I have a four year old gelding who was born on my farm. He was handled frequently as he grew up, groomed, basic desensitization. He always behaved calmly. Though I’ve started horses myself, I decided to send him to a trainer that I’ve used before. After about two weeks, she said she thought he was too dangerous to continue with. She had done some desensitizing with him, but when she put a saddle on him, he bucked wildly and charged through the pen. She couldn’t make any progress with him, and he’d destroyed a panel on her round pen. So I decided to take him to another trainer I’ve used. He was very confident he could deal with him and get him going. After 3 weeks, he also said he was too dangerous, and he was not going to go forward with training him. The gelding did the same thing. He was unpredictable once saddled. He would blow up, buck uncontrollably, and charge the sides of the pen. He broke some boards at this trainer’s. When I picked him up, the trainer “demonstrated,” so I saw what he was talking about. So I brought him home and here he stands. I can work with him but I’m interested in hearing from anyone who has suggestions or similar experiences.
I’d have a full vet check done. If he has kissing spines or another back issue, it may be pain related.
What does the vet say?
Have you/the trainers tried different saddles, girths, and pads?
My vote is for pain. I would have an extremely thorough vet exam done.
As the others have said, Pain.
What does your vet say? Did neither “trainer” suggest the possibility of pain?
Some horses can be more “shut down” than accepting. These horses can get dangerous when the stimulus gets to be too much. Do you have any video of this experience? I’d also check for pain responses but I do think trainers sometimes misread this and push too hard.
Thanks, I will.
I agree. Thanks for the input.
Check for pain.
Start with ground work. He should come when called. Stand still without being tied. Lead with a click where he walks before you walk, halt before you halt when you say halt and back using a thumb resting without using on chest and saying back. Always 2 signals for back.
He should be able to be touched all over, stand still when he gets a fright, (this is different to desensitization which teaches them not to get a fright. This teaches them what to do when they do get a fright), give to pressure and last of all be able to lunge.
Teach to lunge with nothing on back.
He doesn’t take off when the saddle is placed on the back otherwise there is no way they could do the girth up. Teach him the girth is not going to hurt. How did they get the saddle off afterwards?
Put on a roller and do up girth so it is not touching. See if he will walk. Take him for a walk. All you need to do first day.
Slowly do up just tight enough to stay on and walk.
If that works it may be that he is cold backed.
Slowly do girth up tight enough.
Keep the same routine. Mine stands still when being tacked so no tying up. If he does buck, he goes forward and then turns and comes back to me by himself. He only goes about 10 metres on a bad day. He doesn’t normally buck at all if I:-
Groom saddle and girth areas. Put girth down on off side. Do girth up so not touching. Groom. Ask to back before doing up another hole. Continue grooming. Ask to back before doing up another hole. Pick out hooves. Ask to back then do up another hole and put on bridle, ask to back do up another hole, ask to ealk, tighten to final hole before getting to mounting block.
I take him for a walk around the paddock before entering the arena. I double the reins around his neck and he goes by himself. He walks around the outside of the paddock. I do a much smaller walk around the outside of the arena.
Once tight enough and able to walk, introduce to ropes and start long reining.
If you can lunge with roller on. Start introducing side reins. It is not side reins that kill and maim horses. It is unknowledable trainers who use side reins to kill and maim horses.
If you can lunge with roller in side reins then do so 10 minutes each day after long reining until lunging like a school pony. Could take months.
Then put the saddle on with no stirrups and do girth up so it is not touching. See if he will walk forward. Do as above with roller.
Then lunge with stirrups down put high or low enough not to hit elbows.
Then you need to find someone to get on him. That person certainly wouldn’t be me! You can put newspaper in jeans and attach to saddle and tie boots to stirrups first.
and remember that it will be much quicker and cost the same to keep, and may not cost your quality of life, to go and buy a horse that you can already ride safely.
I’ve seen this reaction to girth pressure. Take a lead rope and apply/release pressure to the girth area. Can you put an english saddle pad on and walk him around with it?
My horse was a huge bucker when first introduced to the saddle. I did the above, eventually introduced a surcingle. Turned out with the surcingle every single day for an hour or introduced the saddle in the same way.
I dunno…but I do know it’s not smart to experiment with saddles and girths on one that has behaved this way and caused considerable damage without a session ending successfully. At the very least he may have learned he can win. If this was just one trainer, maybe they rushed him but two? Both before the month was up.
Next thing he breaks could be your ribs so I wouldnt fool around experimenting with vagus nerve theories, groundwork or refitting saddles if two pros failed in just a few weeks and the behavior was allowed to continue and could not be corrected because it was not safe to persue. That’s a problem. Start with the vet. ASAP.
Something is wrong that only happens when the saddle goes on and then he checks out not caring if he hurts himself. Sounds like pain associated with the saddle.
Did you ever lunge him in the bridle? If not it could be the bridle and/or bit, not the saddle. Knew one that abruptly started melting down when ridden, turned out he had a tick bite that abcessed on his poll, the crown piece of the bridle sat right on it. Odd but he never got headshy or objected to the bridle for about 10 minutes but once it started to hurt, look out.
It very well could be pain (or fear), but I remember reading something from a trainer who said we tend not to leave the saddle on youngsters for long enough for them to fully habituate, so he suggested getting an old saddle, putting it on, and turning the horse out saddled. I don’t think most horses need that amount of habituation to a saddle, but yours might?
Also, as most understand, this was in no way about “winning”, nor did he “get away” with anything. He broke round pen panels and fences, which means that he now associates that additional pain and fear with the pain and/or fear that first caused him to react so violently.
This wasn’t about winning, nor did he “get away” with anything. He broke round pen panels and fences, which means that he now associates that additional pain and fear with the pain and/or fear that caused him to react so violently.
Not saying that is what happened to this horse, but many that work so hard to get a saddle on a horse and then turn them loose “so they get used to it” end up with some horses that all they do is get used that a saddle means buck as hard as you can.
Had my share of those to retrain, one little bay Docs Prescription colt that never quite got over it.
He “had a permanent hump on his back”, meaning at any excuse, bucking was his default behavior, it was so ingrained by the time I had him.
Another a very good ranch horse that came with the history that, after saddling him, best “let him get it out of his system” in a pen before stepping on him and then he was kid gentle.
Try to ride him right after saddling and you were in for a rodeo round.
His name? Hoppy.
People, when starting a horse, spend all that time doing a great job teaching them that saddles are ok and putting them on …
AND
… then don’t turn them loose to learn and practice bucking with a saddle on!
Keep control of the horse and keep teaching it to move on out with that saddle and cinch feeling as if it was part of it, not something to be scared off and needing to get over it!
For all those horses that eventually learn not to buck when people start them bucking them out loose first few saddlings, that one that learns how to buck so well and gets to practice it time and again later?
That one is on you if that is what you do with the horses you start under saddle.
Unless you are raising rodeo bucking stock.
The OP has tried herself and two trainers already and no luck.
Assuming it is nothing physically wrong with this horse, that he just was very well trained to buck, so good two trainers could not change him, that he is acting dangerously to himself and anyone working with him, maybe she needs to consider if that is the horse she really wants to own and work with, or find someone else that may want to take a chance they can turn him around and find a more suitable horse for her skills?
From the many foals we raised, we had two, fillies both, that were not quite right, very spooky and unpredictable and would run into anything if set off, including other horses, their dam, tree branches, fences.
If a horse is unstable mentally, it doesn’t wait until it gets it’s first saddle on to act up, you can tell all along that foal is different than others.
Since this seems to have been a normal foal, I wonder what happened during his first saddle training and continued to happen to have turned like it did.
Maybe things went wrong during his first wild bucking and after going thru the panel, if he was injured somehow?
That could have been adding to the problem.
Maybe a broken vertebra or rib right where something puts pressure when saddled?
Decades ago, we had a feral mare that saddled just like any other we had at that time.
When trying to ride her that first time, she became dangerous.
She was rearing and bucking wildly, on the longe line, to the point we could not control her until whoever was on her was bucked off.
Our other feral horses were unfazed and riding fine under our program, so we knew it was not us.
The saddle and cinching were ok, a weight on her back, no way.
Next day the vet examined her and found some old broken ribs right where a rider adds weight, so she was not going to be a riding horse after all.
It took some serious prodding on her back by the vet to figure that out.
A basic exam may not have found that problem.
OP, maybe you have something similar to that mare with that horse.
But because he never got any additional work after breaking the panels and trainers gave up, he is still full of bad associations involving pain and fear. Perhaps winning was not the best choice of words but it’s still quite a setback and something that needs to be reprogrammed in his memory before progress can be made.
Once horses get something associated in their mind with pain and fear, it’s really hard to get rid of it. That’s why it’s important to find out if something is wrong physically that triggers the behavior in the first place.
@horsepoorer unfortunately it would be hard to say if the gelding is “untrainable” from the little information there is. We would have to know what exactly the trainers did when they saddled him.
Did they get him used to a saddle being placed on his back and taken off repeatedly?
Did they put the saddle on, cinch it up loosely, then take it back off repeatedly so he knew it could and would come off?
Did they take their time cinching it or cinch it up tightly?
Did they let him loose with the saddle on, as others mentioned?
Was there a lot going on around him on that day?
If he was on a lunge line, was he taught to lunge properly so he would still respond even while worrying about the saddle?
Did the saddle actually fit properly? In my experience people throw ill fitting old western saddles on horses without thinking about how the horse might react if it is pinching them.
If they did in fact go slow enough that the gelding seemed to understand and be comfortable with every step prior to working on the lunge with the saddle, and the saddle was a good fit, then a vet definitely needs to come out and check him. If the vet clears him for everything, including ulcers and spinal problems, then he might just not be suited for riding. That happens sometimes. You might be able to find a really, really good trainer who can work with him but some horses don’t ever do well riding. Check out Doug Payne’s book, he is an eventer and show jumper but it applies to all disciplines, there are some horses he worked with that never settled but were still top level horses, just required a highly experienced, sensitive rider, but would not have done well with the average rider ever. Or, alternatively, maybe try English with him, my young horse is 100% with an english saddle but humps up with a western saddle no matter how well it fits. He goes okay in it but just isn’t a huge fan.
I believe that some horses just can’t be managed. It may be pain-related, it may be brain-related, and you could spend tens of thousands without ever getting an answer.
I had one that I bought as a 2yo. He came to me and was a sweet in-your-pocket youngster. I turned him out with my herd and he lived happily for a couple of years. In hindsight, he was more accident-prone than your average horse and at one point wound up flipped upside down in a water trough (sigh), which was ugly enough that it resulted in a hospitalization.
But all of that could be written off as random accident and the fact that he was low man on the totem pole.
He was also a slow maturer. He still looked like a 2yo at the age of 4. I waited a little longer than usual to back him, but it still turned out to be a major issue. The first time I connected the girth (which I did carefully and slowly and after several days of setting a saddle on his back…because he was extremely reactive) he kicked me in the leg, broke out of the cross-ties, bolted out into a pen, and spent several minutes bucking wildly. So we went back to square one and reintroduced the saddle, girth, etc. even more carefully. It took a week or two to get to the point that we could saddle him up relatively normally. After that I started lunging/double lunging/ground driving him. That went “okay,” but not great…it took him a long time to not be insanely tense while working. But he did eventually accept the lines and the work. Then I put a dummy (sand-filled jeans) on the saddle and we started all over again. Then I sat on him in a stall for a month while he ate (this is one of those things I would never suggest anyone do, but fortunately worked out okay at the time). It took almost the entire month for him to relax when I was on him.
So after all of that I decided it was time to start “riding.” It took us forever to get to that point (6 months-ish?). Where usually the whole process from first saddling to first ride takes 2-3 days. First ride we tacked up and I mounted in the arena and had my husband leading him and we were just walking and halting, walking and halting (zero cues from me other than voice commands). First day went okay (though he never relaxed). Second day he walked and halted a few times and suddenly I was higher in the air than I think I’ve ever been. No warning whatsoever. That was the end of my work with the horse.
I sent him off to a cowboy/horse whisperer type trainer. He had him for a month and called me up to say, “I’ve gotten nowhere, I need him for more time.” The second time he called me with that information I told him he could keep the horse if he wanted but I wasn’t paying for any more training. In the midst of this he had flipped himself upside down between two boulders and required a minor surgery. I was ready to call it quits and put the horse down (which my vet was begging me to do)…he was just too unpredictable and dangerous. But he had turned into the cowboy’s “white whale.” So he begged me to do the surgery and said he would do all of the aftercare and keep him as long as it took. So I paid for the surgery and basically gave the horse to him. He has now had him for eleven or twelve years?
…aaaand…the horse is still as unpredictable as ever. In the beginning he would text me videos of the horse being ridden around the ring with a bunch of balloons tied to the saddle, and clips of trail rides. But peppered between the good moments were lots of bucking and unpredictable moments.
The point to my story is that the horse stayed true to his first reactions and in hindsight I’m sure there was something wrong. Kissing spine, broken and poorly healed ribs, maybe a mental/developmental issue? Who knows. But I wish I had been more willing to give up much sooner than I did. My life lesson out of it? Some horses just don’t fit the mold of riding horses. I used to joke that he should have been turned into a bronc…boy he could have made a name for himself! But in all seriousness, the tip off was really that he would absolutely 100% shut his brain down in his fear reaction. And I just don’t think there’s a way to make a horse like that safe. And your boy sounds similar if he’s willing to go into/through walls.
So yes, investigate what you’re able (I would focus on withers/back/ribs), but I wouldn’t spend a fortune on a horse who’s already demonstrated that he is not cool with the program.
I’d be super curious to know what the vet says, and how things go. Even if it a pain issue that you can resolve, you are going to need to be super cautious for a while since he now has some pretty traumatic experiences with the saddle.
Hope you get it figured out 
Did the trainer show you all the groundwork he did before putting the saddle on? And the horse was perfectly well behaved and responded to all the exercises perfectly, and then after 20-30 minutes of groundwork, he got saddled and went nuts?
