horse follow up question

Question
QUESTION: Hello, and thanks for reading this. I am training a horse to ride been training her for about year not counting winter weather was to bad to ride or anything. but got on her the first time this year afeter all our training last year and she would try to buck when i would trot her away from the other horses so is what i did (this might seem mean) was grabbed one rien turned her away from horses any way and i would swat her with the other rein while she was bucking on her butt and make her runn for like probly good 5 minutes away from the other horses? is this the right thing to do or not??? dont want to ruin her shes to good oof a horse.

ANSWER: ummmmmm, probably not the best way, but it may work.  I would rather see you prepare her better and build her confidence so she would not feel she has to buck since she is so insecure being alone with you and away from other horses.  As for the bucking, I got no problem what so ever for smacking her, but you have to make sure you timing is fast and right so the horse connects the swat with the buck, too soon and you cause it, too late and confuse the horse.  Swatting is a correction.......... Direction is better than correction....... so if you were communicating better, if you were reading your horse better, you know when she was going to buck BEFORE she bucked and you could give her direction to prevent the buck...that way you prevent the correction and the horse learns without correction.  Sometime a horse will challenge and needs a correction, but most times corrections are given when a horse is confused, nervous, scared, or lacks good direction...that is when a correction is bad.

I think this horse is bucking since it is trying to tell you it is not ready to trot off from other horses alone, that means you have not prepared her right and set her up to succeed, you are pushing too hard without the right preparation so the horse is failing.  Your way may work and is more what I call old cowboy style where you are showing the horse who is boss and making the horse listen.  A better more natural horsemanship way is to take more time, improve your communication, make sure the horse knows what the right answer is and set the horse to succeed without having to correct it.

This may sound like double talk, but the more you understand how horses think and react the more you would understand the difference.  As for you ruining a good horse, if you have to ask this question, I think you know you could be doing better.  The bigger problem is if you are training this horse and someone else is going to ride it, then you set the horse and the person to fail since they may not want to have to smack a horse to ride it, but if the horse is trained that it will learn that is what has to happen or it will go back to bucking.  Which is why I tell people, just because something works, it does not mean it is good for the horse.

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

QUESTION: thanks appriciate the advice greatly but she used to be ok with trotting away from other horses thats why im so "unsure" how to handle the situation. i didnt know since its been good three two months since i rode her if she was just trying to be a brat and get me off her back. and i didnt explain the situation threwly enough i was riding on about 55 acres and thee is a little horse pen with two horses in it when i would ride by pen and trot away other horses would nicker then she would buck. so my question now is do i need to spend more time preparing her or was that a correctional situation? that was out of her norm to do that she use to ride away from horses when we would trail ride last year. Thank you for reading this sorry for bugging.

Answer
I still think you want too fast after the winter lay off.  And you confirm this by saying she did not do this before.  So anytime, especially a young or newly started horse, you need to restart them every time there is a lay off.  They are young, they forget, they get smarter, they learn faster, and then they will test more.  You need to make riding a good habit, you create good habits by doing something successful lots of times. It always comes back to you and what you did.  So what ever you did caused this.  So pay attention, read your horse listen to your horse and don't put the horse is situations you cannot make sure he succeeds in.  

Correcting a young horse is not good.  Even if this was a correction situation, you could have avoided it or handled it better to avoid the correction.  You failed to do that and your horse failed.  Your fault, learn from it and don't repeat it.