Last reply says it all. If the horse hurts it is hard to fix a issue.
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Have you done any dressage? Or “”“flat work”""
This sounds really fixable with a month of dressage. The horse needs to learn to move his shoulders and sit on his hind end. You teach this by squares, shoulder turns, leg yield, etc. Then you add a pole and do a shoulder turn to a halt after it and build from there a tiny cross rail to shoulder turn halt etc. It will rebalance and teach him to use the hind end motor instead of the front red (shoulders).
Was this horse an ottb? Well they learn to power their bodies by their front end (shoulders) and you have to change the engine to the back. You do that with dressage.
Find a good classical dressage trainer. Make sure they don’t put this horse behind the vertical and deep because it will make him go even more on his forehand and wo t help you progress.
He has to find his hind end.
These two statements are contradictory. Perhaps you are thinking of dressage as strictly upper level work. In reality, it sounds like basic dressage work might help this horse immensely. I know horses that are well into their twenties that are schooling, and some happily competing, in dressage.
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Selle Francais (stated in first post).
“Horse has regularly done this and been dangerous for over a decade—professional trainer/owner refuses to ride him at this point, and he has already seriously injured OP on multiple occasions”
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“This sounds really fixable with a month of dressage.”
I don’t mean to be terribly snarky, and its not that your suggestions are inherently wrong or bad, it’s just that given this horse’s history your response seems particularly glib. Even if OP found a fabulous dressage trainer to work with, this horse’s issue over fences isn’t going to just magically disappear, let alone in a month. He’s probably already in his mid to late teens and even assuming it’s not a response to pain and it’s just because he doesn’t use his hind end, the muscle memory he has developed will take months, or possibly YEARS to correct, even with exceptional training.
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Maybe 3 months then but you would see a difference after the first month. Not being glib, just the right work teaches him to use his body correctly and horses that use their bodies correctly usually behave. It can be done.
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Oh, it can be done, but not in a month. Or two, or three. First you have to convince the horse that it’s better to do it this way, and then you can being to develop the muscles for it.
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It can be done by an advanced rider. It cannot be done by someone learning dressage.
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This. The advice given in this thread was for the OP in their particular situation.
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Mine too, however the OP doesn’t seem to be here anymore.
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My opinion still is that was a 13-14 teenager, fits the way such thinks and feels.
They can do any and all, even that they don’t really know much about.
All it takes is try and they obviously have thought all this thoroughly.
They have tons of that wonderful concern and try for it.
We all were that teenager at one time also.
Then life interferes, like silly forum adults that can’t seem to understand them, bah, humbug!
Once we think maybe that is the situation here, lets consider this:
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Well…OP is pretty clear they do not own the horse or control its management and states this trainer who has control of it does not “know dressage or teach it” so that might be why better training, extensive vet intervention or changing barns aren’t coming up as obvious options.
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I don’t think the OP is a teenager, just based on the timeline that we’ve got. But I think she’s probably in her mid to late 20s. Old enough to know better, young enough to think she can take on a (so far) intractable problem and fix it.
A long time ago, my brother-in-law, who was an amateur pilot told me a saying that is supposedly common in the amateur flying world: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”
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All the dressage in the world won’t fix the pain this horse feels in his front feet when landing off a jump. Dressage sounds like a good idea to try if he is otherwise safe on the flat, but at this point the jumping does not seem to be fixable.
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I’m sorry the OP has stopped responding.
I’m sure she feels piled on .
It is rough lesson in life learning to manage one’s expectations, especially when it comes to horses.
I hope the OP will seriously consider how this situation is affecting the horse .
I think that at this point for her, it is more about how fixing this horse will affect her than the outcome for the horse.
This is no way an attempt to demean her, attack her or question her character.
Just an attempt to think about what the horse is going through.
I don’t foresee a good outcome for this horse.
At 18 with "slight navicular changes " , and an owner no interest in riding it or retraining it .
I’m not sure why the trainer has let this go on for so long, but I think that in one aspect I do respect the trainer for opting for euthanasia as opposed to trying to rehome him to an unsuspecting, or unrealistic buyer.
Who wants an aging , difficult expensive horse that can’t ethically be ridden? Nobody wants a pasture pet that isn’t easy to handle and will just become more and more expensive to keep comfortable.
It’s just a sad situation. The trainer should have nipped this in bud a long time ago.
It’s sad.
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As long as she feels piled on and is not responding rather than spending Christmas in Hospital with a broken neck.
Most of us were that teenager, however in this case you have a horse who already has the measure of the ‘teenager’, and 'the teenager has already been injured coming off it AND the trainer/owner who does not know how to fix it.
The teenager can have all the try in the world, that is not going to help from a Hospital bed that could be permanent.
It is the silly forum adults who see their duty of care to hopefully save this 'teenager from a needless fall. That of course does not mean she will not come off her own horse. We can only do what we think is best, which in this case I think if we had access to her parents, they need to know what is going on.
I think they are non horsey and do not know what is going on.
Although I think as someone else pointed out this is not a teenager, so most probably not at home with their parents, so that point is moot.
Being kind is not forcing the horse to jump. Not having the fall and finding a trainer who does know how to teach kindness to horses.
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I also read the emotional state of the OP as being about 14. But they are also quite articulate so could be older but stuck in an adolescent relationship to the horse and world.
I think we do sometimes get questions where the problem is real, but the situation is altered to give the poster more status. The 14 year old knows what adults will tell her so tries out the question as a 20 something. In this case I think our advice is exactly the same despite whatever age!
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She said she was 27 lol
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Trust me, plenty of us continue to make stupid choices well into our 40s.
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