Starry has a Meltdown
Late in the afternoon, the other day, I was out riding the loop in the back of of the barn property. At the beginning of the ride, both horses seemed a little nervous. Cole even did a little hop spook for no reason that I could see and then returned to his normal self, so it was no big deal.
After a few laps, Starry suddenly freaked out--big time--about something. His head was up; he was snorting and frozen in place. Kevin wisely got off, but he couldn't get Starry to take a single step without him panicking and trying to get away. They just kept circling and circling. After a few long minutes of this, Cole started to get upset, too. I got off. Cole relaxed, so I brought him over to Starry to see if he could calm Starry down, and it didn't work. I could see Kevin was getting scared. He was worrying that Starry would knock him down, and he was letting the reins get longer and longer--losing what little control he had of him. (Ironically, it is when you are worried you might get knocked over that you are most like to be knocked over.)
Starry was still trying to take off whenever Kevin tried to get him to move. He was simply terrified. They just weren't getting anywhere. By now, Kevin was holding the very end of his reins. I was close enough that I grabbed Starry's reins by his mouth. Now I had both horses.
I told Kevin to take Cole, and I would take Starr. Fortunately--and unfortunately--I have had way too much experience in situations like this. Cole did bounce a few times with Kevin, but soon, he was doing tricks, instead. Once Kevin got Cole doing his silly walk, I knew they would be fine. They did the silly walk almost all the way back to the barn.
Starry did circle a few times with me, but somehow, I got him to take one straight step. It probably helped that by now, Cole was silly walking home. I stopped Starry, gave him a carrot and asked for another straight step and asked him to stop, again. Even though he was hard to stop and it took more than one step, at least he wasn't in a total panic. I kept repeating this, and eventually he started to settle down, and we got back to our barn safely.
Kevin quit for the day. I took Cole back to ride some more--and that is when I saw the coyote. It was just a little one. Cole saw him first, but he wasn't afraid. He is a very bold horse. We watched him trotting around. Starry might have caught a glimpse of it--or even just smelled it. Some horses can be very troubled by them--like Ranger. I'm just glad it all worked out.
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