One Person Horse

Question
We bought our 10 year old daughter a 5 year old Appaloosa in August.  At the time he was broke to ride and was willing to stand, walk, trot and canter, serpentine through poles, and generally well behaved.  Both my daughter and I pleasure rode him in an outdoor arena and on trail rides.  We moved him from Montana to Wisconsin and began his formal training process (which is currently mostly indoors).  We board him with our trainer who does most of his daily care.  Since that time, while he is still very sweet and gentle when being groomed and cared for, he has become extremely stubborn under saddle.  He has bucked on our trainer and her daughter (13 years old) several times and generally gives a hard time when under saddle.  When my daughter gets on him he is goes back to being basically well behaved.  I couldn't believe what our trainer was saying as I rode him myself in August and had no problem.  So when my daughter was done riding him this Sunday I got on him and he immediately started giving me a hard time.  After 10 minutes I got off, my daughter got back on - and he was fine for her.  We would like to progress his training, but my daughter is not capable of that.  We have been riding with this trainer for over 6 years and she has trained our other horse beautifully - so I don't believe it is an issue of abuse by the trainer when we are not around.  I have read several website answers to others with similiar problems and they all say to have more people get involved in caring for the horse, but we are already doing that - in fact my daughter only gets to see him once a week at this point in time.  Any recommendations?

Answer
I'm honestly a little stumped on what may be causing this odd behavior in your gelding... however here are the two things I came up with:

1) Maybe your gelding is one of those horses with a very active mind... being ridden by the same person, every day, doing probably the same thing has made him a little sour to that person/routine. When your daughter, whom he only see's occasionally gets on him, its a change for him and gives him an open mindness...

2) However, you said he also becomes stubborn/sour again when you get on him for a ride, and you also don't see him daily (if I understood correctly). Sooo, perhaps he has some back pains and the lightness of your daughter prevents those pains from showing up. This could be caused by an ill fitting saddle, or mis-aligned spine/hips (more common than you may think).


So, my advice to you would be have the vet out for a thorough examination. Tell him/her that you suspect back or other pain in the horse.

I hope this helps you a little, and good luck!