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[RC] Horse Safety (or don't panic, HELP the horse) - Bonnie DavisWay back in the 50's and 60's horse safety and HANDLING A PANICKED HORSE used to be one of the stead fast clinic items. There aren't anymore safety clinics held -- I guess all the top trainers we have roaming the country have taught us horseowners how to avoid panic situations. Every horseowner knows the first thing NOT to do is panic!! It's help the horse. Panic later. Don't stand around screaming or yelling or shouting -- it's help the horse. And there are ways to do it!!!!! One of the first things as an 18 year old new horseowner I learn from an old 60 year plus (shouldn't probably say old since I'm now 62) cowboy was to 'pile on'. In other words, sit on the horse's head. When a horse panics or fights he throws his head around. Get on the horse's head and stop the head from being thrown around. Hold it down, the horse stops fighting. If the horse was on the ground and fighting to get legs loose or thrashing around, grab the head and sit on it. Push the horse's head on the ground so it can't move. I've been lucky, only had one of my own horses get hurt in 40 plus years. But I've seen others. One horse went into a fence -- the gal owning the horse was screaming like a witch for the horse to 'whoa'. About 6 people went running and everyone began yelling whoa. The horse wasn't going to whoa -- it wanted to get away. It was going through barbwire, kicking and crashing down the wire fence. He was out of his head. He'd fall, thrash, get up, fall, thrash...... We got there with wire cutters and my husband and I got a hold of the horse's head and I sat on the head. My husband put a knee in the neck just below the head. The horse lay perfectly still. It would start to kick but then stop. Another person got the wire cut, untangled the horse. We got some scratches, dirty, a lot of blood on us but amazingly, the horse was not seriously cut. (By the way, how many of you wear good fitting gloves when working or riding horses? That's the reason one wears gloves -- to protect your hands so you can pull wire from around a leg, pull out stickers from a tail, etc.) Again, one of the tricks to gentle a horse for old time 'horse tamers' (before they were called 'trainers') used to be to throw a horse and sit on its head. The horse can not get up when you sit on its head. The horse learned he was at the control of man. The horse got up when the man let him. Look at calf ropers, they knee the calf. My daughter works on a range. She gets to give the shots to BIG cattle. When she got tired of being tossed around, she began kneeing cattle -- they lay there now. I better clarify, by sitting on the horse's head I don't mean put your butt on his eyes. You put weight on the head -- a lot of weight to counterbalance an average 40 pound head. If I have to keep a horse down for a long time, I knee 'em and I've even seen year's-ago-vets lay a horse down, cover it's eyes with a towel or something, keep weight on the head for a few minutes longer and put three or four handfuls of dirt on the towel on the horse's cheek and then the vet walk away. The horse stayed down. Why? If a horse can feel a fly crawl on its skin it can feel three or four handfuls of dirt piled on its cheek. In the horse's mind, it couldn't move its head. Since I'm old (and senile) the problem with horseowners today is that we EXPECT it now. With the internet we have instant communications and so we expect someone to solve our horse problem -- now! We have all types of bits to control a horse. Buy a saddle for every horse we own and then have an AM saddle for morning riding and a PM saddle for night riding. Give our horses all kinds of 'goodies' to keep 'em happy. Have 'doctors' talk to 'em to find out how they feel about us. And then when they throw us off or refuse to load, hire a trainer or WE go to a trainer to find out what's wrong with US. It ain't us, folks, it's the horse!! Our horses are screwed up because we've made 'em that way!! We've allowed it. We're no longer the 'leader' -- we're their 'buddy'. We talk natural horsemanship but if you really want to see natural horsemanship -- look at the cowboys. They were 'natural' and some were mean! I'm a firm believer that my horses respect me and from respect, they do (yes, do) what I want them to do. I know my horses. If I yell at Sig -- he falls apart. Hit 'em, it'll take him four days to recover. Bud, yell at him and he giggles. So for Bud, a sharp whack with a whip or when saddling to make him stand still -- a swift kick with the side of the foot into the belly makes him 'respect' me. Yet each horse (and every horse I've owned) will whinny when I come in the barn (and that's not because they love me but because they know I'm going to feed 'em grain and they want me to repect them enough to feed both). What we need today are some of the 'old' cowboys who taught how to help in a panic situation -- keep a horse down, get a horse up. Why one should wear boots!! Gloves! What to do when a horse falls at a dead run. Where to go when the horse stumbles and falls off the trail. In other words BASIC safety and horse help......now for the person who ties their horse to the middle of the fence or the rearview mirrow on your truck, don't. Always tie to a solid object -- use the fence POST. Bonnie Davis ----- Original Message ----- From: "superpat" <superpat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Bonnie Davis" <horsecamping@xxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 12:39 AM Subject: Re: [RC] [Guest] Trailer ramps I have never seen a panicked horse wait for anything.....by the time anyone could even think about reacting, the horse would be struggling to free itself and get away from whatever monster was attacking...... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bonnie Davis" <horsecamping@xxxxxxxxx> To: "Heidi Smith" <heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Jim Holland" <lanconn@xxxxxxx>; "Ridecamp" <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:00 PM Subject: Re: [RC] [Guest] Trailer rampsI know its a stupid question -- but if a horse gets a leg under a ramp,whycan't the ramp be lifted and let the horse get leg out and then stand up? It's easier than picking up a trailer so a horse can get a leg out from under a step up.... Bonnie Davis ----- Original Message ----- From: "Heidi Smith" <heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Bonnie Davis" <horsecamping@xxxxxxxxx>; "Jim Holland" <lanconn@xxxxxxx>; "Ridecamp" <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 10:52 PM Subject: Re: [RC] [Guest] Trailer rampsBut I've never seen a horse slip and go under the end of a ramp and break a let. I've seen two of those with step-up trailers -- one whenunloading on blacktop at a horse show and the horse spooked andslipped,oneleg under the step up which the horse broke. The other on dirt whenthehorse 'fell' out, sat down and went over backwards with both legsgoingunder step-up. One leg broke, the other skinned to bone.I've euthanized one horse that broke a leg on a ramp (slipped off thesideof it and the leg went underneath it) and know of at least one otherthatwas euthanized at an endurance ride by someone else, and have likewiseseendegloving injuries on ramps. They are no assurance that such an injury willnot happen. In fact, given the narrower space underneath a ramp, if ahorseDOES slip off of one and get a leg underneath, an injury of that sort is more apt to happen than under the wider space of the step-up, although I know such injuries have occurred with step-ups as well. I didn't read Jim's response, but have been following this thread somewhat--and you can add me to the list of folks who have had both and whowill never again own a ramp. Although we had no trouble training any of ourhorses to load with the ramp, we had far more slippage and problem with theramp that I had EVER had with a step-up trailer (and yes, I've had theoldstraight-load two-horse variety where they had to back out, as well as having the open format where they could turn around if they choose).Theone trailer I had with a ramp I finally took to a shop and had the dang thing removed, as it was fortunately one that had full doors. 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