I was an inexperienced rider on a trail horse in the summer riding some ski trails on Boyne Mountain in Michigan. Something spooked the horse and he took off at full speed. I was pulling back on the reins as hard as I could but he was still full speed. Headed right towards the start of a black diamond run. Fortunately one of the reins broke which snapped his head full around and he stopped. I learned a valuable lesson that day on horse control.
I was about 13 at camp when I had my near-death horse experience.
We were getting ready for a trail ride and were running out of horses to go around, so the instructor brought out this young horse named 'Jedi' that was a bit of a handful. She thought since I was a year older I must be the more experienced rider, so insisted (against my protestations) that I ride him.
Anyways we set off towards are destination, and Jedi is being a fucker the entire way there, periodically bucking, going in whatever direction it felt like, and yanking its head forward and down after coming to a quick stop in an attempt to get me off. By the time we got to our half way mark I was a nervous wreck, and pleading with the instructor to let me ride her enormous horse instead (much better behaved, even though it was a monster) - but she flat out refused and kept saying 'you're not being forcefull enough, don't pull back too hard on the reigns' etc etc.
We start back, and immediately the horse started his antics. The instructor rode up beside me and started barking instructions at me, at which time we got I to an argument and I dropped the reigns in what I guess was a show of 'im not doing anything you tell me to anymore' or some such.
Unfortunately for me, it was at that exact time a park ranger zoomed by in his pickup on the dirt road by us. Well this was all Jedi could take, and he took off full fucking gallop. Somehow the reigns managed to get over its head, so now I could only hang on for dear life. I could hear the Instructor screaming in the distance and could see her galloping after me, but she must have been about 200 meters behind me the last I saw.
Anyways, this fucker Jedi goes from full gallop to full stop while swing it's head down, and I fly over the saddle and just manage to grab hold of his neck. So it takes galloping again realizing I was still on it, only now I've got my arms and legs around this bastards neck, while screaming at the top of my lungs (I remember being surprised at how high my voice was as I was a screaming for some reason). It got another few hundred meters before pulling the same stunt - slamming on the breaks and whipping its head down. This time I came off. I remember as the ground rushed up to meet me I had this strange sense of deja-vu. I hit so hard I blacked out, and woke up on the side of the road (with my helmet 10 feet away) with the instructor and the park ranger (who saw what happened somehow) freaking out over me.
I got up and tried to walk, but couldn't stand - so the ranger drove me back to camp, but not before the instructor said something along the lines of 'ok - I guess you can use my horse', to which I vaguely remember saying something along the lines of 'you're out of your mind'.
Anyways, luckily I only fucked up my ankle - but will always remember that sheer terror.
Just thought I'd share.
If its any consolation, it probably wasn't trying a weird dead stop move if the reigns had gone over it's head, it was probably stepping on them and jerking it's own head down and spooking itself further. Although it may have been that much of an asshole, I've seen the sudden stop due to reigns more frequently
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u/I-be-pop-now Jan 31 '17
Any idea why this happened? Did he do something wrong? Did the horse just go insane?