What's the worst thing you encounter out hacking?

The local trotter racing up the road parallel to the lane
Lorries who let the air brakes go

Also, not that it is scary but why is it you see people walking in the woods, they see you, and the next thing they are hiding in the bushes ? It is sweet of them but not the best thing to do ! but I suppose a lack of understanding on their part ! very minor though, just funny

x
 
A badger trying to jump through a 5 bar gate, but instead just crashing into it (making a painful sounding thud) then falling backwards onto the road with its paws in the air with another thud. Only thing Ellie has every spooked at!

And a very old, deranged looking man who told me my horse and I were beautiful whilst trying to grab my bridle. The police turned up as I tried to get away, turns out he had dementia and was totally harmless but I was terrified at the time!!
 
The most bizzare thing we met out hackinf was a man in half a blue barrel, being raised and lowered up a gantry by the local YFC Tug of War team :eek: The mare stood there with her head raising and lowering her head as she watched him :D
 
A whole load of people dressed as vikings waving axes and spears and shields, growling shouting and fighting each other. I can only assume they were in the woods for some sort or re-enactment. The whole cast and crew of a film set including several scary horse eating lighting stands, and today a travelling fair had appeared as I rounded the corner on the way home. Had to do a detour, although I did feel thick as I know they were due and thought someone was having a very loud garden party!
 
I used to ride past a field that the circus would occasionally visit, mare wasn't at all bothered by elephants or circus tents and caravans, she only had eyes for the stallion! My boy is completely unfazed by skip lorries, double decker buses, tractors and trailers or motorbikes, but his eyes were popping tonight when we walked past a drain where the grass has been cut back :rolleyes:

The Ostrich farm is probably the scariest thing ever, especially when one of them escaped and was standing in the road! Loooooong detour!
 
When I was about 11, I was out on my cheeky pony hacking in the woods behind the yard when we disturbed the T.A out on a weekend warrior mission.Cheeky pony didn't bat an ear, gave me the fright of my life.:eek:. At another old yard,they had either pheasants or paintball nutters hiding in the woods.So I stopped going there:(
 
Idiot teen on moped revving madly, caught up with mate hacking round streets, nearly touching, made the horse bolt then stop suddenly so poor mate went over horse's head, starfish fashion onto her back. Nasty teen zipped off. The horse went to investigate her rider, stood on her hand and broke two bones!

There's an unfortunate amount of road work by our yard. :(
 
Toothless terriers. Motorbikes, hot air balloons, tractors - bring them on, no problems. Small inoffensive toothless terrier - cue "typical Arab" behaviour. Sigh.
 
E_Lister said:
A badger trying to jump through a 5 bar gate, but instead just crashing into it (making a painful sounding thud) then falling backwards onto the road with its paws in the air with another thud. Only thing Ellie has every spooked at!
Click to expand...
Brilliant mental image. Was the badger OK?
 
Encountered 2 dogs on the bridleway today - one had obviously seen the vet recently and had one of those "lamp shades" around his neck - my horse freaked out!!! Lots of apologies received from his owner!!!
 
Tinypony said:
Brilliant mental image. Was the badger OK?
Click to expand...

I must confess that I didn't check, through the tears of laughter... but then I don't think bending over a stunned badger is the best idea on the world!!

As we edged past it got up and managed to go through the fence though, so unless it was lightly concussed I think so ;)
 
A friend of mine was taking a youngster out for the first time when a pheasant that had got stuck in a carrier bag ran out in front of them! How unlucky is that.....

My pony still does a double take at ... stones, large ones and especially if they have been moved since she passed them last. She's fine with tractors, lorries, refuse bags, dogs, trailers, bikes but stones - oh no, legs on hard if we see any of those!
 
My horse thinks the scarest thing that we see are emus! they make this weird 'drumming' noise and dosent matter how often we go past jazz absoulutly hates them. :p
 
met a massive tractor/spray machine thing the other day, the horsey didnt care at all but a leaf blowing in the wind? terrifying.

And most of our ponies dont care about lorries, hedgecutters, bikes, dogs but llamas or alpacas are obviously the most evil predator on the planet.
 
Hehe this thread got me thinking when I was out riding today.

We're having a nice canter up a hill in the woods until she slams the breaks on me *so nearly* going over head because she saw a......rock?! Ok a boulder but really Charisma! Gave her a slap and grr and carried cantering on up the hill as I took my stirrups back.

In fact she nearly had me off twice tonight due to her silly spooks!

But she's ok with tractors and herds of sheep galloping up the road. Yes we've had that too - with no shepard :D Just on their own, trotting up the road and past us. Charisma and I are stood there like, 'eh?' :D
 
the 2 oddest things we have met were
a vintage cycle group rally - including penny farthings - mare walked past as if she saw them on a daily basis
a field roller type thing being tractored through the village - made the most horrible noise in the world - again mare was fine BUT last week end threw herself into the middle of the by-pass to avoid a carrier bag hidden in a bush & ther day before almost fell over in horror because of a soft drinks bottle in a tree:rolleyes:
& nearly forgot to mention - her current fear of steps in peoples' gardens .......go figure
 
The old boy - yellow flowers, rocks, pigs (we've actually bought two just to hopefully get all the horses happy about them!), black plastic, actually any plastic, but bombproof with any vehicles, planes etc.

The youngster - I don't know yet, I've ridden her about a dozen times, and the only thing that she'd spooked at was when she was leading and two motionless Rotties erupted against a five bar gate, shaking it, and barking like mad. I understood her fear completely!
 
A giant octopus flying down the road about 6 feet off the ground! It was a plastic car cover but looked just like an octopus. Luckily the horse I was riding and the one I was leading (both fit TBs) obeyed my command of 'Stand' and a tentacle got caught in the hedge so it never actually wrapped around us. The both went past the billowing mass with no problem.
Nothing much makes my horses spook, tractors, low flying planes or helicopters, hot air balloons only 50 feet over them, they know that if they do spook or act silly they will have to face up to whatever until they are so bored of it that they take no notice.
 
Probably:

The local world war 2 re-enactment society about to have their battle and the landowner where I lived had forgotten to tell me about.

A rally car at about 70mph that my landlord had given permission to test drive around the estate where I lived, same landlord.

My nextdoor neighbours tank, a military surplus Scimitar CVRT.

A model airplane club.
 
forget your pheasants in hedges (bad enough i know), around here it is ducks in dykes, which wait until you are right alongside and then take fright/flight with extreme flapping and quacking. i've ended up hanging round horses' necks a number of times, hence the addiction to very sticky-bum breeches! also i now sing loudly to warn the duckies so the little gits can vacate the dykes ahead of us rather than alongside us. fortunately my singing is usually bad enough to terrify them into flight. ;) ;)

otherwise, around here when they harvest the broccoli they have a huge thing that fits to a tractor, 10 men working on each side of the tractor sorting the broccoli, so the whole rig is about 30m+ wide. can't find a pic, but trust me, it is a seriously huge bit of kit, and tends to create a few eyes-on-stalks moments from the youngsters...

worst thing ever? being chased by a swan. unfunny. we were the other side of the really wide river, and about 20' above him on the bank, but he wasn't having any of it and ran/flapped across the water after us, my big wb took 1 look and just ran for his life, poor boy.
 
We are surrounded by studs, and every field for miles in each direction is full of mares, foals or yearlings which is challenging enough when they have a hoon around next to you. But the worst thing has got to be the stallions! Can wind up any horse when they're screaming and hooning around!
 
Meant to quote the person who hates gates on their 17"2!

Lol, this is me out with my mate who rides a 15h horse but cannot mount from anything but a mounting block (including unable to accept a leg up). Luckily my big man will stand by all manner of things, including a weird statue :P)
 
the Micro Pig and boncy castle next door, my poor guy is so scared of turning left out of the gate and of coming home, screaming children (like horse like owner, I hate children anyway) bouncing around with a generator going and a pig snuffling trying to get out of it's pen (which it has managed several times!). Other than that he is pretty good, we have had tractors, chitty chitty bang bang cars, loose dogs, sheep, cows, traction steam engine......
:D
 
We have a huge steam fair down the road from the yard every year so for that weekend all the youngsters from the yard spend most of the day being hand grazed on the big grass verge to get some mega traffic training!

We also have bike races that go past the yard, with groups of 80+ bikes which is fun if you get caught up by them :eek:

Luckily my boy is really good in all heavy traffic - unfortunately though he would much rather jump in front of a lorry to get away from a leaf (nearly landed on a nice new jag recently too to get away from a daffodil :eek:)


pmsl at the image of a pheasant trapped in a carrier bag too :D
 
Erm the worst was probably 2 army tanks with about 40 soldiers with, guns, war paint on their faces and twigs in their helmets all hiding in the undergrowth!!

Riding my just 5 year old out when we saw a combine harvestor, followed by 2 MAHOOSIVE tractors and trailers was pretty scary on a tiny country lane. My mare decided safest to march through the teeny gap (combine was about 4" from my right foot!) only to find there were another 2 combines (each with 2 massive tractors and trailers) right behind the first one!
 
A garden bench - seriously!
The bombproof R&D cob mare took great exception to this, when it appeared at the side of the path across some land, in memory of the owners mother. Obviously if it could just appear from nowhere, it could chase her when she passed it. She wasn't too keen on the giant stones that appeared at the other end of the path either.

Whereas the Clydie mare wanted to join in the bed push. After trotting along the road between 2 beds, we turned left where they turned right but then she heard the applause as they arrived at their destination and wanted to nip up the side road to get back to them.
 
I rode around our yards hay field thursday and found a man in camouflage with a rifle in the grass, I nearly had heart failure, he was there shooting rabbits.
 
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