[QUOTE=beowulf;8687925]
Bucking at the canter is almost always a sign of discomfort. If he wanted you off he’d be bucking at other gaits any other time.
Involve a saddle fitter and chiro, I’ll bet it’s physical. Hope you are able to dust off your wounds![/QUOTE]
I disagree that bucking at the canter always means pain… in the sense that there’s a lot of it and you should chase it. Sure, try to rule out a physical cause. But remember, too, that bucking while canter is pretty easy for the big horse bred to have a powerful hind end. And if he discovers it earns him a rest, it’s natural that he’d use his spectacular physical equipment in order to get what he wants. Nothin’ wrong with that!
I think you have a basic training problem-- he’s behind the leg, and now it’s limited to the canter. He’s smart enough to know that. There are so many solutions, if you stop worrying about the buck and think, instead, about the behind-the-leg problem.
I had a very good, very smart and articulate cowboy help me with a horse** who had this problem. The horse would buck and I’d punish him (he got a smack with my stick)… and then he’d buck in response to that, not straighten up and fly right. Cowboy said “Meh, it’s easy for him to buck in stride” and “You need to find something he doesn’t like, and that’s safer for you.”
His idea was that this horse, like yours, was behind my leg at the canter. Rather than ride straight ahead, he had me trot down the quarter line or so, turn toward the rail and ask for the canter just about as we started to come out of the turn. The idea was that when I asked, he had better go… really squat down and gallop off. This was the classic western rollback. The point was that the horse couldn’t do much but turn and canter, so I was safe. And being safe, I was free to get sharp with my stick so as to teach him to respect my leg… thus correcting the basic problem.
** The horse in this case was kind, not calculating, and wasn’t catty-athletic. So use this technique as you have the balls to, depending on how committed this horse is to dumping people.
More recently, a dressage trainer who is a fan of double lunging helped me work out a similar problem with a differently-minded horse on the ground. In essence, we still worked on her being behind the leg, but we had the discussion about her need to go forward when I asked. And this meant no bucking, no plunging, nothing but cantering would get any praise or peace. But she got plenty of praise while she was cantering around for a couple of laps. Between a lunge whip and having two reins, I could teach this mare that, yes, she could canter politely and promptly, even with contact. Furthermore, I could limit her or even shut her down if she got wound up and decided to try plunging around instead of bucking.
Really, babies are wont to try all sorts of strategies for getting behind your leg. Bless their hearts! The don’t know that those aren’t civilized… or not worth a try since cantering on the aids is just.so.hard!
If you have jumping in your background and you are comfortable going for a little gallop in a two-point, this can help, too. Perhaps this is something I’d try after I had taught the horse on the lunge that he could, in fact, keep cantering, and maybe even do that with some contact. I think you have to be willing to go forward, even in his big (big, big) baby bounding canter. And if you get off his back, he has less reason to feel that stuck him in the back. Bridge your reins and keep tall with your body, maybe with your hands, though!
I hope some of these ideas are useful to you.
