I am thinking that spooking might be a horses job. Not the job I taught them - the job their Mum taught them, the job that is written on their bones.
If you think about it, most spooking is - just horses looking at a feature of interest and alarm or - using their body to communicate to everyone else (me, the other humans, the other horses) that we might also might want look at that feature of interest or alarm or - quickly ducking away from that feature "just in case".
Aren't these all mega important skills for a horse?
Could a horse be trying to protect BOTH OF US by using their posture and direction of travel and position in space to check something out, let me know it's there and potentially get the both of us the hell out of dodge if required?
I avoided a really, really nasty accident once because the pony (Johnny) I was on spun on a dime and skidded down a cliff. Many many other horse and rider pairs got tangled in a wire fence, came off, broke bones etc etc but because of my ponies quick thinking we both ended up safe and sound 3m downhill of the carnage.
I also had a different pony (Shakira) bolt suddenly on a trail and then several heartbeats later an enormous swarm of wasps rose into the air around us. Her marginally quicker reaction time meant we escaped basically unscathed - if we had waited for me to notice there was a problem and start kicking we would have been in a world of trouble.
I was riding a third pony more recently (Monkey) who stopped dead and stared fixatedly ahead down the trail. I realized after sitting and waiting a moment that he was watching a small domestic house cat who crouched down in a stalking position in the bushes ahead. I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for that little pony. I thanked him verbally for letting me know about the hazard, then explained that while I appreciated if we lived in another place big cats attacking us would be a real threat to our lives, we live in NZ and that was only a very small cat who was not a threat to us. We sat for literally another couple of seconds, he relaxed and once I could feel the bioavailability come back underneath me I gave a teeny click and he walked on bravely.
I can see people say "but Zoe, spooking is dangerous! What if you fall off your horse?" And ok sure I see where that is coming from but - the kind of gentle spooking I'm talking about isn't actually likely to cause me any danger ... most spooks a horse does while I ride are just gentle curves away from an object of concern, or a single big step sideways, or a dramatic flinch and halt, or a few steps forward in a faster, tense gait, or some random other athletic moment ... and then a return to "normal". - how is the horse meant to know that spooking is dangerous for a rider? I ask horses to do Way. More. Athletic. Motions. with their bodies undersaddle than they ever tend to organically produce spooking. How is the horse meant to know it's perfectly OK and safe for me to sit on them when we scramble over ditch, or do a flying change, or a trot leg yield - but not safe for the horse to offer much smaller movements autonomously?
And in my experience when you fall off (for any reason) a horse who has a half decent relationship to riding - that horse is horrified.
I'm deliberately excluding from this rumination three other categories of spooking - overwhelmed trigger stacked horses blowing up (and yes, pain is a trigger) - horses who have a nuero rigid routine of spooking at the same goddamn thing in the same spot every day. - horses who really don't know what they are meant to be doing in this weird ass human situation so they are being very cautious and would appreciate if someone just told them WTF was going on.
I'm leaving these categories out cause I don't have anything to add right now and I think these categories have different underlying WHYs.