It just kills me when people breed a psycho mare (not at all implying it was your choice). It’s just cutting heads off the hydra.
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Agreed. It infuriates me.
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Delivering a strong correction with crop (or spur or bit or any other aid) is NOT “beating” a horse. It’s correcting an ill behavior.
Remember that the horse is 40 times faster than you and they may give warning of what they are going to do but maybe not. Or at least not within a time that you can answer.
G.
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Agreed (also not implying choice)… and not for nothing, but seen many Rivermans with aversion to work. Tough horses to handle. Seen some nice ones I would never put a leg over.
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While I know you’re arguing semantics, I was there and I brought that crop down with everything I had in me. At the time, I was a very fit, national level athlete in another sport. Miss Mare stood stunned under me for most of minute before she could walk off.
In that case, I literally beat her on the head. Or walloped, if you really must avoid beat. It went beyond a good whack and if someone saw me correcting a horse on the ground with that sort of force, they would rightly say it was excessive. So yeah, I still feel guilty about it.
Was it called for at that exact moment? Maybe. \
Do I think I could avoid it ever getting that to that point now, 15 years later and much more experience under my belt? Yes, almost definitely. Miss Mare was not a hard or dangerous horse by any means. She was just smart and testing and gave me more than enough clues as to the direction she was heading for. When the current youngster, Miss Mare 2.0, hit her testing phase, she learned that sort of behavior got her some pretty difficult lateral work until she says “uncle” and decides the other work is better. And since I applied that correction from the very first time she thought about getting light in the front, it’s never been an issue.
I’m not the type to shy away from a physical reprimand, especially on dangerous behavior. But hindsight is 20/20. It should never have been necessary and I shouldn’t have used enough force to worry that I had concussed my horse.
Agreed. I’ve seen one that is absolutely gorgeous, lovely movement, a jump to die for and you couldn’t pay me to take her. There is a screw loose in there somewhere and when she doesn’t feel like working, she’s a terror.
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For the sake of clarity…I was kidding. Earlier in the thread, I told the story of how this whip horse reared and went over backwards on me last Fall…obviously my cracking him in the head with my hunt whip didn’t work in that case. 
My big mare has gone up (higher than “light in front” but not all the way to “heigh-ho silver!”) on me once and I cracked her on the poll with my fist out of instinct. She was startled and hasn’t ever tried it again.
It can–and does work–just not on that one given day.
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I’m still confused on why you think you need to second-guess yourself? It worked; the horse suffered no ill effects; you suffered no ill effects. No harm, no foul?
G.
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I don’t think I’d jump to euth the horse in the OP on the basis of the story told alone. The big rear was apparently easy to see coming perhaps by everyone other than the rider, and the rider may have contributed to the flip. I put up with an awful lot of temper tantrum type behavior on the horse who doesn’t appear to be actively trying to kill me or that appears to have no cares about whether they hurt themselves in the process. I used to say I’d take a bucker and not a rearer, but I’ve actually ridden a few where rearing was their preferred behavior, but they were not trying to fling themselves on their backs or even really make much of an effort in unloading me. What I really don’t ride are the ones who will intentionally flip themselves, run through a fence, buck you off then try to kick you for good measure, etc. Those have a screw loose that may or may not be fixable, but I don’t want to die trying to fix it. I have a feeling that with the horse in the OP, if the rider had retired from the course for the day and then taken the time to fix the training issue related to being herdbound, then the rearing might become a non-issue. But without seeing it, it’s hard to know if that’s the case or if it’s a horse who is going to keep flipping to try to get his way.
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Oh gawd yes, put that horse in the ground…100% no excuse behavior…and don’t sell it to make a nickel and perhaps kill someone.
My rearing story : , we just bought a 4 year old TWH. Wife was riding and he was a bit antsy. She slapped him on the neck. The slap must have startled him because he started to rear up. In hind sight, she must have grabbed reins and just pulled him over on top of her. After I found she was not seriously hurt, I climbed aboard. I had read that a horse that learns to unseat a rider by rearing becomes worse. So up I went. One step and he started to buck instead. Honest, head down, legs extended, back arched bucks. I remember thinking… “This is gonna hurt” The next thing I remember was standing on my feet, looking at his face with the reins in both hands … Just like a millisecond ago in the saddle. Unhurt, I climbed aboard again. We walked a dozen paces and I gratefully got off… telling him what a good horse he was. That incident was 21 years ago. We just laid him to rest this Spring. He never bucked or reared again. Wife would not ride him again, so he became my horse alone for 20 years. In my ignorance, he never unseated me, but I fell off often until I learned to ride centered. Whenever I fell, he would stop and wait while I collected myself and climbed aboard again. Point of the story. A rear alone is not reason enough to forego 20 years of riding with a good horse.
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