Scariest most ridiculous thing your horse spooked at?

I got chased down the lane by a 3 foot tall inflated number 5 balloon which was bouncing along. In the end I flagged down a car and got him to pop it.

Oh, and men in fields next to the road for some reason. Men anywhere else are fine. Well except for the one who came out of the field with a dead cow dangling from the pallet forks of his tractor.
 
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lily once had a major freak out over some road markings, that we’d walked over a thousand times…nearly squished a poor man who i then asked if he could pretty please just walk in front of her over it for 10 steps - she proceeded to follow the random man she’d never met like a little lamb🙈

10 metres down the road a little girl wearing pudsy ears waved at us, and she totally lost her sh*t so i decided that was enough hacking for one day and we went home🤣 it was only 15 minutes down the road!

i wouldn’t mind but she’d walked over it multiple times a week for about a year, never bothered before or since!🙄
 
I've had several 'bombproof' horses so you wouldn't think I'd have much to add to this thread would you?
You would be wrong!
Clydesdale mare#1 would pass, or be passed by any vehicle at all but hated passing the gardens with a dog, or a goat, above her head, even though she didn't care if they were anywhere else.
Clydesdale mare #2 - we found ourselves in the middle of a Charity Bedpush, she didn't turn a hair at the rattling, banging, applause, screeches of laughter and squeals as the 'patients' almost fell off the beds. However, a while later, along the very same road, there was a herd of young small ponies, who trotted up to the wall of their field and accompanied us on our journey. She was petrified and took off with me.
Piebald Cob - was also driven and wasn't worried by any kind of traffic. She did worry that the memorial bench that had been placed at the side of a path that we used a lot would jump up and get her. She thought the same about some big stones that had been placed at either side of the end of the path to stop vehicles churning the ground up. She refused to walk between them! She was also once chased (backwards) by a dried hydrangea head that blew out of a garden as we passed.
Then there was the Kaltblut - she was very sure of her self, walked past a turbine being unloaded in parts from a big vehicle with no problem, wasn't worried by any vehicle, including sheep transporters, tractors with bales on spikes, buses, coaches full of noisy children and once joined in with a Cycling Proficiency lesson at the local primary school BUT the day we walked alongside a hedge and she refused point blank to take another step had me stumped. She tried to stop her companion from going on either but the Appaloosa decided that there was nothing to worry about and she wanted to go home, so gave the KB a lead.
I found out later that there were empty pegs hanging on a washing line behind the hedge. The washing line was at about fetlock level as the garden was below the road. And she wasn't the only local equine that objected to using that route.
 
It's a beautiful dry and crisp autumnal day. I'm out hacking by myself with Baggs and we turn up the usual route where we go for a nice steady canter. All goes well and we get to the end of the bridleway with no problems. We turn a corner and some llamas are at the end - no problem, Baggs marches past, snorting slightly and passag-ing beautifully. We turn the next corner a few hundred yards down the bridleway and before I know it, I'm sat on the floor, with Baggs trembling behind me. I clamber to my feet to figure out what scared him -

a bloody leaf.

There were a bunch of them in organised piles but this one sole leaf that was by itself was of course going to eat Baggs the nanosecond he thought of going near it.....
 
Strictly this probably was a bit scary but there was a house in the village that had a prolific gnome collection (you know, the type of thing that would end up in the local paper). All over the garden, fishing gnomes, gardening gnomes. Gnomes just doing gnomey things. This used to be bad enough but ok once horses got used to them but at Christmas they all used to sport bloody Christmas hats and tinsel.
 
Ceifer said:
Strictly this probably was a bit scary but there was a house in the village that had a prolific gnome collection (you know, the type of thing that would end up in the local paper). All over the garden, fishing gnomes, gardening gnomes. Gnomes just doing gnomey things. This used to be bad enough but ok once horses got used to them but at Christmas they all used to sport bloody Christmas hats and tinsel.
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Where is this gnome-fest I must visit immediately 😀
 
Ceifer said:
Strictly this probably was a bit scary but there was a house in the village that had a prolific gnome collection (you know, the type of thing that would end up in the local paper). All over the garden, fishing gnomes, gardening gnomes. Gnomes just doing gnomey things. This used to be bad enough but ok once horses got used to them but at Christmas they all used to sport bloody Christmas hats and tinsel.
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Village scar crow competition was always fun
 
Shetlands! A mate hacked Beau back to my old yard, he went past traffic, a tree surgeon overhead using a very noisy chainsaw, not a flicker. 2 shetlands in the field as he went past to the entrance and omg! Spins, snorting, the works. My mate has a very good seat but was a bit surprised.

Those 2 were devils, forever scarpering under the fence to upset him as I caught in, there was lots of rearing and splashing down into puddles for quite some time.

At the next yard, it was a child ringing his bike bell, apparently terrifying. I had to go and tell him to stop. An umbrella being twirled at the top of the lane was also horrifying. I had to ask the lady to please stop, it was freaking both horses out that I was fetching in.

My TB mare really didn’t appreciate the plastic covered pushchair we encountered one day, even when the parents very kindly went up a driveway. Lots of sideways capering.

My warmblood hated markings on the road and went rather quickly to the other side of the road to avoid them.
 
Slightly off topic but my last mare really was quite a decent sort, had the odd moment or two but I knew her well enough to know where was safe enough to have a bit of a blast and ride one handed while filming with my phone in the other hand.
This was the stunning picture I captured on the way over her shoulder and under her neck! It was only when I had managed to throw myself back up into the saddle, get to the top and turn around to go back down the pathway, that I realised there was a MASSIVE big bull with his HUGE head sticking out of the hedge at the point where she spooked! No idea how I stayed on and managed to hang onto my phone.

IMG0132A_zps29962c6d.jpg
 
DecantersKingHenry said:
On a lovely cool and windy day hacking down the quiet one track lane, when and Emu, yes and Emu popped its head above the hedge 😂😂😂😂 Henry made an extremely quick retreat and trotted back to the yard, apparently 3 had escaped locally
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My mare is called a donut as we don't go hacking we go spooking 99% of the ride.
We have spooked at pigeons, a sparrow
moving leaf
discolour leaves you name it.
 
Another TB of course.

I had a helicopter take off and land in the field near during a dressage test with no reaction at all only to teleport sideways in canter at a skip bucket left to collect poos.

And talking of poos, we had just gone over a bridge while a very rattly goods train passed underneath us and spooked at the top of the road at a poo on the other side of the road he'd done on the way out.
 
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