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I've never experienced it (all the horses I've worked with that get extra feed-grain etc.- have been really slow eaters), but it sure sounds scary. I'm glad you guys were there and caught it and had the tools to fix it.

Choke is terrifying. The worst part is that once a horse chokes, they're like to again because it creates scar tissue along the inside of the esophagus, therefore narrowing the opening and making it easier for feed to get lodged. Also makes it almost impossible to tube them. We had this problem when one of the horses at school colicked really bad last spring. We couldn't tube him because of the constricture from a previous choke, which we didn't know he'd had.

He probably bumped the ethmoid turbinates, and that's why she was bleeding. They're little... balls up in the nasal cavity that are covered in very thin blood vessels. Because the blood is so close to the surface, it warms the air as it enters the horse's nose. I'm not giving a very good explanation... but they're pretty cool looking. We got to scope a horse in my equine science class. Anyway, they're really easy to bump, and they bleed very easily and profusely.

Choke in a horse is not the same thing as a human choking. When we refer to choking in a human, it means that something has "gone down the wrong pipe" and has lodged in their trachea, making it difficult/impossible to breathe. A horse choking can still breathe, as the object is lodged in the esophagus, not in the trachea. This is still a serious veterinary emergency, but it doesn't cut off their air supply and doesn't go into their lungs. Horses are obligate nasal breathers (they can only breathe through their nose, not through their mouths) so food can't get into their trachea from their mouths. Sometimes more minor chokes go unnoticed (I don't know how you wouldn't notice... they usually make it pretty clear that something's wrong! But I guess some people are just really oblivious) and the horse ends up starving to death because they can't get anything past the blockage.

That's really scary.
I've never experienced that, but i went threw something close like that.
A couple of months ago, I had one of the school horses Rosie out on the crossties and i fed her an apple slice. she was fine, until she started to cough. She was coughing alot, and shaking her head, and boogers were coming from her nose. I was freaking out. My first instinct was to get her some water and take the crossties off. So I went in the feed room and got a bucket then filled it up with warm water. I brought it back to her, untied her and let her drink it. She drank almost everything, then she coughed a little more, and then was fine. i was really scared and freaked out.