terrible for other riders?

Question
QUESTION: Dutchess, my horse, will not allow anyone to ride her except for me, including some horse trainers in the area that have a very good reputation. She will buck, bolt, and even rear--anything to get them off her back. Most of my friends and the people at the stable my horse is kept at think Dutchess is crazy, but she is perfectly fine with me 100% of the time; I don't recall her so much as kicking out, ever. I've tried lunging her while other people are on her, and she's absolutely perfect. She great when I'm teaching riders on her, but as soon as I stop concentrating on her she loses it! I would really like to have other people be able to ride her, and now some people are talking to the owner of the stable about kicking me out because she is so "wild." I understand that this may be entirely the fault of the other riders, but it's such a big difference between when I ride and when other people do. And I lot of these people are supposed to be a lot better riders than I am.

I'm 13 years old and have been working with horses (pleasure riding, trails, dressage, and a little jumping) since I was 5: taking lessons, working at barns, riding horses that just understanding or miles. I'm getting more and more into natural horsemanship, and it makes all the difference. Dutchess is kept 12 hrs in 12 hrs out with five other horses. She is an 8 year old TB mare, trained for racing (not sure if she ever made it to the track). Any ideas?

ANSWER: This, like most problems with horses, are a people problem and not a horse problem.  This horse has a bond and respects you as leader.  Anyone that claims to be better than you or calls themself a trainer, a name is nothing, SHOW ME.  Anyone that really understand a horse will know that it is never the horse's fault.  So anyone that labels a horse as mean, crazy, stubborn, does not understand a horse.  A horse is a simple horse, period.  They do what they are allowed to do and see the world as a horse.  In the horse world, you are either a higher horse or a lower horse.  If you are lower you better listen to the higher horse of you get kicked, bitten or chased.  If you are higher, lower horses better listen to you or you chase them and make them move.

Understanding horses is about understand herd behavior and how a horse thinks.  If you had someone at your barn who understood this, you horse would be fine with them.  Just because people say they know horses don't make it so, just because someone calls themself a trainer, don't make it so.  Either a person can handle a horse and make it respond without pain or fear, or they can't.

Your horse as been taught that she is high horse by people who don't know how to talk or communicate to a horse.  So they blame the horse since they can not admit their inability to handle and understand a horse.

If you want your horse to respect other people, have someone who understands horses handle her.  Personally, having other people handle the horse and ride her will probably make her worse and she will pick up bad habits that she will try on you.  I can tell if someone leads my horse one time.  Most people pull and yank a horse around by the lead rope, once they do that, my horse gets heavy and will not follow me on light rope, so I have to work him to show him that someone does not pull him to lead him.

You can try to tell people to carry a plastic bag with them when going out to pasture.  If you horse comes to them or approaches them, pull out the bag, shake it and charge the horse and make her run away.  After a few times of that she will not approach people.  This is a cheat and only allows those other people to continue their ignorance.

You are still young and have a lot to learn around horses, so don't stop reading and learning how a horse thinks, why they do what they do and how the herd works in the wild.

Hope this helps,

Rick

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I did read through your website, and it was really good. Seems like good horsemen all do the same things, even if they don't know the 'why; behind it. That would be why they're good horsemen--the stuff works!

Thank you very much for your time. Another question (if you don't mind): I'm thinking about purchasing another horse named Ariel. Ariel is 1/4 warmblood 3/4 TB, 16.1 hh, and about 14 years old. At the moment, she is pretty thin and doesn't have much muscle, but she's gaining condition and is really a great horse.

Her problem: she twist her back legs. If you stand behind her at the walk, you can see her put her hoof down normally, then twist the hock out (not every step, but sometimes). She doesn't do this at the trot or canter once you get good forward motion, and it doesn't seem to bother her at all. We haven't gotten a vet to check it out yet, but I've been told it doesn't effect her at all and improves with consistant work (however, it's hard to tell since she's so out of shape).

Have you ever heard of anything like this? Do you know if it will effect her athletic ability, or make her more suspectable to a break-down later? I'm not looking to do anything too stenuous with her (trails over medium difficult terrain, first level dressage, small jumps). Tell me if I'm not explaining the problem clearly...anyways, thanks in advance.

Answer
All horses are good horse, they just need a good herd leader to make them feel safe and to give them good clear direction.  I get questions all the time and people will give me the blood lines, breeds and other info about the horse.  If does not matter much, other than genetics, who the mom and dad are of a horse.  So don't let people get you into blood lines, how much money the mom or dad has won or other things, what matter is, is the horse healthy and will it work with you.  Most horses will work with you if you are clear on what you want, consistent, fair and understand how to talk to them.

The foot thing might be what is called cow toed or cow hocked.  Some people prefer this depending on what they are using the horse for, but for the show people who are only worried about conformation, it is not a desired trait.  It may be from muscle breakdown from not getting enough to eat and being out of shape.  Hard to tell, but horses are pretty hardy, so they recover fast and normally work break down too easy.  Most people nowadays only ride maybe once a day for a couple of hours, this is really nothing to a horse that is well fed and in shape.  Horses can work eight hours a day carrying someone over uneven ground, so I normally don't see any horse getting over worked.  However some do abuse a horse and come on twice a month and run the crap out of a horse and put him away sweaty, so don't do that.

If you feed him normally, give him shots, foot care, worm him, and keep him in pasture and not a stall most horses do fine.

Remember the more horses you have, the less time you can spend with each one, so it does not take long to get behind, get in a hurry and then you get into bad habits and the horse learns this and starts getting away with more and more and then you have to take twice as long to fix the problems.  

good luck,

Rick