trianing my pony

Question
Dear Lyn,
  My ponies name is Neville. he is a 13.2h, 6 year old welsh pony. I have been training him for the winter and now he is getting into all kinds of bad habits. when you first get on he is really jumpy. sometimes he will buck and rear. when you start trotting he will take the bit in his teeth and bolt. he will run straight at the fence and turn sharply and he'll through you into the fence. i have been told to just give up before he kills me. he has so much potential and i don't want to do that to him. can you please help me?


Answer
Molly,

Neville is a pony, first off, and they are smarter than horses.  That can make them challenging to train.  He sounds like he has some specific issues, though, from your description and they sure sound like they are related to his saddle.  There could be a couple of reasons for this. The first I would consider is the fit of his saddle.  Ponies are hard to fit in many cases because they usually have wide withers, often very low ones, and short backs.  If the saddle is not comfortable or causing him outright pain that could be a good reason for his behavior.  

If not sure how to check his saddle fit out, and you don't have someone around who really knows how to check a saddle then you'll have to do a couple of things.  


Set the saddle on his back, no pad or anything, and press hard down on the saddle with one hand and run your hand along the panels under the saddle on his back and check to see if the pressure is even along the entire length of the tree.  Make sure the saddle tree isn't too long for his back.  If it is, the back part of the saddle will dig into his back right where his kidneys are.  

Next, put the saddle and pad you usually use on him.  If the pad is white make sure it's clean.  If it isn't, put a thin piece of white cloth, and old piece of sheet or towel will work, on his back under the pad.  Ride him until he sweats under the saddle.  At this point in time I would have someone put him on a lunge line with you on him to keep him from running into the fence.  He's trying really hard to get you off his back which sort of says there is a reason, like pain, for it.  Horses just don't start gettting bad habits for no reason.  Think about it.  All the bad habits usually involve avoidance of something, which if analyzed are something causing the horse pain.  

In any event.  When you take the saddle off look at his back.  See if there are any dry spots or areas where the hair is ruffled.  Make sure you don't set the saddle too far forward.  The front of the tree should fit in the depression on his withers behind his shoulder blades, not on his shoulders.  But dry spots indicate areas where pressure is much greater, enough to dry the sweat.  Look at the white pad/cloth.  It should have a nearly perfect imprint of the saddle panels on it with no areas that are dry or darker than the other areas.  Both indicate pressure.  The channel down the middle between the panels should be clean and dry indicating that he had no pressure on his spine.  Saddle fit is one thing that has to be right with a horse.  Some are much more tolerant than others; note all the horses you see with white marks on their withers.  Ponies are often not tolerant, and he's a youngster to boot.  Think about saddles like shoes.  If your shoes don't fit, especially if you have to do a lot of standing and walking, you can't do it or at least not comfortably.  If you ever wore shoes that did not fit well for a length of time and stand in them you can kind of have an idea of a poorly fitted saddle.  

If the saddle fits well then let me know and I'll let you know what else to look at.  Once you have things that are causing problems corrected he should be fine.  If he trained well all winter then something is going on for him to start misbehaving now.  

Lyn