I might check his feet. My guy was bucking occasionally, including at the walk, and objected to the girth being tightened under saddle. just found out he has navicular, and the only symptom was tripping.
have you also pulled a Lyme titre?
1 Like
Video would help. Have you tried a treeless or bareback pad?
First off, thank you all so much for your thoughts. I very much appreciate all the suggestions!
Also, a short update:
Rode the beastie Friday and had very little success. I tried the “let’s just stand here until you want to move and then stand some more” approach. Turns out, I have done a very good job teaching him that “woah” means we are going to hang out here until I want to move on. Overall a lot of our night turned into disengaging the hindquarters so that he had to move his feet instead of being able to buck. We were able to finish with a lap of walk without argument.
Yesterday has made the answer very clear however. My boyfriend(not a dressage rider, but a very good rider on the breed circuit) offered to hop on him for me after I couldn’t even manage a lap around the ring at the walk. He put my gelding to work in the long lines and then hopped on. My horse considered trying to buck with him undersaddle, but overall was very good and went freely forward with not more than a token resistance. So, it is clearly me that is the issue. While it most likely originated as a pain issue, he now has learned that I can be bullied. Guess this means that I have a lot of work to do in pulling up my big girl panties and riding through it! Being an assertive rider has never been one of my strong suits!
Hopefully I’ll be able to update this thread in a few weeks with a positive update!
Glad to hear it doesn’t sound like a pain issue. Sorry to hear it means your horse is being an a$$ to you! When I’m diagnosing whether it’s behavior or pain I would do the following.
-
Lunge him in full tack, girth fully tightened. Is he good? If so go to step 2. If not, try again in several different saddle/girth combos (find a treeless to borrow if you can to be definitive). If good, it’s your tack. If not, likely behavioral.
-
Fill an old pair of jeans full of sand and put them on his back, securing the legs to the saddle so they don’t spook him. With added weight, is he good? If so, go to step 3. If not, likely pain related where weight exasperates it. Saddle fit, back pain likely. Make sure he’s not just spooked by the pants if he’s bad. Try it a couple times.
-
Find another rider to get on him? Is he good? If so, likely behavioral. Try several times to confirm. If he is still bad, likely pain related.
If it’s behavioral and you can afford it, I would get a trainer out to get after him and then have you get on. Slowly cut back the trainer time each time (as long as he’s being good for you) until he’s good for you without the trainer getting on. If you have confidence issues this will be best for you both. Horses like that can wreck the tiny shreds of confidence you have in no time flat! If you don’t have a trainer then see if your boyfriend can do it. Get him in the habit of working again and BIG corrections for bucking. No no no! Get that eliminated from his vocabulary. My horses think they are going to DIE if they buck with me. Usually takes one, maybe two, times and then they decide that is no longer a smart or viable option. I do not accept bucking, biting, rearing, bolting or kicking. It is met swiftly with severe consequences so I don’t have to deal with it over and over in the course of our life together. Hasn’t failed me yet. I wish you the very best and STAY SAFE! No sense in pushing it and getting hurt if you don’t feel up to it. Just save some $ and hire someone to come help if your BF can’t do it. GOOD LUCK!!
At this point I’d try an animal communicator.
The 'Bute tes’t is also something else that I’d try.
How does he behave when there is a different rider on him? Oh… I see he was better for your BF…
My two cents:
-
If you truly believe that your insecurity is feeding your horse’s insecurity, SEEK HELP from a qualified person. You won’t fix this on your own and you need someone to train you as well as your horse.
-
Qualified person with a history of results. Accept no less.
-
The sand filled pants thing…some horses simply don’t tolerate this. Ask me how I know.
-
the “lets stand here” approach can be interpreted as a tacit reward to your horse. i agree with the BF approach, make your horse go forward. Put down rails he has to go over or through and really mix up the work. Do not reward stubbornness.
-
Please recognize that if you’re not comfy being the dominant one in your partnership (I hate the term “aggressive rider”), get help. QUALITY help. Aggression isn’t going to help you. Timing and feel will, and your horse will respect you for it. In the mean time, getting hurt isn’t going to help you at all. The best thing you can do is hire an experienced person to put you and your horse on a different path - one that works for the two of you.
-
Re BF, some horses are so interested in the new rider that they “push through” their health issue because they’re focused on something else. Don’t assume that one ride means that he’s “cured” or that it’s your bad riding. Get a good trainer to come out and watch you ride AND ride the horse.
3 Likes
Having a rib out can be very painful. I work with problem horses and had one come in a few years ago who would buckle his knees and drop to the floor after being saddled and then asked to walk forward. People told the owner all sorts of things and tried shaking ropes etc at him, said he was dominant.
Nope.
He had a rib out.
Osteopathic vet came and put the rib back. End of that problem. He also had Lyme.
I would wonder if your horse’s feet are sore. That often leads to tightness in the shoulders. I would get a chiro/acupuncture vet out immediately. Unless you have one that is and Osteopath and then I would start there.
Thought I’d update on my case - vet was out on Friday and so far we have diagnosed “heel pain” - with the block he was much sounder. We took a bunch of films and that’s where it gets a little tricky. Saw a few possibly widened channels on his navicular bone, and maybe some sidebone going on, but hardly definitive enough to hang a hat on. These are the first rad’s ever on this horse so it is hard to say - nothing to compare them to. And because of his breed, age, etc, hard to say for sure what we saw on the navicular bone is in fact problematic. In the vet’s opinion, if he were a QH he’d be slightly more concerned and not even then not all that concerned at this point.
Sooooo, we talked options: A) conservative- change up shoeing (which he said he wouldn’t change much to the current work other than bring the toe back a hair, and maaaaybe add a pad down the line), do some bute, see if things change. B) inject and see if that makes a difference C) schedule MRI down at the clinic.
I opted for option B to start, with options A (shoeing changes) and C ( MRI), waiting in the wings. When the needle went in, a bunch of fluid came spurting out - definitely lots of inflammation present. I am to let him have paddock turnout and then on Wednesday do some light work and see what I’ve got. Basically we’ll know if the injection had any positive impact within 7-10 days. I can tell you from handling him just yesterday that he’s gone from a dull, blah kind of dude to being very spicy, with a very bright eye. He’s also cleaning up all his hay- which we’ve always kind of struggled with. I suspect he is feeling much better, but won’t know soundness-wise for a couple more days.
I’m also not sure if and how the back/SI is involved. It makes sense to me that if the hooves were hurting everything else would too- I guess there is a chance that once we relieve whatever is going on up front that the back may sort itself out. But I guess there is also the chance that there is an SI issue as well. Time will tell with that one.
I have a horse who does something similar - it is a “go forward” problem with him. When he is done working, he just plants the feet and bucks. I started just doing a bunch of TOH. Forces him to step up and under so he can’t physically buck.
It’s super annoying, but the more I do it the less he tries to buck.
Not saying your horse for sure doesn’t have any injury, but it just sounds behavioral to me.
This is a late posting but maybe it will help. I have a horse that bucks and I am now understanding as to why she does. I have had this horse for 17 years and one comes to understand a horse’s behavior when you have it that long. I had gone to trainers, saddles, dental, etc. Nothing wrong. Two things here with my horse: too much pressure in the mouth and with the legs. If your legs are positioned too far back, too much touch onto its sides, it will halt or not want to move. Too much rein pressure. The weight of the reins is enough pressure. This will create confusing cues caused by the rider. Some horses are more tolerant to pressure and others cannot tolerate it. Second: horse could have vision problems to where it cannot readily focus and understand what it is seeing. I can ride my horse with gunfire (shooting ranges all around me), semi trucks, cars, pheasants flying up, etc. Just recently, the winds kicked up and the brush was moving hard while another pheasant was running around in the ‘moving’ brush. After several times of trying to calmly walk my horse past that spooky area, she erupted into a temperamental buck. From what I have read and am inclined to agree with, my ‘smaller eyed’ horse has problems with vision compared to the larger eyed horses. Horses like that can be more temperamental/spooky.
I third the animal communicator
Re bold: I dunno about that… is your BF significantly taller/shorter, heavier/lighter than you? Longer/shorter legs?
A different rider being successful, to me, doesn’t rule out pain and rule in horse being a bully, especially with just one ride. Can BF ride horsey for, say, a week to see if familiarity brings back the behavior?
I would wonder about ulcers [or as others noted the rib out], not to trot out the most used issue, but because it seems it got worse after being away from home [stress], and not getting turnout/grass [more stress]? And it also seems to start as a response to leg aids [?]. How do you do transitions on the lunge? Since he doesn’t do this on the lunge, I wonder about using those cues when you are riding, ie trilling ‘trot’ to trot, a kiss for canter? What does he eat- hay and grain?
