man, all those horrible accidents, they are so scarey to think of!
And I know any horse can spook any time. But in the tv show, my gosh
the chaos and crowds and noise that horse was exposed to... maybe he
hit an electric wire? I wish I knew what would make him spook like
that. If he wouldnt spook at jumping a giant fake tree surrounded by
potted daisies while a crowd of thousands cheered and waved flags and
hot dogs... what would spook him? I guess you never know! I would
guess tho, that it was a perceived unbearable pressure that did not
relent, a common thing for bolting horses. I saw Julie goodnight on
tv recently. what everyone else calls "desensitization"-- She calls
"bombardment". I thought that was interesting. and an apt way of
putting it. If you think of it as bombardment then maybe you would be
less likely to go past the point where the horse is no longer using
the thinking part of its brain but the reacting part, a useless
learning phase. if you saw the movie seabiscuit, or better yet read
the book since it is way more descriptive in the book, the jockey, Red
whatshisnanme, when he had the crippling injury that kept him out of
racing for a while... was from a 2 year old green race horse bolting
for the barn and being so mindless with terror he tried to go between
two poles so close together there would be no way a horse could pass
thru them, and he was at a gallop. That was mindless panic. I would
think Theodore was in a mindless panic and I wonder why. Thats what a
true bolt is, mindless panic.
Janice
even good horses have bad days sometimes.
