Thank you! It sounds like you handled the lunging issue fine, but unfortunately if she tries it with other people she could be a dominant horse…. That puts more pressure on you to prove her that you are her superior. If she stops does it feel like she is cemented in the ground and does she threaten you if you try to put pressure on her? Then a possible solution could be to not push her forward but to spin her around. That way you prevent her from doing nasty things but you still force her to follow your aids. You do this until she is willing to go forward… it might take a while the first time but it’s not fun for her to spin so at one point she will probably give up. And the next time she stops and you spin her she knows already that it’s no fun and will give up earlier. There are two other solutions which might help. One is not nice and takes a brave person and you better don’t loose because that will make it worse…(I never in my live did this but I watched a couple of riders doing it with rearing horses and it worked.) And the other possibility would be to find a very good mentally solid rider to push her through this….
While I agree with this, my younger horse, now 6, would get less happy about going forward when his saddle would get tighter around his withers. Got a wider saddle and presto… he’s back to his happy self.
Horses are still growing and changing with correct work at 3 to 6/7 years old. Big difference between a horse being a donkey and them trying to tell us they are having an issue. Why eyes on the ground with a good trainer is so important.
I think you missed my point 
After all the usual have been checked in the end the problem is probably us
The whole post screams shoes.
The horse is sticky and not moving forward.
Go take your shoes off and run around. You would still be walking but would you want to run forward right?
Put shoes on and it will help the horse feel more comfortable moving out amd going forward.
Also, it was good - then the horse regressed. Thats typical of a horse that needs front shoes.
Also depends on season. My 4 year old gets sticky if i dont put pads on in the summer when the ground is dry and hard but i can get away with not having pads the rest of the year.
Also lack of shoes on a horse that really needs it can create back pain - more reason to not move forward.
I probably did. I’m dense at times. And yes, I’m the one holding my horse back….not the other way around majority of the time.
OP didn’t say anything about the footing in her arena, but it sounds like she’s mostly riding in a groomed arena. Especially with the mention that their trails are rocky. I’m not saying shoes won’t help this situation because I don’t know, but there’s so many things that could be happening here that I don’t think it’s the first thing I’d look at.
I love a hot and sensitive mare. I had a mare previously that I restarted that was like this. She had a strong self-preservation instinct but not spooky when she felt confident. Horses don’t like to feel off-balance. It took a little while for her to realize that she could just go forward and that I would go with her.
Its not about footing. Its about having protection on the foot. Has she put hoof testers on her? Is she thin soled? Sometime you think they dont need shoes and then you try it and its magical.
And sometimes you put shoes on a barely started 4 year old for no reason.
How is this unrelated to footing? I’m fine walking or running around on the carpet in my house or nice grass without shoes on. Doesn’t mean I don’t want shoes in my gravel driveway.
While it’s entirely possible, this horse has the same issues on the lunge line. I’m putting my money on 4yo without a work ethic before I put shoes on a horse that is hardly even under saddle.
But the horse is moving forward just fine with and without tack on the long lines and lunge. You would see these kinds of issues on the line… Her feet, according to the OP and her farrier, are healthy!
Not moving forward does not equal a requirement for shoes. Again, shoes should be used to maintain balance, correct a conformation flaw, correct the growth of the foot, and prevent excess wear. I have a horse who needs shoes… Nothing she has said leads me to believe the lack of shoes are the problem. This seems like a confidence issue when the rider is added. If her feet were the problem, she wouldn’t be going well on the line or in turnout even.
OP, my previous post was a little flippant, probably because I’ve been through three really tough years with my mare. Fortunately I work with an instructor who knows several mares of similar breeding, and reassured me that they are all very similar and can be hard as hell to get forward and cantering. Yours does not sound so opinionated, but it could be worth asking around and seeing how other horses (and particularly mares) with similar bloodlines have similar tendencies.
For context, it took about three years to get my mare lunging decently, and I used to pride myself on being pretty good at teaching lunging. She would come in at me, double-barrel at the whip, suck back, and anything else you could think of. For awhile I had to lunge with a hog sorting stick in one hand and a whip in the other so I could push her shoulders out if she tried to come in at me. So it sounds like your mare is not going to be this tough!
My mare did rear with me a few times in I’d say the first 50 or so rides. She would do a very calculated rear where it didn’t feel like she would go up and over, and I was able to give her a little punitive pop in the mouth and after about the third rear, she decided to give up that tactic. Even though she felt more balanced to me than other colts I’ve started, I think SHE felt off balance and that was a big factor in her shutting down early on. It did help to introduce some lateral work at the walk before we were even cantering.
Much of our cantering for a year or so was a nightmare. Unless something was happening to get her excited so I could opportunistically get the canter (like chasing a dog down the fenceline), I’d have to pretty much put the reins in one hand and cowboy her into it, and then be ready for her to slam her feet down and quit on me. I did ride her in a running martingale for several months for safety and a bit of extra control. My job when she was cantering was to just sit up there and act like I didn’t notice if she was kicking, swapping leads, or any other foolishness, and then be ready to put her back to WORK in the trot if she fell out. Not punish, but not make the trot easier.
Once she was fairly solid W/T/C, but going into these sucking back episodes, we went to the “ask/tell/demand” system, so that she knows that when I take my leg OFF she better go because that’s a warning. I’ve also had to periodically ride her with two whips so she can’t get away. Everything is getting much better and she’s grown a lot of brain as a seven year old, but the two FEI trainers I ride with both say they think she will always be like this, it is just a matter of the level. Interestingly, instead of being spooky/hot off property, she sucks back and gets off the aids, so it kind of seems like her way of coping with a novel situation, which tracks with when being asked for new things at home. I think much of this is just her built-in self-preservation system, and on the upside, she DOES protect herself and is not an accident prone horse, or one that I worry about losing her mind and hurting us both. Next month I’m taking her to a clinic with Leslie Morse, so I’ll be really interested to see what she thinks, depending upon the horse that turns up that day.
And as I mentioned above, I’ve found things to help. She tends to have a tight feeling in her muscles, and be more of a leg mover. I use an Equilibrium pad before I ride quite frequently, work on her with an Equi-Laser and SureFoot pads, and have also been kinesio-taping (also professional chiro and bodywork since she was two). She is not diagnosed PSSM/MIM, but had some of the symptoms, but not others. I switched up her diet to add extra Mg, E, C and ALCAR and lower carbs, more fat this spring and that has seemed to help with the muscle tightness, and she’s been overall better.
Sorry for the novel, but maybe there is something useful in her for you. And she has been barefoot her whole life Pretty sure shoes were never the answer as I’ve had an absolutely miserable, sucked back lesson on her one afternoon, and then come out and done another lesson the next morning when it was cool and crisp and had more horsepower than I knew what to do with.
I do not understand the anti-shoe remarks here. We put them on my 4 year old at the advice of my trainer, when the mare was just being lightly walked and trotted under saddle and it made a lot of difference. Trainer could see it on the lunge line.
Mare was not lame and farrier has said her feet are fine. The shoes, however, did make a significant positive improvement in her way of going AND her training.
I also put shoes on my horse when I sent him to be started at 3.5 years. This was because he had thin soles and was tender footed. I also put him on a hoof supplement. I started with the front shoes, but after a month or so, we added the hinds. My farrier likes to take them off in the fall for one or two cycles for foot health.
I’m not “anti shoe” one of my horses is in shoes right now. I don’t think I’d leap right to shoes after 10 rides under saddle thinking it’s going to solve all the forward problems.
Forget what anyone else does . With only 10 rides she may not know what you want at all. Some horses seem to be willing and broke from the first ride but they are few and far between.
It might be nothing more then you are moving way too fast for her. Take time to get her walking , turning , stopping , moving off your leg, moving her hips and shoulders and doing all that reliably and willingly and then move to the trot.
She is learning how to move with a rider and she may be experiencing some discomfort as she is using muscles she hasn’t had to use and she needs to build up strength and stamina.
4 year olds can have their version of our “terrible two’s” and some horses can tell us NO and just not want to do what we ask. I would say back off a bit and give her time to learn . If you push her too fast you will have issues down the road.
As a kid I ran over gravel barefoot and felt nothing. Now if I walk on anything but grass you would think I am a cripple. If anything young horses are the ones who don’t normally need shoes when you are just starting out and especially when you are doing light arena work.
I am not anti shoe. 2 of my 3 wear front shoes and my young horse has fronts because i don’t have an arena, just the field to ride in and our ground has been hard.
I will disagree that shoes will magically fix OP’s forward issue with her horse. It won’t hurt anything but her wallet.
I second this. I have a young horse whose default is to stay rooted to the ground when she’s scared. She also doesn’t do coercion. There’s no timeline. Have as much patience as you want your horse to have.
Mine is now moving out confidently on the trail and in the arena but it was a slow process until it wasn’t.
Its different when you add weight. Could be adding weight adds back soreness needs shoes to support.
One of my favorite horse people from my teenage years was an old woman who trained and rode saddleseat horses. I had no interest in saddleseat but she had a 4H club in my county and would sometimes teach clinics or chaperone for the state or regional shows. Whenever anyone was frustrated with their horse, or most often this girl who had a seemingly rotten large pony mare named Bobbi. Bobbi was one of those horses who never seemed to get it, until she did, and then she never forgot it. This girl could never remember that every other time Bobbi couldn’t get it, she eventually did and executed it perfectly every time after that. And every time, this old lady would tell her, “Bobbi is on Bobbi time.”
I have a sticky youngster, too. I’m thinking of starting a journal to see if I can find any patterns because one day she will be fabulously off of the aids and the next day ignore the leg completely. On good days, I have a training level horse, and on bad days, like she’s never been sat on before. Same thing as others have reported – if you get over her shoulder, she will stop. If the saddle is not in the exact right position, she will stop. Sometimes she just says no. She is sensitive and everything has to be her idea and to her liking but she enjoys the work most of the time. I don’t keep dumb horses.
If she’s miserable doing one thing, we do something else. I don’t start fights because I usually don’t have time to end them. It might be unconventional, I might regret it later, I might end up with a horse with “no work ethic.” But here’s the thing – in five years from now, I want an upper level horse who enjoys the job and wants to work with me, and I’d rather have a horse that can respectfully say, “no, thank you,” instead of “go $^@% yourself.” I don’t want a forever first level horse who can’t handle the mental requirement of second level and above because they were forced into the work at four.
She’s four. Four year olds are not known for their logic and ability to suffer fools. But in a year, you will have a five year old who is more confident and had the experience of working with you to solve a training problem, which is a skill you will need to install, because by next year, you will have a different problem to solve together.
