A photo shoot that nearly went horribly wrong. Arabian show horse freaks out and starts swimming out to sea. They found him three miles out.
You can’t exactly pull a horse into the boat with you. 
They had to guide the exhausted horse back to the beach. I never knew horses could swim this well.
The horse is ok and maybe he’s heading to London for the Olympics? LOL
few more pictures here. The close up of the horse in the water is amazing.
Wow, that was quite the panic reaction. At least the horse survived though.
What a cool story. I love the thought process behind the horse’s actions, though. “A GIANT WAVE CRASH SCARED ME! I KNOW! I WILL RUN INTO THE WAVES, SURELY THAT IS A GOOD IDEA!”
If you think that’s incredible, he only came in 3rd in the triathlon.
What better way to conquer your fear than to run head first into it?
Elephants are also surprisingly good swimmers, and have been found miles out to sea.
Yeah but you have to admit the bicycle phase is not exactly designed for horses.
StG
Probably out to visit their cousins, elphant seals.
Was his name Bob?
StG
So I was on my oil rig and this horse swam by…
Hey, works with burning barns.
Horses can be smart, but not SMART smart. They’re herd herbivores, which makes working with them weird if you’re used to domesticated cats and dogs. Their actions often don’t make intuitive sense to us with our eyes on the front of our heads and all.
Its been said the reason elephants go out to sea is to form cocoons which later hatch as whales. Whether this is true or not may be debatable, but the movie “Cocoon” was based off this phenomenon.
I’m not entirely convinced that “thought process” and “horse” go together in a sentence like that.
In case people think I am pulling their legs, here is a video of some elephants swimming in the Indian Ocean.
Whoa, that happened here in Santa Barbara. I was noticing that the photos were attributed to the Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol. They do pretty good work and saved my ass when I turtled my catamaran and couldn’t right it.
The owner of the horse is the ex-wife of movie producer Jon Peters.
Actually running straight towards the enemy is a pretty good survival stragery. If it’s a wolf or other smaller-than-you predator, you might trample it, or at least surprise it and give yourself some time to scram. You can’t trample the ocean, but horses don’t generalize all that well.
Anyway - yeah its surprising how well horses can swim. Their “paddles” are pretty ineffcient, but they are quite bouyant.
My friend has a horse summer camp where every year as a treat the kids swim the horses in the pond on a hot day. the horses enjoy it. Except… She’s got one horse – otherwise one of the more athletic horses she’s got – who can’t swim. Just flails and sinks. It’s pretty strange.
According to the Daily Mail piece linked in the OP:
So, yeah, it sounds like the wave crashing spooked him, but it was the people trying to catch him that prompted him to try and become a seahorse.
I just wonder if any sharks went to investigate him and were like “WTF!? I’ve never seen anything like that before!”
Oh lawdy, how did I miss making this pun the first time around??
Or, if he was waterskiing, Skip.