Saturday, October 31, 2009

Something scary for Halloween

A habitual bolter or a habitual rearer: which is scarier? It's a tie as far as I'm concerned. But there's something worse: flippers. Sometimes horses rear, lose their balance (especially if the rider pulls on their face), and fall over backwards. That's not flipping. A true flipper does what this horse does (BTW, pay no attention to the "Man dies!" description. It's perfectly obvious no one is even hurt.):

I'd never actually seen a true flipper in action. You can see from body language that both the groom and the jockey have a pretty good idea of what's coming, although it's interesting that the horse never really lays his ears back. Is it possible to rehab a horse that does something like that?

3 comments:

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

OMG that is SO scary. I agree - the horse doesn't seem upset and he flips so fast! Weird.

Helen said...

Actually, the horse was put down a few days after that incident. He was found to have a malignant brain tumor which was the source of the odd behavior (he was perfectly trained at one point)

halfpassgirl said...

Thanks for the additional info, Helen! I was actually wondering if there was a neurological explanation, because the horse just doesn't appear to be afraid or upset in any way. I couldn't find any additional info via Google.