WHat's the daftest thing your horse has spooked at ?

Primroses. A tyre. A pile of bin bags (the massive churning bin lorry next to them was fine). A sparrow tweeting loudly. Dog walkers. Deer (despite them frequenting the field she's in on a daily basis). Sheep (daren't take her past the alpacas, I don't want to die). Other horses. Car headlights. I could go on, she's 'sensitive' (bat **** crazy).
 
Prams, but double decker buses and motorbikes are fine. Something apparently rustling in the hedge across the road, but a car backfiring multiple times and sounding like gunfire virtually next to her is fine. Chairs by the side of the arena are very dangerous, but in the cafe next to the arena they are safe.
 
A white stone, a white feather in the school, a polo mint on the floor, a white jump block (that she sees every time we are in the school), a white jump pole. Are you seeing a theme yet?
Her own shadow is a favourite.
Anything that has moved since the last time she has seen it.
A hole in the school fence about the size of 10p.
Absolutely nothing that I can see
I have lots of experience in spooks as you can see.
 
fox is terrified of drains, we can be out on the busiest road with buses, motorbikes etc flying past and he doesnt bat an eyelid. but takes a big circle around drains and eyeballs them the full time! big weirdo!
 
Too many to remember them all but one I still laugh about was coming across a man who was inspecting a man hole. He had his whole head down there. So horsey saw a headless body and had a freak. I had to call out and get the man to look up. Then it was oh it's a man, and then he walked passed with no trouble! Then there was the 13 black TV monitors but that's another story.....
 
The slightly different coloured patches when the school surface was topped up.

The bench that was moved six inches.

The mounting block that isn't in exactly the same place it was yesterday.

The spot in the school where something unknown spooked him two months ago and I nearly came off. That spot is obviously very, very dangerous.

He saw a mouse once, and I don't think he's ever fully recovered from that trauma.
 
We have lived here for nearly 3 years, during that whole time we have had black bales stacked between the stables and arena. Today her highness (who never spooks) wouldn't go past them and turned into a snorting dragon. Snorting dragon who was on her toes felt bloody amazing to school!
 
A mounting block... after I'd stood him next to it, tightened his girth, pulled the stirrups down, climbed onto the block, mounted, and put my gloves on... THEN it turned into a horse-eating monster necessitating a sideways exit from the vicinity at 200mph
 
My first horse used to stop for a wee, and when he was done he would shoot off like a bullet cause he would splash his own leg as he finished his wee and would give himself a scare. I just had to hold on cause I knew it was coming lol - my current horse thankfully has never needed to wee while Im riding
 
A bent sign, I think she has a thing about signs because going past a broken one the other day we somehow ended up in the middle of the road. Pigeons, deer, diversion signs, a fallen over cone, honestly the list is endless!
 
A settee coming along the road on top of a car, the horse turned right in front of it and jumped a six foot hedge into a field. Another froze at a black gentleman on a golf course wouldn't budge while he politely gave way to me, impasse for what seemed like ages.
 
I think the silliest one was her spooking at me spooking at a jogger. We were milling out on a really lazy hack, just a plod around the old block, and I was in my own world when a jogger ran past us and scared the c*** out of me. I shrieked, my horse spooked at me and shot after the jogger, who shrieked at us both and nearly fell over a pothole.

The weirdest thing she's ever spooked at was a decapitated moose head someone left at the end of their lawn out in this near abandoned village of the damned in the woods. There are more surreal elements to this story.

The daftest thing she's ever spooked at was the sound of her own farting, but in hindsight those days she needed no invitations t spook and spooked roughly every 5 steps or so.
 
Just remembered another one - two straw bales, either side by side or stacked one on top of the other. A whole stack is fine. One on its own is fine. But two? Clearly they are conspiring to eat her.
 
bullocks with their head through a field gate, this meant a 180 spin to find more bullocks through the field gate we had just walked past, it was a double gated field with wee bullocks, sort of push me pull you. you can't go forward you can't go back you can't go forward you can't go back,....................but you can pirouette on the stop
 
This is hilarious.
My old boy -
White lines on roads
Drains
Bench by road (if it had been a xc jump he'd have jumped it fine)
Blades of long grass. Standing at a funny angle
A disabled person. Sitting on a bench, at a funny angle.
 
I was hacking through a housing estate at the beginning of last year and there was quite a breeze. Then I hear a rattle and a Christmas bauble chased us all the way down the road! Horse was not impressed...
 
My daughter's new, unspooky mare had a meltdown yesterday when the just clipped poodle had his doggy coat on yesterday in that awful weather :)
 
A horse that was lying down in a field... the sight of this legless creature proved too much to the usually unflappable NF who promptly spun and tried to leg it, scaring the laying down horse into getting up and fleeing! Was quite funny
 
A "lost dog" sign on a post, he wasn't going anywhere near that thing! I think we were there about 10 mins before he managed to figure out what it was. This is a very sensible, unspooky cob who has no problem with black plastic blowing in his face, large machinery, getting caught up in a herd of cattle being driven down the road etc.
 
For one of mine it was winning a sash. He took the novice championship over several horses that were clearly not novices. Judge put it round his neck and it was like a half tonne helium balloon on the end of the reins. He did a massive sigh when I finally removed the offending material! I guess that it at least proved that he was definitely a novice and had never won anything like that before....

He is also scared of apples, especially if juice sprays when he bites in to them.............he won't entertain them now!
 
My friend's Exmoor took terrible offence at a lady with a limp & a walking stick. It was a fellow Livery's arthritic Aunt come over to help with her horses.
 
Most recently...
- the random purple crocus in amongst the many snow drops on the verge
- my dad emptying the wheelbarrow on the muckheap near the arena
- one corner of the arena - no other visible cause other than it's a corner
- another horse entering the arena - despite the gate being open and horse visible for 30 seconds before it stepped through the gateway
and best of all....
his own reflection in arena mirrors - apparently this doesn't just need a spook but attempts to bite it and fly bucks as we run away from it - despite having been allowed to mooch around the arena before hand and stop in front of it to have time to work out it's him and having worked in arenas with mirrors before
 
Rufty will go past anything and never spooks but a couple of weeks ago out on a hack with his bomb proof friend they both had a major melt down. We had been cantering under some trees when my hat silk caught on a branch. Tried to retrieve it and both went into snorting, spinning mode. We were laughing so much we were useless. After 10 minutes Rufty got his brave pants on and I managed to retrieve it. They continued prancing and snorting all the way back to the yard. Stupid horses!
 
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