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What is the oddest thing your horse is afraid of?

31K views 247 replies 203 participants last post by  rosie1 
#1 ·
IDK if this is in the correct part...sorry if it is...

But What is the oddest thing your horse is afraid of?

Mine is newspaper. Honor can walk by a screaming child, or a cat, or something any other horse would flip out at,and remain completley calm... but newspaper just freaks him out!
 
#2 ·
COWS!!!

He had been used as a competitive trail horse for a while before I got him and was never afraid of cougars, bears, hikers coming out of nowhere, you name it. But for some odd reason, he is deathly afraid of cows. I usually make sure there are none when we go on trails haha
 
#42 ·
COWS!!!

He had been used as a competitive trail horse for a while before I got him and was never afraid of cougars, bears, hikers coming out of nowhere, you name it. But for some odd reason, he is deathly afraid of cows. I usually make sure there are none when we go on trails haha

Same with Pro, been right up to bears etc. it's just cows!! Except he was an endurance horse not competitive trail.
 
#3 ·
^ my old hrose was afraid of cows! we even tryed putting him in a PEN with cows....he was fine until they LOOKED at him... those darn cows with their lazer beam eyes.

the weirdest thing.... i would have to say...... that evil troll in the wash bay, or the dragon in the trailer, or maybe the horse eating shadow monster?
 
#4 ·
My lovely, sweet, chilled-out horse has become so bored in our little indoor (actually, so have I...) that he's imagined up all sorts of arena monsters.
The mounting block (which isn't at ALL scary when I mount or let him look at it) can make him bolt sideways across the arena, as can either of the far corners, and a small hole in the wall. Oh, and the chairs by the door, if there's a person in them.
The corner thing I kiiiiind of understand, because we had an unfortunate parrot incident there once. (Long story). The rest? Pure silliness.

OH! And if we pass a broken wooden pallet on the side of the road he does the abrupt shoulder-drop thing. Only pallets, nothing else - not deer running out in front of him, ATVs, bikes...and the pallets in the arena are harmless. :)
 
#10 ·
hahah wel as i have mentioned before i live in rural spain so dont know if you guys will know what im on about but anyway furia is petrified of contadores (water meters) they are at the front of a house (quite far out) and are just a square concrete box with the meter in and she hates them!!! hahaha
not forgetting the horse eating monster that hides in the trees, in the air and on the ground hahahahaa:D
 
#12 ·
ahaha this is a funny thread. my horse is scared of Flag poles with or without the flag like stated before. plastic bags... and cows.. she is DEATHLY afraid of cows. we were riding by a pasture for the first time. and she kept either A) trying to charge them through the fence or B) run super fast by them. and she snorting and blow snot and prancing and pawing the ground. she hated the cows and like stated before was ok untill they looked at her..

my moms horse is scared of Dragon Flies, red mud... , cracks in the road big rocks lol she is a silly ******
 
#16 ·
My horse really dislikes a mini donkey, the first time he saw it he was up by the fence meeting other horses, the donkey pushed through the horses and Hero took off running, so did the donkey and they stopped and look at eachother. When ever the donkey is around my horse stops and tries to take off. But he didnt spook at a loose 600 ppound pig running to us lol :)
 
#17 ·
HOT AIR BALLOONS!

I was riding my gelding, Arthur, and the mini mare was running free behind me, and my mom was walking, in the fields behind my house. I was cantering, and then all of the sudden my bridle snaps in half. It was older, and I was too young to know how to oil it so I hadn't oiled it in a while, so I take full responsibility....So I get off to see how bad it's broken, and find that the cheekpiece on one side is snapped clean in half, and the bridle wasn't gonna make it back to the house. Especially with the way Arthur fights for rein when he wants to run lol. So I take a lead rope I carry just in case and wrap it around Arthur's neck in an attempt to keep him steady till we reached the barn. Yea, a battle lost before it starts. Well, it might maybe have possibly worked if a hot air balloon hadn't appeared 200 feet up, blowing fire and freaking out the horses. Arthur breaks loose, and canters with the mini mare "Lulu" in the general direction of another few fields....we run, desperate to get the horses before they reach a road, call 911 and tell them to post police on either end of the street to warn drivers there's loose horses. We're freaking out while running through the back 1000....until we get to the house and find both horses grazing in our backyard. YEAH. Arthur had somehow lost his saddle blanket from under his saddle (?!?) and I found it like 4 months later in the woods, all chewed up by some animal who'd stolen it lol.
 
#18 ·
Neither of mine are afraid of anything. o_O I ride Ricci down the road on a not-very-big shoulder and she doesn't flick an ear at any of the traffic. We were running down the back road once and out of nowhere, a huge black dog launches out of the bushes not even three feet away, barking it's massive head off and Ricci couldn't have cared less. And Gracie was the bravest baby I've ever heard of. I brought her home at 7 months and she wouldn't even flinch at ANYTHING. Waving branches, my dressage whip flailing around, I've even thrown pine cones at her and she never even noticed!

So if they're afraid of something, I haven't found what it is yet. =]
 
#19 ·
Ginisee- Smoke, tarps (we tried to make fake liverpools out of them but it didn't work... she's fine with real liverpools. haha). She isn't scared of them but she really HATES ponies.

Uma- Toadstools. Seriously. The horse is great with everything else. She will jump any jump with confidence, but toadstools? Game over.

Demi- just about everything. haha. She is just a naturally spooky horse. Mostly loud noises and things coming up behind her. And her shadow.
 
#20 ·
Well she's not terrified of them, but Gypsy is afraid of cows, she's getting better, there is a neighbor's cow that sometimes gets out and we put her back while we're riding. I thought we might have been in trouble when we went out into my dad's pasture into the middle of the cows and everytime we turned our backs on one group they'd start coming towards us. We finally pushed them back until they didn't want to have anything to do w/ us (I was proud of her, that was a big step forward!). She's really fine as long as they don't come at her. I've never had a horse that was afraid of cows.

Now what she is terrified of, a demon mini that we sometimes see while riding. She's not afraid of minis in general (I have four), but she's pretty sure this one is demon spawn (I think it's mostly because she can't see him at first, she can only hear him).

My mule is afraid of my pot bellied pig (the feeling is mutual, they see each other and take off in opposite directions).
 
#21 ·
Lol, these are really funny. Butterfly is afraid of yellow daises on the side of the trail and butterflies (It's how she got her name). I have no idea why but, she can spot a yellow daisy a mile away and puff and sweat about it. I think she just may not like the color yellow, but It's usually the yellow daises because she can handle shaking a yellow blanket in front of her! And she hates when a butterfly touches her or is around her. She would FREAK if she knew how many touch her on the trails lol! Horses are so silly sometimes :P
 
#23 ·
my old man is scared of stones... well more sort of small rocks the type people put at the end of their borders to stop people driving on them, we had a bit of fun one day with some dry stone wallers. they rushed out when he started playing up and turned the tractor engine off thinking that was scaring him. im not sure that they believed me when i told them he was fine with the tractor but actually scared of the stones they were using to build the wall. mind you one of them had a rangers footy shirt on and we are a celtic family maybe that was the problem!
 
#95 ·
my old man is scared of stones... well more sort of small rocks the type people put at the end of their borders to stop people driving on them,
ok, I have to say when I first read this, I thought this was hilarious. So I took Pumpkin out across the road for a 'trail ride' and he is going all and well, when we come to an area with the rocks like you posted...... so he freaks out :lol:

Typical him, to freak out at what i though was hilarious. great stories every one :)
 
#25 ·
This is gonna sound sooo weird but my horse is scared of foals. A baby broke loose at one of our shows and came WALKING not running over to him to say hi..(i was on his back so he wasnt tied up) at first he didnt notice but then the foal touched his leg and Phantom literally did a double take...he started backing up like a frieght train and the whole time im laughing cause hes scared of a baby. his eyes were wide and he was snorting up a storm but his ears were up and foreward and the baby just kept following him till its owners came ot get it. but the whole time after that whenever we rode by the foals trailer phantom would turn and look at it then walk sideways.I swear he probably thought that cute little thing was gonna eat him. lol
 
#27 ·
My mare is absolutely fine with dogs charging and barking at her, birds flying out of bushes, hogs running at her, snakes slithering by her feet, tortoises running to their burrows, donkeys hee-hawing, coyotes running across the trail, gators jumping into lakes, deer running out in front of us, armadillos scurrying through bushes, raccoons climbing trees, bunnies hopping across the trail, possums waddling across the trail, etc.... but a cow standing still in a field makes her freak out.

And then she's absolutely fine with cars, tractors, semi-trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, four-wheelers, trailers, lawn mowers, trains, etc... but construction vehicles (even when they're turned off!) freak her out.



My gelding isn't afraid of anything that would actually scare other horses, but he always spooks at stupid stuff like a rustling in the bushes or a shadow on the ground. He's weird.
 
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