"Horses are dangerous". Support please!

I have been involved with horses for almost 50yrs, keeping my own for 40, and during that time, I have broken 2 bones, neither was directly caused by a horse. the first accident, I broke my ankle crossing the yard to get a rope to take an elderly horse out after her breakfast and the 2nd accident, I broke a bone in my foot, falling off the kitchen step. That *may* have involved a Rottweiler standing in my shoe, with me. I suppose that could support the argument that Rotties are dangerous dogs but it seems that horses have caused least damage to me. The dog and her sister did both try to make me better with lots of licks!

Accidents happen whatever you are doing, and wherever you are. You have to balance the possible danger against all the benefits of fresh air, exercise, social interaction etc, etc that we got with horses. Not to mention the wonderful relationships that most riders/owners build with their horses, that the non-horsey struggle to understand.

ETA, rather like pennyturner, I have an old back injury (torn muscles) from a fall off a youngster many years ago. I got back on but then couldn't get off! I did walk with a stick for about a week but didn't go to the doctor, as it was during the school holiday, so I didn't need to take time off work! That injury does rear its ugly head every now and again but actually recent physio sessions on a mechanical horse have helped enormously.
 
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Velvet82 said:
Thanks for everyone's comments. Obviously I know riding can be dangerous, its just been difficult when you're passionate about something and you have people telling you it's dangerous. It hasn't put me off, and I think the next time someone says it's dangerous I'll just nod along :D
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I don't think there is any point in denying that it's a dangerous sport, I aknowledge that it is, but point out that I do everything I can to mitigate the risk. Helmet always, and generally try and handle horses in as safe a manner as possible, keeping safely at front of mind at all times. But horses are unpredictable, large animals and yes accidents unfortunately occur.

There is no need to be embarrassed about a genuine accident happening. It can and does happen to the most experienced horse people.
 
I had plastic surgery following a snail keeping accident ;) These things happen- and ultimately with horses fairly regularly. Id imagine 1/2 of HHO have been injured at some point :o
 
Hackie said:
Helmet always, and generally try and handle horses in as safe a manner. There is no need to be embarrassed about a genuine accident happening. It can and does happen to the most experienced horse people.
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Luckily I was wearing a helmet. It now needs replacing and I won't be riding until I get a new one. A great excuse for a lovely new helmet!
 
Yes...horses are dangerous. But ask them do more people die from horse accidents or from wars humans create? *no hate to humans😂* but WE are the most dangerous animal on the Earth. Hope you get better soon :)
 
I have done more damage to myself by being divvy or 'drunk in charge of myself' than I have with the horses. That's in 25years too.
 
I was in in one job and they were trying to suggest that if I had an accident riding, I could not take advantage of their sick benefit policy. I did some research and found statistics that showed that Rugby and Football carried similar risks. I suggested that if they were going to apply the policy to riding, then they would have to extend it to other risky sports. As there were quite a few people who played a bit of football or rugby in their spare time, they would have had a riot on their hands so they backed down.

Here's some death rates from various sports.

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/risk/sports.html
 
Velvet82 said:
Thanks for everyone's comments. Obviously I know riding can be dangerous, its just been difficult when you're passionate about something and you have people telling you it's dangerous. It hasn't put me off, and I think the next time someone says it's dangerous I'll just nod along :D
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Once you are injured and back at work you become public property and the comments that go with it.
 
Of course horses are dangerous, but they are a calculated risk. You work to eliminate the dangers and to narrow the possibility of accidents, both by training the horse and by your own riding lessons. Same as with most things in life from using a sharp knife correctly to driving a car.

In my mind the sheer joy of spending time with my horses far outweighs and perceived danger.
 
Of course they're dangerous! Wanna see an icky picture? Funny how so many of us have horse related accidents but don't give them all away immediately!

Loads of sports are dangerous: I tumbled off my Chopper as a kid, snapped a front tooth in half, same thing the next week, managed to gash my leg open and broke my arm badly.

rara007 said:
I had plastic surgery following a snail keeping accident ;) These things happen- and ultimately with horses fairly regularly. Id imagine 1/2 of HHO have been injured at some point :o
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You really must explain that one, I'm intrigued!
 
rara007 said:
I had plastic surgery following a snail keeping accident ;) These things happen- and ultimately with horses fairly regularly. Id imagine 1/2 of HHO have been injured at some point :o
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I gotta ask: how does one have a snail keeping accident? :D Did you trip over something while chasing after it when it bolted for freedom from its terrarium?
 
I was going to post that we have quite a lot of riders at my workplace but have had more staff off work due to five a side football than horses (two broken ankles, one badly torn tendon, a couple of people with broken ribs and a groin strain)


*Quote didn't work, I was replying to the post about sick pay*
 
Cortez said:
Here's some death rates from various sports.

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/risk/sports.html
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THANK YOU for these stats; very, very interesting. I am (amongst other things) a historian and it is absolutely amazing how many historical figures have died as a result of horses. Also amazing that running is more dangerous than riding![/QUOTE]

Agree - Thank you. But insufficient. Some of those sports like running may be more likely to cause sudden death. But serious injury, especially spinal injury and head injury may be more frequent among people riding or handling horses. Does anyone have figures for that?

Yes history and 19th century childrens books too are full of deaths caused by riding, but apart from hunting deaths, but you could put that down to deaths on the road. The horse was equivalent to an expensive fast car today.
 
The stats are not complete and took 30 secs of googling to find. They show deaths not injury and compare different countries but interesting nonetheless.

As I said I looked into it for work reasons some years ago and found many sources including insurance data which showed the same trend.

It's also worth mentioning that when I was doing a lot of riding holidays, most of the travel insurance I checked included riding as standard with exceptions for hunting and cross country.
 
I think you are stupid if you don't think you will ever fall off a horse, but lets be honest most of the injuries are very minor.

Take surely the most extreme of horse riding that most of us will do - XC. Every weekend there are hundreds of people riding round XC Courses, lots of them not very well prepared and 'giving it a go' and most of them get home safely still with their horse, a few falls with a few bruises, but normally you just get up and get on again. Sadly, its only the extremely rare ones that have a bad accident we get to hear about and everyone focuses on!

If every time we heard about a car accident we decided we weren't going to drive - none of us would ever leave home. But you can hear of the most horrific crash on the motorway and merrily drive down that road the next day absolutely believing you are going to arrive at your destinations, but hear about a horse accident and wow, we are all nervous. Its all about perception!
 
horserider said:
Yes...horses are dangerous. But ask them do more people die from horse accidents or from wars humans create? *no hate to humans��* but WE are the most dangerous animal on the Earth. Hope you get better soon :)
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Thanks horserider :)

criso said:
http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/risk/sports.html
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fburton said:
There's a nice graphic here...

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/06/deaths-mortality-rates-cause-death-2011

showing what people tend to die of. There's also a table of accident statistics.
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fburton said:
Another article (mentions H&H)...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8339097.stm

and a scientific survey...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478823/
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These surveys and graphs are really interesting!
 
people don't realise that horses aren't dangerous they are still animals and have their own brain if they spook trip or fall yes you may fall off but people fall off motorbikes get hit by cars its just the way of life I guess no matter what you do your never 100% safe but people who are scared of horses usually say that they are dangerous... I love my horses and find that its a stress release going to see them, they are comforting loving animals who agrees !!
 
MissBaker said:
people who are scared of horses usually say that they are dangerous... I love my horses and find that its a stress release going to see them, they are comforting loving animals who agrees !!
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They are comforting and loving :) I have no resentment towards the horse that threw me off. I can't wait to get better so I can get back to riding.
 
I've been riding 30 years, lets say on average three times a week as I only rode once a week when I was at a riding school for the first three years, and although I've ridden nearly every day since then, I was back to once a week for 4 yrs at uni and only riding in the holidays when his loaner could spare him.

That's about 4700 times I've sat on the back of a horse (probably more). I've fallen off maybe 30 times - maybe more, I've lost count so about 0.64% of the occasions I've ridden and hurt myself badly enough to require hospital treatment 3 times (dislocated finger, severed tendons from muscle - almost all the way through, and concussion) so that's 0.063% of the times I've ridden. Less than a 1 in 1500 chance of ending up in hospital every time I ride is one I'm willing to take.

I am touching every bit of wood I can find at the moment though :)
 
Those aren't bad odds :) The worse injury I've had before this time was a sprained wrist and mild concussion. I'm not doing too bad! I'm also touching lots of wood!!
 
I work with an assortment of mountain bikers, skiers, runners and rugby players. After seeing their injuries, I'm sticking to horses!
 
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