Spooking when not scared- what goes through their heads (if anything?!)

[My Boys M&D]

Lighthearted (sort of) after another schooling session where I've had to take some deep breaths!

I'm a firm believer in the fact that horses don't have the mental capacity to be 'naughty', i.e. if they play up there is generally a reason, pain, anxiety, anticipation etc. So can someone please give an explanation as to why horses spook at things that they aren't scared of?!

Prime example today- doing some flatwork and polework in our arena, which also has a set of showjumps laid out. Horsey, who is a retired Novice eventer (i.e. has seen and done it all), will NOT trot calmly past one particular jump with a filler. He will walk past it, around it, walk up to it, rub his nose on it and jump over it. But every single time I try to trot or canter past it I get serious spooking, head up, snorting, rushing until we pass it then he will chill out again. Yet when my friend joined us in the arena with her horse, mine completely forgot about the scary jump and trotted past sweetly. Friend then thinks I am making the whole thing up!

Any horse psychics care to offer suggestions?! I've taken to singing "you're such a ****" as we sidle past resembling a giraffe!

 

[sassandbells]

Just throwing this out there and I might be completely wrong, but could it be that you also inadvertently have an “issue” with this jump, ie you are expecting him to react to it so you adjust something and then he is picking that up as something to be scared of? & when you had the friend in the arena you were more focussed on them so weren’t doing the same things to cause the reaction? So in walk it’s fine as it’s a slower pace, but in trot perhaps you feel a bit less confident and that’s why the reactions only happen in trot? Just something to think about perhaps.

 

[marmalade76]

I have had horses that I swear spooked for their own amusement, one was the arab, bold and as cocky as they come but would spook at the most ridiculous things, like a tissue someone dropped yet things you'd think a horse would spook at he was fine with. The other one, if you rode round an arena with nothing in it, he would look for things the other side of the fence to spook at. Put a jump up and the spooking would stop.

 

[oldjumper]

Lighthearted (sort of) after another schooling session where I've had to take some deep breaths!

I'm a firm believer in the fact that horses don't have the mental capacity to be 'naughty', i.e. if they play up there is generally a reason, pain, anxiety, anticipation etc. So can someone please give an explanation as to why horses spook at things that they aren't scared of?!

Prime example today- doing some flatwork and polework in our arena, which also has a set of showjumps laid out. Horsey, who is a retired Novice eventer (i.e. has seen and done it all), will NOT trot calmly past one particular jump with a filler. He will walk past it, around it, walk up to it, rub his nose on it and jump over it. But every single time I try to trot or canter past it I get serious spooking, head up, snorting, rushing until we pass it then he will chill out again. Yet when my friend joined us in the arena with her horse, mine completely forgot about the scary jump and trotted past sweetly. Friend then thinks I am making the whole thing up!

Any horse psychics care to offer suggestions?! I've taken to singing "you're such a ****" as we sidle past resembling a giraffe!

Don’t ask me ….mine always spooks when I put hay in his stable (well, that wasn’t there a minute ago!)

 

[Fransurrey]

Gawd knows. I had to tell my boy to get a grip, yesterday, as he suddenly took extreme exception to a sodding WATER TROUGH in a field. It wasn't even close by. We had some epic dressage moves and I had to stop some cyclists from coming past. Not sure what they made of me trying to explain that he was terrified of a water trough and I didn't want him swinging his arse round and wiping them out. We later had vampire deer in the distance. He's mostly bombproof, but we do have these rides, sometimes.

 

[PSD]

One of the horses in my barn spooks at her feed bucket if it’s empty refused to go in her stable, funnily enough when it comes to feeding time it’s not as scary!

 

[Peglo]

My horse out of absolutely no where has decided she hates going past trees or bushes. There’s very few around here but ones we go past regularly she’s looking for something to find scary. I nearly wonder if she dreamt something scary happened as it just came out of nowhere. I would love to know what goes through their mind.

 

[My Boys M&D]

They are funny aren't they! I don't know whether it makes it better or worse that they can do it for no real reason!

I genuinely don't think it's me tensing up, as it can be a different thing every ride, sometimes he really takes me by surprise. And yet, on a hack this morning he stood and rested a leg while an enormous tractor with a bale of wrapped hay on the front went past, plastic flapping in the wind....

Joking aside, I have been pondering how this 'spooking for no reason' aligns with the view that 'they can't play up for no reason'. I wonder if we will ever know the answer!

 

[Trouper]

One day someone will invent the "tech" that enables us to see how horses see - then we might be able to understand how things actually look to them and what makes the innocuous look absolutely terrifying!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Barton Bounty]

We had a bit of spooking this morning, we went a few miles away from home and everything turned scary. It was the first time he had every been on some parts and mostly he was an angel but that squirrel that little lamb bleeting and the baby moos all fried his brain , oh and a stone not massively a problem at all as he just spun a couple of times but we went by

 

[smolmaus]

Top tip from Sadie, if you spook at literal shadows (including your own) there is ALWAYS something to spook at.

We were spooking at a shadow on the road on Friday when a big growly 4x4 came past and the big growly 4x4 was apparently labelled FRIEND so she followed it past the scary shadow like it was another horse. Who knows. I'll take it.

 

[marmalade76]

Not long after my yard sharer moved in, we went out for a long ride along bridleways & lanes. Her horse was new to the area but the horse I had at the time certainly was not and was generally pretty bomb proof and not normally spooky, her's is an old boy of 17 at the time so not exactly green but on this ride they were absolutely ridiculous! They were violently spooking at everything and anything, it was like they were trying to outdo each other!

 

[SantaVera]

My cob decided to take exception to the rhodedendron by the gate,why? Because it has flowers on it! Big horse eating purple flowers.

 

[Barton Bounty]

Today we came across a baby calf with its head stuck in between post and rail, of course a van was just coming past and the calf was frantically trying to pull it out. I text the farmer , chances are it would work it out, but just in case

 

[Peglo]

My cob decided to take exception to the rhodedendron by the gate,why? Because it has flowers on it! Big horse eating purple flowers.

Purple flowers are the absolute worst!!!! Who knows why purple. They can be any shape or size too

 

[DabDab]

They are funny aren't they! I don't know whether it makes it better or worse that they can do it for no real reason!

I genuinely don't think it's me tensing up, as it can be a different thing every ride, sometimes he really takes me by surprise. And yet, on a hack this morning he stood and rested a leg while an enormous tractor with a bale of wrapped hay on the front went past, plastic flapping in the wind....

Joking aside, I have been pondering how this 'spooking for no reason' aligns with the view that 'they can't play up for no reason'. I wonder if we will ever know the answer!

Well it depends what you define as 'reasons' I suppose...
Naughty, in my view, is doing something to wind up whoever is nominally in charge. I don't think horses do anything to deliberately wind us up, in fact I don't think they have the capacity to contemplate our views on anything they do. So they are always doing things for a reason, it's just that the reason may not be a particularly good one! I Don think dome horses are genuinely amused by dancing around, after all, fake simulation of natural instincts is something we see as quite normal in other species - cats pounce on things that aren't there, dogs shake and kill toys that they know aren't real, so a horse doing a bit of spooking practice isn't so strange I suppose.

 

[Annagain]

My old share horse Monty was the same. he'd jump any filler, all day long but if you rested it against the side of the school he couldn't possibly go past it without spooking. He was generally a very non-spooky horse so it was very unusual.

Archie wasn't particularly spooky either but in the spring, when I started to take him out again in the evening as the days got lighter instead of bringing him in, feeding him and leaving him alone, he would find all sorts of things to spook at. A hangry Archie hacking on the evening before bin day was an extreme sport. If we spooked at one wheelie bin, we spooked at 30.

 

[AShetlandBitMeOnce]

Dex span, burnt my hand with the rope, and jumped the fencing back into his field because a table about 25ft away was on it's side - but walked past a whole school of shouty, jumping pony club kids, and with a wheelbarrow, the walker being on and a lawnmower no agro. Make it make sense!

 

[Auslander]

I can tell the moment I get on Alf whether he's going to be a sensible senior citizen, or it's going to be a wall of death kind of ride. Not really sure what that means, but I'm 100% accurate with my predicitions!

 

[Crazy_cat_lady]

My Welsh D behaved perfectly all lesson once, only to then decide a piece of dry sand which had emerged from under the wet stuff....

Mud on the road was another cause of the brakes slamming on and the snorting starting - yet fly tipping wasnt anywhere near as scary

His hair on the floor after trimming was positively terrifying

He wasn't allowed to be tied on the yard as he'd start off fine, then almost look for something to be scared of, end up scaring himself and pull back and break the string

He was infuriating to jump as the spookiness made him careful but he hated fillers and would also know if something had been changed

 

[Tiddlypom]

During last year's big heatwave I decided that it would be better to stand their black water bins inside the larger north facing field shelter to get the water out of the sun, a distance of maybe 10 metres.

I did so, only all 3 horses seemed to think that some black horrible monster had taken up residence in the field shelter and they refused to go anywhere near it, with much snorting and cavorting.

I had to lug all the water back out again and stand the bins back out in the sun in their usual place. It was rather too hot to be finding it funny at the time.

 

[Cloball]

Merrily marched past all manner of tractors, trailers and threshers on Saturday. Spooked at the gate she goes out of every day and a rock with some bird poop on

 

[JackFrost]

I think some horses use spooking as a way to release built up stress, so it may even feel good to them. With one of mine, I can feel it holding tension and know that once we have got the spook out of the way, it will immediately be more calm and settled. It's as if it wants to be startled by something/anything to get beyond feeling tense.

 

[Pippity]

My first share would, I swear, simply get bored of walking along nicely on a hack. She'd always choose a nice, safe place for it, give a little shake as a warning, then very slowly and impressively launch herself sideways. She did it so slowly that it was easy to sit to, and she was a solid black, 17.1hh Shire-x, so looked utterly magnificent when she did!

 

[Widgeon]

During last year's big heatwave I decided that it would be better to stand their black water bins inside the larger north facing field shelter to get the water out of the sun, a distance of maybe 10 metres.

I did so, only all 3 horses seemed to think that some black horrible monster had taken up residence in the field shelter and they refused to go anywhere near it, with much snorting and cavorting.

I had to lug all the water back out again and stand the bins back out in the sun in their usual place. It was rather too hot to be finding it funny at the time.

That was very kind of you. I think I'd have decided that thirst or curiosity would eventually drive them inside, and retired for a G&T.

 

[millikins]

I've often thought that if they are an otherwise happy, confident animal, they actually get a buzz out of spooking, an adrenaline rush like we do on a fairground ride. You know it's safe but still enjoy being a bit scared.