training track at slow lope, when the neighbor in the adjacent pasture decides to try to start his tractor, backfiring. Tuff throws a couple of little bucks and my poor husband who had never ridden in short stirrups found himself on the ground. Tuff says “freedom” and goes off bucking and running. My husband meets me out in the middle of the pen I have a lead rope in my hands and he jumps up on Buck bareback just a halter and 1 lead rope and manages to come alongside Tuff and get the lead on the bridle somehow. I learned through this to never put someone in shorter stirrups than they are used to. Though he and I laugh about it, it could have been serious.
Roy, my husband learned to listen to his wife when I told him that he should twitch a mustang mare we had named Taffy to worm her or just put it in her feed. ( She was horrible to worm). No he said I’ll snub her up to the post and that will work. “She won’t be able to move.” She broke his nose while she couldn’t move her head. Needless to say her wormer went in the feed after that. She wound up in a home with a couple south of us who has more experience working with mustangs than we do.
The one other thing he didn’t listen to me at first when Flip came to live with us. She was a long yearling and not even halter broke. Had a halter , liked being petted, but did not know how to lead. He tried to lead her and a the first sign of pressure on the halter she flipped over , he tried a couple more times before letting me put the butt rope on. Voila she started leading almost immediately. After a couple of sessions with it no more problems.
Okay by now ya’ll are probably saying OMG what is she doing with horses, she knows nothing. I know a little bit and am constantly learning, while I may always need to learn more at least I am learning and am open minded about that. I learn from watching, reading and paying attention to my horses body language telling me what they feel and adjusting what I do with them accordingly.
Sorry for being so wordy.
Christy
I guess I was one of the few extremely lucky horsekids who grew up with a very proficient horsewoman for a mom. My mom taught me safe systems for every task involving horses, and most importantly she taught me to respect horses for what they are.
So my stupid moment happened while I was away at school and a buch of students, including myself, from all riding diciplines thought it would be an awesome idea to take our horses out of the barn at 2am and ride. We were teaching the western guys to jump like jumpers and they were teaching us english riders reining techniques. Then after our little lesson we thought it would be fun to go on a black trail ride through the campus (nothing was lit but the little ligts outside the barn and arenas) and one of the girls horses spooked, tossed her and took off running. Needless to say it was pretty stupid and we all were almost expelled from school. Lesson learned.
Big fan of your comments mugly. I hate this tactic, along with a lot of the other “gimmicks” out there – western or english. People who tie their horses mouths shut are ignorant to the body mechanics of a horse and that to move in balance – they need to be able to move their lower jaw! A horses lower jaw and tongue is directly connected to their ears, and their ears are their form of balance. Sure, some horses can cope with their mouths tied shut, but that doesn’t mean they are comfortable, and people should learn more about anatomy before using these quick fixes. Take an anatomy and bitting clinic – from an equine anatomy expert. Then tell me you feel good about tying your horses mouth closed. I have taken such clinic – and that’s where my opinion comes from.