Question
riding her
Hi I have a 4 year old mare who has been recently broken. When we first started lunging, she used to buck and take off when I asked for canter whether I had the tack on/off. We got past this and she lunges fine, no bucking or taking off. When she had been lunging correctly, I started to ride her, and she was fine, we got as far as walk/halt, halt/walk, walk/trot etc, basic transition, over trotting poles and small cross pole jumps. Then one day she took off, galloped for 7 laps while bucking. I couldn't stop her. I tried the one rein stop, I tried pulling her into a circle, but she was way too strong for me and I had to jump off. She didn't spook, just took off. I enlisted the help of a professional trainer, and she is doing the same with her now. We had her teeth checked and they were quite sharp, so I thought that might have been the problem, but even after getting them done, she is still doing it. We have tried working her in a small arena and a large arena, but the outcome is always the same. Any thoughts? I think it might be something to do with her back, and am thinking of getting her back checked. If it is not her back, do you have any suggestions? as I am all out of ideas :( She does have another problem though, any time I need to pick out her back feet, she gets unbalanced and falls over, even when I have her on even ground, standing square.
AnswerHi Michelle,
When you say your horse gets unbalanced and "falls over" is that literal? Does she fall on her side or quickly steal her foot back and readjust? If she is really falling over you need to have a vet check her out ASAP! The advice I would give you is to see it from her point of view. There are people and trainers (most of them) who work on getting a horse to do things "correctly", but what does that mean? Is it all body position and correctly stepping through? She is new to this whole thing so what we want to do first (there is a time for body position etc.) is show her this can be fun! In the field when she is walking somewhere she wants to go her ears are up, right? We need to spice things up a bit and let her feel like learning is fun. You could start with checking out how she is with plastic bags. To be safe stand outside her stall and crumple a plastic bag around while holding it up, she will probably start trying to move to the back of the stall and walking away. Keep it up, not too loud, and watch her eyes, when you think she even thinks of looking at you stop and put the bag down. If she looks away start again. It seems odd but you are trying to show her she has the power to make the pressure of the bag go away. Work on this a little each day until when you lift and crumple the bag she immediately looks at you. If she tries to come at you in a rude way wave your hands in the air and be big until she goes away- we want her to look at you politely. The other thing I would do is work on teaching her to lift her feet but don't hold them. Slide down and squeeze to ask for it and when she lift it let go stand up and give her a pet. Work on these things and let me know how they go and we will come up with other ways for her to feel like she is the smarty pants who is figuring all this stuff out.
Best Wishes,
Caitlin Day Huntress
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