How do YOU stop a horse that's spooked and running off?

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Just out of interest, say your horse spooked and took off, how would you pull it up?

One rein stop? Pulley rein? Circling?

And if you could sort of feel it coming, you know when thry grow and head comes up and their back comes up, what would you have done to get the horses attention back on you and to ask it to relax?

Circles? Turn away from spooky thing? Get off?

Thanks :)
 
My new horse is quite spooky, when we're out on hacks I try doing some exercises, like, a few strides of walk, a few strides of trot, walk again, halt, if we do say 4 or 8 strides, transition, 4 or 8 more strides, then leg yield across the lane in walk, leg yield back, halt, trot, walk, trot, walk, halt, etc

Then a few minutes of just relaxed walking or trotting, so any time she feels a bit tense, I just start with the transitions, so she's got too much going on to think about wheelie bins!
 
If ones running off with me I will put it on a 20m circle, I don't like hauling on one rein as I was out with a friend did this a while ago and she ended up pulling the horse over.

Comming up to something spookey I will put my leg on and ride it in to the bridle whilst bending them away from the spookey thing. I try to relax the rein as soon as I've got the bend.
 
Circles, turn head away from spooky thing, speak calmly, trot on past. It would depend if it was genuine fear OR a naughty spook. If it's genuine I let my horse stop and have a look then calmly ask him to go past - it takes a few goes but he will eventually trust me. Then lots of praise afterwards. I used to dismount and lead him past things but I don;t need to any more.

If the horse has spooked and bolted, depending on the area in which it occurred I would attempt to circle, focussing the horses' attention back on what it's feet are doing and not the scary thing.

I would never dismount if the horse was scared unless it was dangerous to stay on, as if horse bolted and I couldn;t hold onto him from the ground I would have a loose, frightened horse! Not good!
 
If she spooks and dashes off then I bring her back to the pace we were going at and kick her on forwards (and in the direction of my choosing!). When she 'grows' she gets a firm kick on (sometimes backed up with a smack with a whip) and often this is enough to push her past whatever scary thing there is (although sometimes a bit of lateral work gets added!). Never circling etc! I have picked forwards so forwards we will go!

If she is being a spooky silly rushing thing then I just make it hard work - mainly by leg yielding back and forth across the track or riding shoulder in varying the bend and direction pretty frequently. While doing this I am always careful to ensure that she is soft in her neck, I'm not tensing, and that she is working forwards propertly and not just scittering along!
 
hmmmm depends on the horse and where we are!
Big girl has not managed to get away from me out hacking.... yet lol, we've had a few jogging sideways down the road episodes and all i do then is sit deep, drop my hands , keep my breathing steady and talk to her and try and get her to leg yield out of the middle of the road back to the verge.
Out on the farm if it's safe i push her on across the field until we meet the hedge and she stops lol, if i'm not in the mood for that or it's not safe then i try and circle, she's only done it a couple of times on the farm and she's tanked out of naughtiness rather than a spook:rolleyes:

With the ginger boy he's not got as far as tanking off, he panics and jumps sideways and as long as i keep calm and talk and turn him he usually just comes to a dead stop and stands quivering bless him:) Getting him to move again is the hard part lol
 
Luckilly my horse doesn't really do anything. He never bolts anyway. When he was a baby he had a tendancy to spook and spin round to want to run off, but i'd just sit there and be calm and then he'd be fine. Alot of the time he is genuinely frightenned and he'll shake and say Mummy i don't want to go, but is will usually jog past with encouragement. It doesn't help that i'm a nervous person, in that i jump quite easilly if there is a loud bang etc, so i guess we take it in turns.
 
Depends on the horse. If it was my boy then he tends to come back to me in a few strides anyway without me having to do a right lot other than sitting deep and not getting into a tug of war with him, at which point I'd just ask him to stop normally, turn him around and ask him to walk on. If he spins round again then I spin him right back the way he came and ask again. I've only had to get off and lead him past something once and that was because the offending abandoned BBQ was dumped right in the entrance to a bridlepath leading off a fairly busy road and I didn't want him endangering us both by backing up into traffic. If someone else's horse took off after spooking then my stopping method of choice if horse wasn't responding to normal aides would be one rein stop (most of hacking round near me was mostly roads and bridlepaths with the odd field thrown in as a rarity so the vast majority of it wasn't wide enough to turn a circle)
 
My horse is not the kind to tank off, so I just slow him back to walk (and then likely I'll turn him round and make him go back past). Runnin away is not usually a problem though, is more the spinning and mini-rears that he favours. Only time he has turned and run was when a tyre swing was moving on its own in the wind - think he thought there was a ghost child on it :rolleyes: :D
 
I stay calm and adopt a "there there" approach to what scared 'em in the first place...

Once I've stopped them with a SOFT voice and a steady fixed rein on the neck... like a jockey.

I also do the "lets go back and see what scared you" thing. It works... even for the scardiest mare in season!!!!
 
Have only ever been on a horse that bolted off with me once. She was renown for doing it so she did it with me and I could not pull her up and we were on concrete track with fencing at either side so could not circle either. What I did was grab hold of her bit and I managed to pull her up. Very scary at the time, but she was 17 and knew every trick in the book because nobody had ever taught her otherwise.
 
depends where we are:

if we are hacking in fields and they take off then i let them go - when they want to slow up i push them on and we stop when i want to (this has cured a severe bolter)

but if we are on the road then i tend to sit in and keep giving half halts - im used to jogging horses and bringing them back with circling (not tight ones) and talking to them.
 
My old lad doesn't spook at anything, but the youngster can do an impressive duck, spin and away manoevre. He's never bolted (yet) but he does attempt to leap forwards, which is usually met with my hands rather sharply and rather higher than desirable :o Not intentional and not ideal.

When he grows, arches his neck and prances around, if he's being silly about nothing he gets told sharply to get on, whilst being ridden forward into a soft contact and I ask him to think about things (laterals etc). If he's genuinely nervous, I will scratch his neck while riding him forwards as above. He's very much the sort to relax if you're scratching him and not tensing up yourself - very trusting - and by riding him quietly forwards, same as when he's being silly (and indeed when he's working "normally") he doesn't think there's anything to be worried about. He's young and new to solo hacking so he has plenty to learn.

An actual bolter is difficult as they're so dead to any aid - never ridden one. Horses that take the mickey in a mock bolt, I go for DQ's let them go and keep riding them forwards till they regret it method, assuming it's safe to do so.
 
I am lucky in that my loan pony isn't particularly spooky and just slows right down so she can have a good look.

This summer however, I was working in Italy and when looking for a new route to ride we came accross a herd of sheep. In Italy they have sheepdogs which guard the sheep 24/7 and live in with the herd.

When the dogs (12 of them to be exact as we discovered later!!) saw us they started barking and came racing towards us, from my vantage point I could see they were running towards us so they are known for being vicious to strangers and as we had no way of avoiding them apart from back the way we came we decided to turn back the way we had come.

As we did this the dogs appeared over the brow of the hill and into the line of sight of the horses for the first time causing them to set off into a panicked gallop. As we had already ridden down the track and knew it was safe enough we pushed the horses ON, just for about 10 strides so they were listening to us and thought going into gallop was our idea not theirs...

Then 3 half halts and I was back in walk (even if it was a bit bouncy and nervous).

Needless to say that we didn't go that way again and were hugely annoyed that the dogs were loose on a public right of way!
 
[deleted user] said:
Just out of interest, say your horse spooked and took off, how would you pull it up?

One rein stop? Pulley rein? Circling?

And if you could sort of feel it coming, you know when thry grow and head comes up and their back comes up, what would you have done to get the horses attention back on you and to ask it to relax?

Circles? Turn away from spooky thing? Get off?

Thanks :)
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With April (ex-racer) if she spooked and took off you had to get up off her back, give her a kick on and a couple of seconds thinking she was in control, then you had to sit back and half-halt a couple of times, talking to her. That did it.
And when you could feel it coming, you had to half halt with inside rein, get leg on and trot past firmly.

With Sam (Welsh cob) it was a case of sitting back when he took off cause it was always accompanied with broncing. :P Then lots and lots of circles till he came back.
When you could feel him spooking, you needed to bring him back to walk, let him have a really good look at whatever was going on, and a kind word and a pat settled him.
 
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