I did have one that would “hump his rump” after a hairy ditch jump. Nothing any decent rider would find unrideable. It was jut his way of saying," Zowie, I did it." A few hundred ditches later, he got over it.
If you are going to have friends ride him, be sure beforehand that they can really ride. In the meantime I’d have strangers stick to flatting him, and then start with teeny jumps.
The thing is, any misbehavior should be treated as such or it will turn into a learned trick. Though there are some exceptions, I typically will discipline any bucking even suspect that the bucking is rooted in pain, because they should never feel like it’s okay to buck (or rear). It’s amazing how fast they can learn it’s okay to misbehave. I may end the ride almost immediately, but I will absolutely discipline the buck.
Just pulling his head up and continuing on clearly hasn’t stopped his bucking, and you need to address it in a much stronger fashion. He needs to clearly know that bucking is NOT acceptable, and your correction should be as big as they need to be to produce that result.
If as you begin addressing this he starts throwing bigger fits…well, I wouldn’t be surprised. You’ll be getting after him for something that you’ve taught him is okay. So expect some resistance as you try to fix this.
I’ve had a few horses that would play a bit when fresh. And yes, maybe a long spot would trigger it. Used to hack my hunter in the ring then go out to the schooling area and pick a long spot over something small set up. If we started porpoising or head shaking too much, we hacked a little longer. When I had one that would school in the jumper ring earlier in the week in the blue ribbon classes, I didn’t care if he was fresh and played around some. It was never dangerous. We might have gotten a time fault going a little extra wide around the turn.
Ones that explode and really test your seat on landing…IME less likely to be freshness. More common possibilities include things like front foot soreness or other pain issue. I’ve also had some that didn’t like to touch the jumps, but unless they were SUPER green and that was really really exciting (see freshness behavior above), hitting a rail shouldn’t cause an explosion. They might jump the NEXT one super hard and show exuberance.
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