Overall worst experience involving a horse?

Either:

I've had a horse go through a barbed-wire fence with me. He didn't even stop. Chest and shoulders all shredded and bloody, it healed fine, but I never did care too much for that horse since then. Luckily, my outer thighs were fine, and the horse is a happy camper now. He was a steer-dogging horse, turns out.

-or-

My white horse who spooks easy when tied. I was washing my other horse and the white horse spooked and set back. The rope got caught on the gate, ripped the gate open, and knocked me underneath the other horse's legs. He cut his chest and leg open pretty bad when the gate swung open. Thank heavens for that other horse standing still, or my head would've been flat as the dirt I was laying on. That was about a week ago.

Nothing too, too bad.

Or:

We were working cows, and I always was trying to be up to par like all the boys. My horse Turbo (everyone joked and called him "Bones", that's all he was, lol) was little scrawny thing but pretty tall. I'd always rope calves and all kinds of stuff off of him, and he'd do fine. We were trying to gather a few steers that had mixed in with the momma cows, and I went ahead and roped this one that was about 600 lbs, dallied off, and went to pulling him back into the pen. The steer had other ideas, ran back passed us and flipped poor Turbo and me over. Ever since then, though, Turbo always would dig his hooves into the ground and really get down when we pulled other cows. (Though we avoided the bigger ones)

Mine have not been all that traumatic so far *knock on wood*, but I will tell anyways.

Whenever my great uncle was still living, he let me ride his QH/Welsh Pony mix. She was old, fiery, and had a mind of her own, but I was 6 and didn't really understand this. We were riding out in his big pasture one day, and she took off running with me. I was young, so I thought this was cool. BUT, then she just stopped and proceded to lay on me. The saddle horn went into my stomach and bruised my diaphram(I think that is what it was called). That is mainly the reason for some of my acute fear today.

The second one happened a few years ago, didn't really affect me much, but still interesting to tell. Well, I was riding my old horse Lucy around the pasture. We were just having some fun playing around with barrels and cross rails and basically wasting time. She was infamous for bucking at the canter(nothing wrong with her health wise and the saddle fit, she was just one of them horses that always was so pissy about everything). Well, the pasture I was rding was barbedwire and electric fencing. I kicked her up into a canter(I am dumb..I know) and she did as expected, took off into a bucking rampage, and I stayed on until she started crow hopping, and with my luck, when I did go flying over her, my back hit the fence...yes, the electric part, and I must say, I have never been in so much pain in my life. It is nothing like I expected when I hit it. It is a shooting pain. It starts in one part of your body and just spreads.
Lucy was old, and died a year later, so I guess you can say she got what was coming her...

This is a touchy question to answer.
Nearly all of us being involved with horses at sometime or another will have had an accident. Sometimes you bleed, sometimes you don't. But you will learn thereby.
What never goes away is the memory of having to say good bye to a faithful steed and companion. My Father said 25 years ago, If I had not had the pleasure of the horse's company then I would not have had to pay the price of losing him. Over 35 years I have four sad memories of saying good bye and it doesn't get easier with practice. Whenever I think back on such events a tear comes to my eye and for a moment or two I can't speak because my lip is quivering. I firmly believe I am a better horseman for going through these experiences. What I do have however is lots of good memories and those are really precious.

Savour all the good experiences and learn from the bad.

B G

We were camping with the horses and friends at a lake about an hour from where I live. We try to go every year. They have a nice campground that's separate just for horses and their riders. Nice trails set in a beautiful forest...and it's very inexpensive to camp.
So anyways-it was our last day and we'd had an amazing ride that morning. We'd gotten back to the campsite and my dad was cooking lunch. The horses were all tied. One of them-the smallest we've got...a Tennessee Walker-was tied with a bungee type lead that his owner had just bought and was trying out for the first time that weekend. I noticed that he had something wrapped around his foot and was starting to back up, stretching out his lead. I walked up to him to unsnap it from the trailer. My dad saw how stretched out it had gotten and told me to move, that it was going to break. I went closer to Chance to unhook it from his halter and to calm him down. I hadn't even gotten to him yet when I saw the lead break. It flew past me and by the time I turned around it had already hit dad and he was on the ground, blood everywhere.
...skipping those details...he was taken to the local hospital then to another one an hour away where a plastic surgeon had to stitch up his face. My mom, younger sister, and Chance's owner went with. I stayed behind since the others that were there didn't know what to do to get the horses home. Fortunately the other campers whom I'd never met offered any support they could to help get things packed up.
When I took my mom back to the hospital to get him the next day to come home I could barely look at him. I'd never seen him in that kind of state and I hope to God I never have to again.
It's been nearly a year now. What scares me the most is what the emt told us. If dad had been a few inches taller, it would have hit him across the throat and killed him. The damage was that severe.
What also scares me is that if he hadn't have warned me...it would have been me. I would have been the one lying on the ground, holes in my face, scares to live with for the rest of my life, all at 20 with my life ahead of me.
"You never appreciate what you have til it's gone."
Take my advice-recognize what you have and appreciate it now. Don't wait until you almost lose it to see the value.

I was on my horse Versailles trying to move our cattle into another part of the pasture when a big bull came out of nowhere and started charging at us! Sai, being a clever Paint, dodged the bull, sending him sliding into the dirt. Well, that did it. He kept coming at us over and over again. We dodged him every time until one of his horns stabbed Sai in the chest. She reared, I slid off, then my dear little Paint galloped away in fear. The bull was pawing the ground and staring at me. When he charged for me, though, I climbed over the fence as quickly as I could.

Sai was cowering on the other side of the pasture, hoping the bull wouldn't notice her. We found out the bull had some wierd disease (not mad cow disease, not rabies) that wasn't contagious but made him aggressive. We had to shoot him because we were worried about the calves and cows and younger bulls.

Versailles' wound wasn't deep, so it healed quickly with a few weeks of care.

I have been involved in and seen many horse accidents in my almost tweny years of riding green horses. But the one I think about the most I wasn't actually there for so this was told to me from someone who was:

My best friend was cantering on a new trail on her palamino horse, another friend was riding with her and new that there was a concrete bridge up ahead around a blind turn and attempted to yell at her to slow down. She did not hear (it was starting to storm/thunder) The mares shoes slipped on the concrete and the mare fell throwing my friend off backwards. She hit the lower back part of her head, killing her instantly. She had no other injuries and the mare just cut her shoulder. I think of her and her accident everyday and wish that she was still with us. I have always been pro helmet but have been known to ride without on occasion, I strongly believe a helmet could have saved her life and will not forget mine again.

Even though I didn't see it, It is the worst accident I can think of.

I was in the field because my lesson was next and the instructor wanted us to wait out there. A horse in the other was acting totally crazy, bucking, rearing, bolting, etc. They were doing the cross country course when the horse collapsed. The rider was unharmed but the horse died instantly. The horse had a brain anurism and they had to bury him right out there in the field. The girl doesn't ride at the barn anymore.
Really scary moment.

I have 3 stories. The first didn't happen to me and I hope it never does. I was in kentucky for Pony Club nationals a few years ago, and it was summer, so quite humid and hot, and my group was headed to go watch the stadium jumping during our break, but before we could get there, officials were running around telling everyone that the Nationals was cancelled for the day. We heard that the horse that had been in the middle of his course had just collapsed and died. They all suspected heat stroke, so everything was put on hold. We got all the details later, and found out that the horse actually died in mid air over one of the fences, and ended up falling onto his rider when he hit the ground. He was about 17 years old, and one of the riders from our team was scheduled to ride in that group of riders, and the horse was the same color as our team members horse. Didn't end up being that horse, but they had to actually bring the tractor in, and pull the horse off the girl. Because of what happened, they decided to build a small memorial for her horse, and buried her horse in the grass along the cross country course where the Rolex takes place.

Another one, involves me and an arab gelding I used to ride. He was a small like 13 handish pony, who had a tendency to not pick his feet up very high sometimes, but we had never had any issues. Well I was jumping him, and we were trotting down the middle of the arena to another fence when he caught his foot in a pit in the sand, and I'm not sure how he knew, but he knew that he was going to fall, and so he dropped his left shoulder, which threw me over his head and into the dirt, where I proceeded to slide a few feet, (I am 5'1" and weigh like 100lbs which accounts for the sliding), and he hit the dirt with his forhead, and his left shoulder, and kind of half flipped over himself, and if I hadn't pulled myself forward a matter of inches, he would have landed his rear end, leg, something like that on my legs. I had a pounding headache for the rest of the day, and got yelled at for jumping up to check on the horse. He just got scraped knees, and a bald spot on his forehead until the hair grew back in, and a bloody lip, but was otherwise fine, and always picked up his feet nicely after that.