Um, no. No horse is lying down during a hailstorm. They're under a tree or some kind of shelter. If they can't find shelter, they're standing up, butt to the wind, head down and ready to bolt at any second.
Horses are get spooked in zero wind by inanimate objects that they just saw the prior week, in the same spot.
Horses get increasingly skittish the higher the wind gets, even in "normal" conditions - I guess it makes it so they can't smell things downwind of them, so it's an evolutionary thing.
When wind gets high, horses get really spooked.
No way in hell would I put myself between or anywhere near horse legs during a tornado. That's just asking to die. From the horse, not the tornado.
The last 24 hours it's been very windy and raining hard. The same horse that I pull out for extra feed twice a day, every day for months saw me in a jacket with my hood up and refused to have anything to do with me until I pulled the hood down and then he figured "ok, I know that guy."
I once had the misfortune to be riding a horse when a hailstorm broke out. The horse closed his eyes and almost ran off a cliff; thankfully he hit a fence first and turned away from that.
you don't know it's a hailstorm till you're in it, prior to that it's just a storm you see coming across the plain. And while a singular horse does get skittish, the idea here I think is that the horse finds the calm presence of its owner to be soothing.
