I have ridden plenty of horses that get a bit hot and jiggy when ridden out on the trail alone, but my new mare is a bit beyond what im used to and comfortable with. She is a 10 year old quarter horse. We can ride out to a certain point and then she decides she does not want to go anymore. She will plant the breaks, and then start backing up. I make her do circles both directions, this sometimes leads to rearing but we can get past this point. After that point she gets increasingly hot, eventually spinning around, walking sideways, backing up, trying to trot and jig, sometimes bucks. It feels like she is about to explode underneath me. I try to get her working and thinking about something else but by this point she will not circle or bend just tries to turn and bolt. I get off and lunge her both directions, but then sometimes i cannot get back on her because she is so worked up. She is wide eyed and scared of everything around her. I bought her 6 months ago, and she was sold to me as a solid trail horse. I longest i have been able to trail ride is maybe 45 minutes. Today we made it 10. Its winter now she isnt being ridden as often. Riding with others isnt an option for me i can only ride alone.
i fell so hard for this horse, she is such a beautiful mover wonderful personality at home, i would really hate to sell her.
Why would you hate to sell her? She isn’t what she was advertised to you as, and you aren’t enjoying riding her. Do you just hate to admit defeat? (I would too. 
)
I see so much potential in her, and yes i would feel rather bad giving up on her so soon. i would miss visiting with her and seeing her outside everyday. My other horse would also be incredibly lonely living by herself.
Is your other horse reliable on trails?
Can you recruit anyone to ride Other while you ride Scaredycat on short trail rides?
My OTTB at first treated trails like The World’s Longest Post Parade. Jigged the whole time.
Even in groups.
Sometimes we’d get all of 100’ from the barn & I’d take his jiggy self back & work him in the arena until he asked to walk.
What finally worked was a fellow boarder with a BTDT horse (former Jumper).
We’d go out together, Vern would snort & spook, other horse would ignore the shenanigans & eventually trail was no Biggie.
Not a total Fix, as every Spring our 1st ride out started jiggy, but after a couple years I could take him on trails solo, even bareback.
BUT:
He was mainly my Show Hunter.
At which job he excelled.
Don’t know that I’d have persisted if I wanted him just for trails.
You have just 6mos invested.
IIWM, I’d cut bait - you were sold a ringer.
Your other horse will survive until you find a willing & capable trail horse.
My other horse is not sound.
I keep my horses at home and dont have any friends that i ride with, nor do i have a arena atm. When my other horse was younger id ride the first few weeks in the arena when i used to board and that helped alot to prepare her for trail riding. I actually bought this horse as a potential barrel horse since my other went lame, but her previous owner only ever rode trails on her. I was hoping to trail ride her to the nearby arena but we cant even get that far.
Can you find a trail horse trainer? Such a person may be able to get miles and TIME on her out on the trail. You could go ride the horse there to work thru her issues under supervision, to the point you can take her out alone at home. If horse is not going to work for trail, trainer should tell you. Then you can move the mare on, get something you can actually use.
We have all fallen for a pretty horse sometime, then they don’t work for what we want even though “they could be so good at it!” We have had more than one flunk out here as driving horses. If they don’t drive, they can’t stay. Driving is our main interest, riding ability comes in second.
I would check with your local or state area trail ride folks, ask about trail horse trainers to find a good one. The best I have heard of never advertises, yet it is his full-time job. His horses get a lot of miles daily and weekly, very solid when he says they are done, alone or in groups.
Sadly at this time i just cannot spend money on a trainer since we are saving to buy a house this spring.
I wouldn’t call this mare straight ahead hot. Rather she is balky meaning refuses to go forward and is quite happy to up the aggression level if you pick a fight with her. This is not specific to trails. She will do this in the arena and on barrels if the mood strikes her.
My mare is a bit this way but more likely to display it in an arena than trails. In hindsight I see how foolish it was to fight her. What she remembers is the fight. You are training her to fight.
Solutions require thinking outside the box. The best way to get a herd bound balky horse moving on trails is to go with another horse.
Sadly going with another horse isnt an option either 
thats why I specifically asked them is she was comfortable riding out alone when i purchased her.
Well I think you are out of options.
You’ve got an angry dominant mare on your hands, and she has your number now. She has learned to fight you.
If you can’t change the rider or the situation, there is no magic bullet to fix a balky angry horse.
You might consider stopping riding and doing ground work. Handwalk her out along the trails, let her graze, establish a relationship. Then try handwalking out, riding home. Hop off if she tries to bolt home.
Teach her some clicker tricks so you have a paradigm for rewards.
Eventually start riding her to just before the point she loses it, then turning around, going home, going out again.
Also make sure that your saddle fits and her feet don’t hurt.
Basically you need to get her to forget about fighting you which means never getting into a situation where she can fight.
It’s not what you wanted from this horse but it will make you a better horse person.
True dat!
I posted earlier on a barn sour horse, and will update that thread, but it was really balkiness, not barn sour and he continues to do it – but, I have a had a good six weeks with him now and it is because I stopped trying to MAKE him do anything.
My prior training said “up the pressure, don’t let him get away with it, make him go forward.” So I did and he became increasingly stubborn. So then I concentrated on what we could do, which was arena (although he was nappy there, too), but when he acted resistant we just changed what we wanted and tried again a few minutes later. Arena work became easier and so we added trail back in. Still not perfect, but resistance greatly reduced.
My horse is a very smart horse and is always testing, but it seems the secret is to ask and wait for him to think about it. No immediate upping of pressure for not responding. If it doesn’t happen, ask again.
That seems to have built a trust level and it is almost like a switch turned on and the – knock on wood – last six weeks have been good. However, I am not asking him to go out alone for awhile. I want every experience to continue to be good as we forge a new relationship. So we get further along the trail, solo, but turn back if we manage to get back the point he resisted before.
The Warwich Schiller video subscriptions were suggested to me and they are good – they show you the bad and the good – they might be helpful.
I wouldn’t give up unless time is important. This has been over a 6 month process with my guy.
My mare was cranky in the arena.
What worked finally was riding her in the arena gate, walk around, out, loop on trails, back into arena, rinse repeat. Refuse to get in a fight. We did that 9 times a day 3 days running. Reprogram what she thinks happens in the arena. Then we were able to move on to a normal 30 minute schooling session.
But she still isn’t 100% fixed. The attitude is still there and sometimes we need to go back to just walking in and out of the arena.
Tough situation. It sounds like you are not comfortable riding her when she is very wound up/resisting. (I wouldn’t be either) I like the idea of doing some groundwork about leading, maybe even some targeting. I would use a rope halter and handwalk her out on the trails you want to ride. There is a good chance that she will be fine being led. If she starts to balk, I wouldn’t fight her. Stop, let her stand (but nothing else) Eventually she will relax and you can ask her to move on. When she is relaxed about walking a trail loop, try riding it. Again, just stop when she starts tensing or balking. Wait. Wait. Wait.
You may have to log some walking miles on the ground, but you should be able make her more comfortable and confident even on new trails. If she gets worried, the stop and think routine will help get her past.
Not every horse will be comfortable on trails alone, but most can learn given the time and training. Since the main resource you have is time, use it to slowly progress towards your goal.
Where are you located? Maybe someone would be willing to meet up with you for some rides?
I had the same issue this past spring. In my case, the horse only had about 20 rides on her and had never been on trails.
Instead of fighting her, I took her for long walks on the ground. And I continued to ride her at the barn.
We progressed from the arena to riding around the barn yard and up the lane.
She was still balking and her favorite thing to do was back up. She never reared or bucked, but I didn’t ever try to fight her.
Instead I took her for walks in hand around the trails until she was ok with going out. I could walk her out and ride her home with only a little jigging. I then tried to ride out again. She would still give some resistance. But I was able to get her to go.
We had one truly amazing ride and I am holding onto that memory, lol. 2.5 hours in the woods. It was wonderful.
What is working for us now is patience. If she balks then I make her stand still facing the direction I want to go. We stand for as long as it takes. But once she steps forward she gets a pat and we continue on like nothing happened.
She is still opinionated, but the stops are becoming shorter and less frequent.
My horse is an Arabian and is sensitive, but not hot. I have no doubt she would have turned into a monster if I had ever forced the issue.
Are you able to ride often enough so that you could start where she’s comfortable and then gradually expand her comfort zone? It would be a project, but maybe if you could think of her as terrified rather than uncooperative, it might be easier to settle for what she can do rather than what you’d like to be able to do with her?
I once rode a horse exactly as you described , she was owned by a vet who was too busy and so she was my free trail horse. I could only ride her with other horses never alone and even then she would act like your horse.
Eventually the vet decided to sell her and she FAILED her vet check. The horse had kidney problems but we never knew she was ill.
Since then when a horse exhibits Hot behavior and especially the Balk you describe I always look for health reasons for the behavior and almost always find out there is something wrong, more frequently orthopedic which really sounds like your horse. She goes a certain distance and then maybe the pain is coming on or just sh’s had enough.
we need to be careful to always assume behavior is the issue.
I kick myself for not looking more throughly at my spooky gelding. He had never been anything but a trail horse and I had him since he was two but always nervous and jumpy … Taking advice from COTH i finally had him looked at and yep he had ulcers .
With treatment his behavior improved 80%., still a forward horse but no longer so jumpy
I signed up just to respond to your post. The best advice I was given to fix a sour horse is to make being out on the trail preferable to being at home. Before you get to the point she wants to bolt head back home but then work her harder than you think you should (to the point you feel a little mean) and then go back out immediately. Ride for a bit and then go back home. If you still had problems go back and work her hard again. Repeat until you get progress. A few days to a week of this should fix the problem. I know some people won’t agree but it fixed my problem in two days.
“It is winter now and she is not being ridden often.”
First half is a problem. 2nd half is a bigger problem. Study my signature until you really understand it.
This ^^. What you’re describing is exactly the sort of thing Warwick gives you all the tools to fix.
The most recent video series in the subscription is about an eventing horse who would balk, rear, spin and want to run back to the barn while out on the cross country course. Which is pretty much the same as refusing to go further down the trail.
Because he was under some time pressure he didn’t do all of the steps with her as slowly as he would have otherwise, (for example, he didn’t perfect standing still while mounting before going on to other things, she may still walk off as soon as he gets on.) But that’s actually good because we get to see some of the unwanted behavior. (If you do all the groundwork and basic exercises, the original bigger problem you wanted to work on tends to… just go away.)
I’m not saying it’s a magic fix for every horse. It takes A LOT of time and concentration. If you really like the horse and want to work on it, there’s a 7-day free trial, and I’d suggest joining the Facebook group and asking for suggestions on which videos/series to focus on. Then watch as much as you can for a week, and decide if you want to continue the subscription.
