What do you count as bolting?

I think I am inclined to agree with the nuanced view of bolting, or perhaps we need another descriptive word for panic running where the horse has not quite lost its head completely. I remember taking my young NF pony in the school for a little bit of lunging. I decided to see if he would enjoy a bit of loose schooling, instead, and see how he would react. I put the lunge whip away to reduce the signal strength, or so I was thinking. I led him round then gradually released him and positioned myself centrally. I thought he might just go to the gate, or maybe buck about about a bit in the corners, or something. Or seize the opportunity to put his head through the fence and eat grass! No, he just panicked. Straight into flat out gallop round the little school, getting faster and faster round the corners and wilder and wilder looking with every stride. He didn’t crash through the fence though. Speaking to him made it worse. I had to leave the school and turn my back on him to remove all pressure, when he began to slow after a couple more circuits. I had no idea he would feel the pressure like that and I learnt a lot from this experience as you can imagine!
 
I completely agree with comments saying that a very strong horse who has no brakes and tanks off with you is a very different thing to a bolter.

I owned one for a while that bolted. He only did it when he was unfit and not settled in his work - he’d spot something that any other horse would just look or maybe mildly spook at, and he’d run like the devil was on his heels. He ran through hedges, over or through every wall and fence in his way, and if you somehow got him in a one rein stop he’d panic so much he’d just buck until he either got his head or got you off. You wouldn’t be able to catch him afterwards either - and he just kept running, often in the opposite direction to home.

After he put me in hospital with a suspected neck fracture (thank god it ended up being a horrible concussion and not worse), his ridden career ended.

You can’t really describe the difference in how that feels compared to a very strong horse you just can’t stop. But it’s night and day.
 
The purpose of language is communication.

If a new person comes on to the forum, starts a thread saying that their horse bolted with them and that they couldn't stop until the end of the field, and asks what can they do if it happens again, would you know what they were trying to communicate? Even if they used the word 'bolted' perhaps incorrectly? Most people would understand. Therefore the word 'bolt' and the sentence it was used in has served its purpose of communicating something.

Language evolves over time.

New words appear in the dictionary every year. Words can change meaning. Words can be 'dumbed down' (see what I did there? 😂 )

A 'moot point' used to mean something to be discussed. Nowadays, it more commonly is used to mean something that's irrelevant to discuss. At least the use of the word bolt hasn't started being used to describe the opposite of a bolt!

If 'true' bolting is so incredibly rare, and so hardly ever warrants mention, then isn't it a bit of a waste of a word if it can't be used to describe less accurate but similar circumstances?

And if a 'true bolter' only stops when it runs into/through something, presumably it damages itself so much in the act that the opportunity to bolt again never arises, thus making advice on how to deal with the horse next time it happens, rather a moot point...
 
I have been both bolted with and run away with. Two different things.

My first true bolt was on an ex racehorse which just took off, without any aim ie not heading for home. We ran through a barbed wire fence and the second one brought the horse down. I was a bit damaged but the horse got put down.

The second true bolt was not that many years ago and it was a driving horse that took off. It was a dense hedge that stopped that one but the carriage was a write off. No attempt to turn away from the hedge was made by the horse.
 
I think 'true bolt' seems to convey the desired meaning quite well.

People that know the difference between bolting and tanking off will know that a 'true bolt' refers to a bolt, and those that don't know the difference... won't know there's a difference but will likely understand the increased severity.

I don't tend to use the word bolt for any of my personal experiences. Even the time I had to throw myself off my galloping flat-out, fresh-out-of-racing ex-racehorse and landed on my head, causing a brain haemorrhage and permanent brain damage. I just couldn't stop her 🤷‍♂️
 
*hic* said:
In my book a horse that goes round the arena is not bolting. A horse that bolts in an arena goes straight out through the fence IME - or in my case bounces off the very ample walls of the indoor and crashes into the next wall and so on until it is at a standstill. Not a pleasant experience.

Tanking off for a few strides whether from high spirits or from fear is not bolting. Running in a blind panic with no care for self-preservation is bolting. A strong and tanking horse is well aware of you on top and can be stopped with technique and strength. There is no communication with a horse that is bolting. It feels quite different and is utterly terrifying.
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It is utterly terrifying. Experienced it years ago, as an Aussie horse mad kid in Calgary, Alberta, at a local riding school, at ten years old I was on an ex barrel racing QH All Canadian champion. He suddenly decided to get back to the barn asap. We must've gotten up to 60k. It was like being on the TGV to France. Then he stopped on a dime, at 5 bar gate, and I went sailing over his head. I've been bolted on since, but nothing was quite so terrifying.

It was probably a tank, not a bolt, and if I'd been older and stronger, there probably wouldn't be a story, but with a kid in the saddle, and a crazed horse, becomes a bolt. But yeah, I do agree, even though its an old thread, with the definitions.
 
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JenJ said:
The purpose of language is communication.

If a new person comes on to the forum, starts a thread saying that their horse bolted with them and that they couldn't stop until the end of the field, and asks what can they do if it happens again, would you know what they were trying to communicate? Even if they used the word 'bolted' perhaps incorrectly? Most people would understand. Therefore the word 'bolt' and the sentence it was used in has served its purpose of communicating something.

Language evolves over time.

New words appear in the dictionary every year. Words can change meaning. Words can be 'dumbed down' (see what I did there? 😂 )

A 'moot point' used to mean something to be discussed. Nowadays, it more commonly is used to mean something that's irrelevant to discuss. At least the use of the word bolt hasn't started being used to describe the opposite of a bolt!

If 'true' bolting is so incredibly rare, and so hardly ever warrants mention, then isn't it a bit of a waste of a word if it can't be used to describe less accurate but similar circumstances?

And if a 'true bolter' only stops when it runs into/through something, presumably it damages itself so much in the act that the opportunity to bolt again never arises, thus making advice on how to deal with the horse next time it happens, rather a moot point...
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I am aware this is an old thread but it's an interesting discussion.
I understand what you are saying JenJ but in this case we are talking about two different things which need at least two different words if we are to be accurate in communicating. However rare a true bolt is, it's certainly not a waste of a word - but perhaps "true bolt" is now that word/s.
I'm thinking of the many different names for snow that some cultures have. Maybe some of those types of snow are almost never seen, but the words are there in the language. It doesn't seem a lot to ask for people to reserve "bolt" in horses to what it has historically meant, which is running in a blind panic. It's a state of mind in the horse which starts with "GET AWAY!!!"and excludes everything else.
My old trainer had a mare bolt from her paddock one night, leaving her herd. She went through hedges and fences for the best part of a mile and was found dead at the bottom of an embankment, having broken her neck. Weirdly she appeared to have large claw marks across her quarters (I saw pics - they were pretty convincing of a large cat. This was near Launceston. ) That was a bolt.
Most of us will have been tanked off with by a keen or exuberant horse, and spooked with, and some of us will have experienced a horse taking fright and legging it (my horse was chased by a loose dog and ended up running downhill towards a barbed wire fence - but key here is that once I realised what was happening I was able to take action and influence his direction and he listened and came to a stop.). Even that isn't a true bolt, it's a massive spook and run, but the horse is still thinking.
I'm a self confessed pedant, and when I see a thread title pop up saying something like "Horse keeps bolting with me" I expect to read a horror story and am mildly irritated to find a question about desensitizing a spooky horse or a horse not listening to the aids when he's having a hooley with his mates.
Watering down language isn't a good thing, it's a lazy thing that leads to misunderstandings and actually having to use more words to explain something.
 
I think, as with all things, there are degrees.

What some posters describe on here as bolting is extreme - running into walls and breaking their own necks - and often seems to result from extreme pain / neurological issues. Those are career enders (if they survive the incident). The horse above that bolted through fences while seemingly being chased / attacked by a large cat - that's an extreme bolt, but if the horse had survived, isn't necessarily a career ender for me - it strikes me that running blind from a predator is entirely logical, however extreme. That to me seems a bigger and more important differentiation than the "knobbing off" issue. If what a horse is doing is logical, it's predictable and probably avoidable or changeable through training. If it's not, it's absolutely the end of their working life.

I don't think it's possible to use "bolt" and expect that to be meaningful without any qualification, not just because of the common usage for variations on knobbing off, but because situations have nuance and it's not really possible to remove the behaviour from the context and still understand it.

I had a pony chased down a bridleway by a white stag. He was running blind - but it was rational, and after the stag turned off, he kept running, but after maybe half a mile, realised he was OK to stop. Now, that's nothing compared to the blind panic of a horse in pain, but it also isn't knobbing off. He was scared, he wasn't naughty. I couldn't have stopped him safely with brute force - I could probably have pulled off balance and taken him down (he's small), but I didn't think that was a great idea. You might say that the fact he eventually realised the threat was gone is enough of a distinction, but in many cases you wouldn't have a few clear miles to find that out. And, for what it's worth, I don't refer to it as a bolting incident, precisely because I don't want to get into the discussion - I would describe the situation in its entirety, because that way it has meaning and isn't just playing into someone's preconceptions.

That said, while I think there's probably degrees of "bolt", they are at the higher end of the spectrum. What novices often describe as bolting, but turns out to be an evasion of a weak rider, is so far from "bolting" that it isn't helpful to conflate the two.
 
You
JFTDWS said:
I think, as with all things, there are degrees.

What some posters describe on here as bolting is extreme - running into walls and breaking their own necks - and often seems to result from extreme pain / neurological issues. Those are career enders (if they survive the incident). The horse above that bolted through fences while seemingly being chased / attacked by a large cat - that's an extreme bolt, but if the horse had survived, isn't necessarily a career ender for me - it strikes me that running blind from a predator is entirely logical, however extreme. That to me seems a bigger and more important differentiation than the "knobbing off" issue. If what a horse is doing is logical, it's predictable and probably avoidable or changeable through training. If it's not, it's absolutely the end of their working life.

I don't think it's possible to use "bolt" and expect that to be meaningful without any qualification, not just because of the common usage for variations on knobbing off, but because situations have nuance and it's not really possible to remove the behaviour from the context and still understand it.

I had a pony chased down a bridleway by a white stag. He was running blind - but it was rational, and after the stag turned off, he kept running, but after maybe half a mile, realised he was OK to stop. Now, that's nothing compared to the blind panic of a horse in pain, but it also isn't knobbing off. He was scared, he wasn't naughty. I couldn't have stopped him safely with brute force - I could probably have pulled off balance and taken him down (he's small), but I didn't think that was a great idea. You might say that the fact he eventually realised the threat was gone is enough of a distinction, but in many cases you wouldn't have a few clear miles to find that out. And, for what it's worth, I don't refer to it as a bolting incident, precisely because I don't want to get into the discussion - I would describe the situation in its entirety, because that way it has meaning and isn't just playing into someone's preconceptions.

That said, while I think there's probably degrees of "bolt", they are at the higher end of the spectrum. What novices often describe as bolting, but turns out to be an evasion of a weak rider, is so far from "bolting" that it isn't helpful to conflate the two.
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Wait, what? You mean the horse deciding of its own accord to do a few strides of trot to catch up with the horse in front isn't a bolt? :eek: 😂
 
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