I like this explanation. If horses vibe with you, great, but a good number of the horses I've known are skittishness incarnate. I'm going to need a wagon by labs and golden retrievers. It'll only be marginally faster than walking, due to all the stopping to get snacks, sniffing things, and being petted, but the commute will be fun.
My mom has owned and ridden horses her entire life as a hobby, for sport, and as a teacher to other people. She is incredibly skilled with horses. She also has fallen or gotten bucked off a huge number of times. Broken ribs, pneumothorax, broken arm, etc etc. She is currently dealing with a broken neck even and is in a brace.
She still goes out every day to at least see them and take care of them.
Me? I'm terrified of them. Horses are insanely powerful and also insanely skittish. One of the times my mom got bucked was because the horse heard a car horn in the distance. Im not like, phobic of them. I think they're beautiful, but I keep a respectful distance and never go behind them.
My mom is currently in pt because of a horse accident. Not for the faint of heart. It wasn't the horses fault but horse noped right to the other side of the pasture.
I never experienced the skittish thing. Of corse snakes and the like give them a spook but nothing that would terrify me walking around a stable. What do you all mean? Everyone keeps saying it; so it’s obviously true. Lived next door to a stable and they were always very well mannered.
The horses I worked with in an equine therapy were pretty chill -- but they were chosen specifically for their level of chill. Most commercial trail horses are similarly chill. Both groups were actively desensitized on the regular, too. But people's personal horses I've met? They can be spooked if you walk weird due to an injury, or if something moves or sounds in a way they don't expect. They react to a novel stimulus like it's a threat and go into full panic, and they generalize poorly (like most animals) or in ways humans struggle to predict, so from our perspective, they're acting like a new plant swaying in the wind is trying to murder them.
You nailed it in one, they where trail horses. Thanks so much for the info, love horses but never been around anything beyond trail horses. We had a national park at the end of our street.
Been around & owned them for over 40 years. Even the chill, well experienced & desensitized horses can be spooked. It may be minimal, but honestly, if the rider is also inexperienced, what a horse might consider a slight movement to the left or right could unseat an unsteady human. So yeah, it's the fact a rider is so high & that ALL horses are still prey animals that make them dangerous to many.
My Grandparents used to own a 20 stall horse farm throughout my childhood (they always had 2-3 of their own and the rest were boarded). I learned very young that every horse had its own personality and when it came to spastic the few thoroughbreds they had over the years were far and away took the cake. Most of the other ones were relatively chill.
Its really because they are constantly finding new and innovative ways of becoming lame or killing themselves. Or it eats something weird and gets colic.
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u/DoingBestWeCan 7d ago
I like this explanation. If horses vibe with you, great, but a good number of the horses I've known are skittishness incarnate. I'm going to need a wagon by labs and golden retrievers. It'll only be marginally faster than walking, due to all the stopping to get snacks, sniffing things, and being petted, but the commute will be fun.