Take some major steps back. If you are working with this horse alone, you need to think like a trainer, not just a rider.
Work out a schedule for the next few weeks so you get lots of lessons and trainer rides her a bu nch. On your unsupervised days, lunge first and then think about the basics - do you have a relaxed trot with a clear rhythm? Can you ride round circles with even bend? Can you ride walk to trot transitions smoothly? Trot to walk? Can you trot over a single ground pole without speeding up or slowing down?
Yep. But, many of us learned this by falling off after trying too much too soon - so, welcome to the club!
It takes a while to get to know a new horse. And I’ve had perfectly fine horses be spookier than usual in new barns. Shows are one thing, but they make a point to keep known spooky things out and don’t feature some of the surprises (wildlife, pasture horses galloping, loud cars) of a boarding barn.
In your situation, I would step things wayyy down to be securely within your comfort zone for a bit. When I got my most recent horse, our first ride was a walk/trot with draw reins, simply because we didn’t know what he’d do. Not that we COULDN’T go jump around a course - he and I, separately, were perfectly capable at the time - but I’m an amateur who wants to keep my confidence up and let a new horse know they can trust me not to put them in scary situations, throw them off balance, ask them to jump off a bad ride, or kick them as I struggle to stay on.
It’s good that you’re talking to your trainer about it. Do follow her advice, and maybe ask what she recommends you work on or avoid in your rides. Extra lessons are also money VERY well spent when you’re on a new horse.
This. I too thought OP is simply asking too much in the first few days that she has owned the horse. I would step back and take a couple of lessons, and have the trainer ride, and maybe wait on and unsupervised rides til trainer has had more involvement.
That is a lot of change in a few days. I would cut her some slack.
Also, Mares are very different than geldings. I LOVE my mares. But its rare to find a mare that won’t test its rider. She is probably seeing what she can get away with. Can my rider sit a spook? What does my rider do when i am a little naughty?
Once she realizes you mean business, you are fair, and you give her all the cookies, she will decide she trusts you and will probably stop all that behavior. Though she still might tell you off when you mess up.
Honestly, I’m very surprised that your trainer is letting you jump this horse outside of lessons. If the mare is truly green, it really doesn’t seem right that your trainer would just turn you loose with her and let you jump her the first three days of owning her on your own with no guidance whatsoever. That seems irresponsible of her, and quite frankly, unfair to you since you seem to be inexperienced with this type of horse.
It seems to me that you are inexperienced with green horses and are simply asking way too much too soon. Since she is new to you and you are not accustomed to riding a green horse, you are probably overlooking the subtle signals that she is giving to you that says she is overwhelmed or lacking confidence. She then escalates the behavior causing you to fall off. Overfacing this horse now will lead to potentially dangerous behavior problems down the road and cause you to lose confidence or get injured.
My advice to you is to put your horse in a program where you are consistently taking lessons every week and the horse is getting professional training rides. I would be willing to bet money that if she came from a bigger show barn, she was in a consistent program or at least being ridden by a professional regularly. This is most likely why your first couple of rides went so well. She was probably freshly tuned up. I know that having a horse in a program can be expensive depending on where you are located and the caliber of barn you are at, but it is honestly the best thing for a new partnership - especially if the horse is young and green… Having a set of eyes on you while you ride and correct your mistakes early on will really set up a strong foundation for your partnership and keep you both confident. It also helps for the young ones to have regular training rides to continue their education and work through any problems that you may not be able to work through yourself. Even if you just do it for a month or two, I guarantee that you will see huge improvements with your progress. You will have a happier horse and save yourself a lot of frustration!
It sounds like the horse is behaving quite predictably, while you need horsewoman’s bootcamp asap - and I mean that in the most sympathetic way possible.
A person who’s ready to buy a young horse and bring it to a new home ought to have better instincts than this, and I wonder if you’ve perhaps been over-dependent on your trainer? (Many people are nowadays.) I’m sure you don’t want to ruin your horse’s confidence or her faith in you, so, honestly, you need to correct problems at your own end of the equation before things really go south.
Do you have a more experienced friend (besides the trainer) you can consult? I think that would help a lot.
~ Have you paid any attention at all to how the horse is settling into her new herd? Moving from a stall to a herd is a HUGE change! I’d give your mare several weeks to adjust to living outside with others, and I’d watch her interactions carefully.
~ Have you done anything to help her build trust in her surroundings and her new owner, or are you just making demands? If it was me, I wouldn’t ride at all for a few weeks. I’d visit, groom, hand graze, and hand-walk around the property, reassuring her as you meet new things together. Let her know that you’re the person she can rely on wherever you go.
~ Have you spoken to the staff? Barn staff aren’t machines either, and can give you valuable information about your horse’s attitudes and health. You don’t know this animal at all yet, and they probably know her better than you do at this point.
~ Finally, think about whether you really want to be an owner. There’s nothing wrong with long term leases and lessons, where your only job is to turn up and ride. Being a horsewoman and an owner demands a lot from a person, and you just may not be cut out for it. That’s hardly a crime, but it’s best to be realistic about it before you do get in over your head.
Heck that would be a lot for me to throw at my old tried-n-true horses I’ve had for years if I uprooted them and moved them to a new place. There’a a difference between going to shows, performing, and the horse returning to it’s home that it knows and uprooting a horse and moving it to a new place and asking it to do a bunch of stuff that is challenging in a different environment without the safety of its “home base.” OP, I suspect you and this horse could be fine but you need a LOT more guidance.
Especially if uprooting just one horse. The horse doesn’t even have his/her known horse friends to draw security from. And in the OP’s case not even the known human handlers.
My homebred horse lost his ever loving mind the first time I moved him to a new location without a member of the herd he was born into.
From your actions it seems as though you were looking for a horse that you could take home, start jumping, and prep for a show quickly. If that is what you truly desired, then this isn’t the right horse for you. Green horses take patience, expertise and time. That is why they say “green + green = black and blue.”
The trainer is telling you that you need to have a better seat, and this won’t happen overnight.
It sounds like what you probably needed was to continue riding with an older schoolmaster until you established a better seat and gained additional skills needed to bring a green horse along.
If the horse isn’t on trial and the deal is done, I would put the horse in training immediately and then only ride in lessons under trainer supervision. If the horse is on trial, then send it back before you cause further damage. With every ride you are training this horse. You are now reinforcing the behavior of whatever action is causing you to come off - that will be hard to fix if it continues to happen. It will also cause the horse to quickly lose faith in you as a rider.
And OH YES I’m in the club too. Most of us have learned lessons the hard way and only now speak from wisdom. Isn’t wisdom the knowledge you needed right after you needed it?
YES, OP, do not think the responses you get from so many here aren’t offered from learning ourselves.
Has anyone mentioned saddle fit? If saddle is pinching a 7 year old WB, by day 3 of riding, she may be sore & not dealing with it. Just a thought (from experience)
Having no faith in human nature, especially the nature of people in the horse business, I see a red flag right here.
I completely disagree with everyone who has cast well-meaning doubt on your riding skills.
A 7-year-old WB is perhaps green because her temperament is intractable. It could be hormonal. Some mares are fractious when ovulating. But the friend-to-friend nature of the “unadvertised” horse just makes me question whose interests your trainer had in mind.
IMHO horses are born with a temperament and are pretty much the same throughout their lives. You might excuse bucking, rearing, biting, spooking, etc. as the behavior of a green horse but I think it could just be the temperament of the horse. Can bad training or physical pain cause misbehavior? Absolutely. And a good pro would be able to mitigate or work through a lot, but is that the horse you want?
It’s fun to practice simple changes and feel a light go on in a horse. It shouldn’t be dangerous.
Last thing is I agree with @Jackie_Cochran that feed could be an issue. I would try going back to how she was housed previously and just dry lot turn out so you can control everything she eats. My amateur’s dream horse has an evil twin personality change on alfalfa.
I really sympathize with you, OP. I bought one years ago who, if I had given him away at the first sign of trouble, would have saved me thousands of dollars. I couldn’t sit his spook and the mismatch made a worse horse of him. It was a costly lesson in more ways than one.
I hope you get some answers from your trainer. Best of luck to you.
I hate to say it. I think you got bamboozled. Otherwise, the horse was under a professional program where it was being mainly ridden by a pro. Sounds like what your trainer might have seen as the deal of the century, may have been a horse that wasn’t quite ready to be advertised for sale, so you go the pre-sale discount.
Regardless, I would hold off from jumping this one outside of professional supervision. Whether she needs some extra tuning or that you’re out of practice with the greenies and sending confusing signals, it’s not a safe environment for you or the horse.
As others have said, if it’s a done deal… send it to pro to work on for a week and come back and see if you have a different horse on your hands. If it’s still in a trial period, I’d reconsider and maybe send it back saying that you’re not seeing the same horse in your layout that it was in theirs. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad horse, just means that it might not thrive in your landscape.
Life is too short to get dumped on a regular basis as an amateur. We simply don’t bounce as easy as we did at 17.
I would bet one issue is she has been fried on lead changes, and I wouldn’t do anything that in her mind looks like you are thinking about any kind of change for a while. This is an issue apart from whatever the spooking is from.
Pain (ulcers, saddle fit) can cause some unpredictable type behaviors to crop up because it raises their baseline anxiety level. These issues are common after a move, change in management, new tack. Don’t forget to check off this box too.
You’ve gotten a ton of great advice so I’ll just flag one more thing. Aside from everything mentioned, I would ask whether the horse was on regumate, or alternatively look for signs she is in heat.
I moved my 5 y/o green mare in April. She had been to to her first two shows last fall/winter and was great (even went to one in a roaring heat) but the combination of a new environment right when she was starting to cycle again blew her little mare mind. I struggled for a week or two wondering where my quiet, rational, easy horse had gone and who the spooky, bucking, unpredictable anxious mess was that replaced her. Luckily I have great trainers and once it was clear she wasn’t settling in, we started her on Regumate and within a few days I had my horse back. It was my first Spring with her so I’ll never know if she would have gotten through a tough heat eventually if I hadn’t moved her, or she would have been a wreck no matter what, but since you mentioned she was a mare I would explore a heat/cycle related explanation as well as everything mentioned above.
I had the advantage of knowing the horse before the move. And I echo the posters who mentioned being shocked that your trainer is allowing you to jump a green 7 y/o in your first few rides together, unsupervised.
It could be. I used my saddle during the trial rides and it looked like a good fit. I haven’t been using a riser since because my girth doesn’t fit with it. Just bought a new girth this weekend so I will try the riser today.
She is on regumate, and had been on it the 4 months she was at the trainer. They put all their horses on it and said she could probably taper off after settling in. Ofc now I’m determined to keep her on it.
You hit the nail on the head for what I’m worried about. Is this just how she is, and it can be managed but will never go away?
The other sobering part is that I finally did experience an honest spook on her, and it’s nothing! It’s like a little skip sideways. The electric fence in the adjoining pasture made a loud, random pop, and she spooked (we both spooked, honestly) and then carried on with no fuss. I also hand walked her on a trail and she spooked several times at wildlife, and they were all the same. So the duck and spin is not an honest spook, but a deliberate evasion she’s learned will dump the rider.
On the lunge yesterday, I asked for a direction change and it triggered a bucking fit. At first I thought I’d pushed her over threshold and wanted to drop the pressure. But I just kept quietly asking as she continued to buck until she finally reversed. So that’s also an evasion, not an honest anxiety response.
I know her full history and spoke to her previous (and only other) owner. She is a college student who got her as a baby project horse when she was a young teen. She said that she just lost her passion for riding once she started college. I understand that can happen, but now I’m wondering how she lost her passion, and whether I am on track to lose mine too!
On a positive note, she is very “into” me and pays attention to every move I make on the ground. I can move her hindquarters around and back her up just with my index finger. I free lunged her in the round pen and when I was done, turned around and bent to pick up my cell phone. When I stood up, she was right at my shoulder and I realized she’d follow me all the way around the ring, doing trot and halt transitions and everything, so it’s like we did join up without realizing it, which was a cool experience for me as someone who’s never done it. I took her to the ring and we even did a full hunter hack this way—two cross rails and halt at a cone. It was actually really fun. I just wish I could ride her while doing it
“. . . not an honest spook” and " . . . not an honest anxiety response"
The horse is honestly reacting to what she perceives in the overall situation. You are correct that she may be repeating a learned behavior that has “rewarded” her in the past. It’s the trainer’s job to set up the situation so that the horse will be rewarded for the desired responses and not rewarded for undesirable ones, consistently over time. This is what most of the above replies are saying.
She may or may not be the horse for you; you may or may not be the trainer for her. If you don’t trust her, then you should move her on before you compound her issues.
My biggest source of confusion here is the OP’s actual level of experience. In some ways, OP, you sound quite sophisticated, and in others, you sound like a very young or newbie owner.
May I ask your age and number of years riding and training, @funky_bunny ? Ages and breeds of horses you’ve worked with previously; how many trainers and barns - stuff like that?
