Why do horses think it's fun to give people heart attacks?

[AnnShh]

I went out to the barn today to see my boy (I have 12 days left until I have surgery to repair a tendon and will be on crutches for a while) and there was a horse laying next to the roundbale feeder. Not unusual for this particular horse- she and the other's in that pasture tend to lay around and nap in the hay that came loose from the roundbale, but I still like to check on them if they are down. She was fine at the time... but I made a mental note to check her before I left.

So I get my gelding, mess around with him a bit and the BO asked me to go blanket one of the mares up there. Blanket her, peek around the barn at the other mare who was down... still alert and fine, just napping like usual.

I went back to the barn to see if the BO wanted any more help and some guy comes barreling up the driveway. So she runs up to the house to see who it was, and the next thing I know she's running to the front pasture and yells that she needed my help.
So I run up there (my ankle is really thanking me now. You don't feel pain when you have adrenaline going!) and the mare was cast in the roundbale feeder... She was a little panicy at first but luckilly she calmed down and let us get the blanket off of her so that we could more easily free her... grab ropes and put them around her legs and rolled her back over.

Luckilly she's fine, not off at all and didn't have any obvious cuts or bumps... the BO put her in the stall for a while.

We all agreed that that was enough heart attack causing drama for the day.

 

[3CsMommy]

This is the second horse in a week I've heard of getting her feet tangled up in a fence or something. The other was at the Best Friends animal sanctuary and tried to roll in her paddock but hit the fence instead. Where's that "D'oh!" smiley when you need it?

I suppose it's hard for those of us who don't have horses, or haven't been around them much, to imagine them being so darn clumsy. :lol:

 

[Courtney]

Ugh, I think it's their special talent.

We had a horse at the barn I used to work at named Lethal Charmer. The name alone should have been a tip off to the type of horse he was. Anyway, he was a complete nut show. Put him in cross ties and used one of those shedding blades on him in the spring -- you'd nearly lose an arm. He'd yank the cross tie out of the wall and bite. One day, I came to the barn to feed and found him cast in his stall - only he'd taken it one step further and lodged his leg in the stall door too. It took three of us to hold his head down so he'd stop trying to get up, PLUS a shot of sedation, a metal cutter to cut the bolts and a saw to hack away at the door until a fourth and fifth person could remove the door. When we finally got him up and out of the stall, the vet checked him over and found NO signs of swelling, cuts, bruising, heat.. nothing. The five of us stood around and tried to figure out HOW he managed to cast himself and get a foot caught in the door - none of us, for the life of us, could figure it out. As one of the hands crudely put it, "if we cut his leg off and tried to jam it in there ourselves, it would be impossible".