Does your horse react to motorbikes out hacking?

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RIDMagic

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Just interested really. Driving down a country lane today and 5 crosser type motorbikes came flying round the corner and it got me thinking, are there really any horses that wouldn't react to that? Do you hack out alone, and if so, do you often come across motorbikes and does your horse remain calm? Particularly with the really noisy ones (think Harley Davidson type...)?
 
In general I have always found motorbike riders to be among the most considerate of road users normally flicking into neutral and coasting past if they haven't seen me in enough time to slow up and or pull over which they often do without request from me. Even the biker who flew round a blind bend at 90 if it was a day managed to dip his clutch and pass me (at speed) without my horses reacting, even got an apologetic nod!

Those bikes with really loud exhausts annoy me no end and yes I'm sure my two would react if we met them up close at full throttle. Luckily (touch wood) there is not a scrambler problem where I hack, I could imagine that may cause some issues.
 
Not as much as he reacts to Daffodils. Met one today, heard it a long time before I saw it due to a bend and didn't even react. He's quite a spooky horse but is also quite selective.
 
I too find motorbikers very considerate but you do get the odd idiot.... or 15 year old dirt bike rider!
My boy is fine with motorbikes generally- we have met a full "fleet?" of Harleys out one day which he did decide to stop and grow a couple of hands for, but that's about as exciting as it has ever gotten with the motorbike spooks!
Where I was before scramblers were an issue.. with some real idiots luckily enough he is desensitized to most(poor sod has had me as an owner so he has had to be) he remains calm in most situations unless they involve water!!
 
Horse is generally very good with bikers and they are often very considerate. Do occasionally meet dirt bikers and he is fine with them too, if anything it puts me on edge! Not sure what he would do if he saw a parade of Harley-types...

If anything he gets quite excited at the sound of small engines, he thinks it’s a quad bike and that he is out hunting! Interesting when XC score sheet collectors wiz past at events, we get an extra boost :p
 
On the roads i also find motorcyclists to be some of the most considerate people and therefore have no issue :) pedal bikes cause me more problems if they just creep up on you ;) though the locals have learnt to call ahead so we can let the horse see them approach.

had a few problems with scramblers in the woods though :(
 
Not any more! One of the industrial units at the farm is a specialist (aka very noisy) bike dealership. They do a LOT of revving outside the workshop, right next to one of my pens/arena. Even the sharp horses now completely ignore noisy bikes!
I've also found bikers to be the most courteous/understanding road users near horses.
 
Normal motorbikes she was always fine (she's retired), assuming they were going at the speed limit ;)
Dirt bikes used to send her running for the hills though.
 
I don’t think he’d bother as noise doesn’t really bother him. He’s more likely to spook at a pigeon or a big leaf. If they came out of nowhere at speed it might cause him to jump though more from the sudden fast approach rather than it was a noisy bike.
 
criso said:
Not as much as he reacts to Daffodils. Met one today, heard it a long time before I saw it due to a bend and didn't even react. He's quite a spooky horse but is also quite selective.
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Mine too - she was very wary of some petals on the ground and completely ignored the 50 person garden party on the other side of the road...

She pretty good with motor bikes both on the road and off-road and we see plenty of the latter being on Salisbury Plain. Motor cyclists on the whole are pretty considerate drivers; the only ones I have had a problem with are a bunch of mid-teens who ride very noisy bikes at break neck speed on the Plain (parents watching). They don't wear helmets so I fear their lack of skill and excess speed may result in tragedy. I loved scrambling as a kid but if I had behaved like them my parents would have sold my bike and grounded me no sat looking on indulgently.
 
I ride a motorbike and always pull over and prepare to switch off engine while horses pass, if its necessary. Mostly I find they happily walk past me with no fuss, I've never had one spook really badly at the bike. My horses are both fine with them because I keep mine on the yard so they are used to them, revving noises and all :)
 
Mine gets far more worried about push bikes than motorbikes. Like most TBs, the bigger/the noisier/the scarier something is, the more relaxed he is about it.

Like everyone else, I find motorcyclists to be the most respectful on the road. There's a great group on facebook about bikers (mainly off-road) stopping to help desensitise horses. It's for some shared off-road byways but can't remember the location - they often get shared around quite recently.

Dad drives a Harley and worries about what to do if he comes across horses. Says he's never had a problem as long as he flicks into neutral and cruises past quite slowly.
 
Current horses are fine. I find most motorbike riders very good around horses, far more courteous than a lot of drivers!

I had a horse who was fine with motorbikes until the day that our YO at the time grandson flew past the manège on one that had no silencer. It did that horrendously loud popping noise which sounded like a machine gun and my horse spooked and launched me into orbit. I re-broke the bone in my ankle that had only healed a few months earlier which was an absolute pain in the backside and my horse became petrified of motorbikes from that moment on. His fear of them became so bad that I could no longer risk hacking him out as his reaction was to remove his rider fast and leg it.
 
None of mine bother, even for the really loud ones - although I did get a flick of an ear from one of my driving ponies when we were overtaken by around 20 'hog' trikes in convoy once. He as good as asked me if he ought to be reacting. I did nothing, so on we trotted.

One of my daughters was a very anxious teen, and her pony reacted very strongly to motorbikes... until someone else rode him, when he was as cool as a cucumber. :)
 
Mine would go down the M1 if I asked him to. There isnt much that bothers him. He would have flicked an ear, tensed up for a stride or 2 and then carried on. Theres a lot to be said for well educated driving ponies!
 
Not in the slightest. In fact she doesn't react to any road traffic at all.

Since we've moved I've found that every single biker we've met has slowed right down and absolutely crawled past us.
 
My gelding doesn't care and will watch the Harley convention fly by with mild interest. My mare shuts down a bit and freezes so as long as they go by quite quickly we're OK. She tends not to be too fearful of things that are smaller than her while panicking at things bigger than her
 
Used to come across them occasionally as lots of byways near salisbury for them to use, pony genuinely not bothered, also not bothered by tractors hedge cutting, speed boats, high speed trains, or hacking over the motorway.

flowers that weren't there last time, lambs and birds are not to be trusted though :p. And he will follow the recycling lorry while it does it's up and over thing then spook at the next recycling box on the ground :p
 
Echo what others have said I've always found road bike and scrambler bike riders very considerate. My horse was petrified of bikes until a girl at the yard had a bike and used to park it near my horse's stable. She hated it to start with but got used to it and is now loads better with them out hacking. Now i just need to find someone with a hgv and a tractor lol
 
No my horse wouldn't react to motor bikes, she never had done. They are normally more considerate than car drivers in my experience.
 
criso said:
Not as much as he reacts to Daffodils.
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For one of mine, this. The other pony doesn't react to motorbikes at all, the mare hasn't seen that many but has never yet reacted to one (but also not met one alone and at speed). My old lad didn't give two hoots about them - we once met a dirt bike on a byway when I was a wild and daft teenager - we were hooning along, they were doing the same, and we nearly collided around a bend. We both slammed on the brakes looking sheepish!

Motorbike people are usually very considerate though. Sensible chaps!
 
My youngster is surprisingly fine with most traffic, including motorbikes. I've found bikers to be very considerate too.
We met some quad bikes and dirt bikes in the woods last week, they're not allowed to be there but still they stopped a long way off, cut the engines and took helmets off as it was the helmets my friends horse didn't like.
I thanked them for stopping and we had a bit of a chat, ponies had a sniff of the quads and scary helmets. They didn't start the quads up again until we were miles past them which gave my youngster a good experience of a potentially terrifying situation :)
 
A pony I used to have was petrified of them. But managed to get him over it. I taught him the word polo, then everytime we saw one I said polo and gave him one. It took a little while but when he would stop and ask for a polo when he saw a bike I knew we had sorted it. It worked for lorries and tractors too.
 
My mare that I lost in 2015 didn't as a general rule, react to motorbikes the only time she was ever startled was when we were walking near a combine that was parked by our track and it suddenly started up, that gave us both a good clear out lol!

My gelding does react to motorbikes on by-ways or if we are on the edge of a road and a particularly loud one went by, and this is my fault because I gather he never did before. When I first got him I worried that he wouldn't be good with motorbikes because I knew so many that weren't, and lo and behold, I got what I "wished" for! So now I need to fix that somehow
 
Misty05 said:
A pony I used to have was petrified of them. But managed to get him over it. I taught him the word polo, then everytime we saw one I said polo and gave him one. It took a little while but when he would stop and ask for a polo when he saw a bike I knew we had sorted it. It worked for lorries and tractors too.
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I think this could be a way forward for my horse, he's partial to a mint
 
Mine has only been doing roadwork for a couple of weeks and she's been fine so far. One of my worst ever falls was off my friends long departed Sec D who did a full on bolt when bikes startled him on heathland. Put all my weight in my left stirrup to try and turn him and over went the saddle. That took a while to get over!
 
'Normal' bikes, no. Those high pitched off roaders or really deep Harley-esque types, potentially, if they're not driven sensibly. That being said I agree with those that have said most bikers are much more considerate that cars/cyclists.
 
AFB said:
'Normal' bikes, no. Those high pitched off roaders or really deep Harley-esque types, potentially, if they're not driven sensibly. That being said I agree with those that have said most bikers are much more considerate that cars/cyclists.
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They definitly are! Luckily my horse doesn't mind bicycles, which is just as well the way they behave out on the ridgeway!
 
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