Weird situation with new horse - rearing

[trubandloki]

@oldernewbie

I will be the skeptic here - I am reasonably sure that this horse had this bad habit installed before you ever got him. Of course the old barn says he never did it - they sure as heck don’t want him back.

The OP imported this horse so it is very unlikely that their lawyer can do much or that the horse will be taken back to the barn they came from.

[fair_judy]

I echo oldernewbie! I’ve had a lot of success with rearing. I’ve never known a veteran with this habit which doesn’t test every new rider. Sounds like you imported one… without an agent who has credentials acting on Your behalf it’s a crap shoot. Importers want to get these horses out of their inventory.

[GraceLikeRain]

@pony_grandma

Teach him to unstick his feet and move by turning him in a sharp circle. Bent like that he can’t evade and has to yield. You turn until he yields then relax the rein and just sit. The old smoke a cigarette time. Repeat repeat the drill.

I think this works for very very few rearers. A horse that feels over faced will learn that when they get spun they are trapped in a new way. They’ll freeze and disassociate while the trainer pats their back about the horse “learning”. The horse may stop rearing but you’ve changed the symptom rather than the cause.

Every horse comes preinstalled with a buck, rear, spin, bolt, strike, and bite. The threshold for demonstrating these behaviors is what varies wildly. I would literally have to pin my mare in a corner and beat her before I can envision a front foot coming at me or teeth but I’d be a fool to think she couldn’t/wouldn’t of scared enough. She’s still a horse and it’s my job to find a way to communicate with her in a way that she doesn’t feel like she has to resort to those methods of communication.

Perhaps this horse has reared before but more likely, his world has changed on many fronts and he has a lower threshold for rearing than others. He feels trapped easily and the moment he goes up the pressure is momentarily released and that’s his coping tactic. You lose nothing by going back and really establishing the groundwork. There can be this attitude of “nothing on the ground translates to what happens under saddle” among many barns. This seems to be magnified when you have a really top horse or a trainer whose personal horse is successful despite having huge holes on the ground. I’ve been there and seen it happen. They may hand over a “naughty horse” to a “cowboy” but the barn culture is such that owners doing groundwork is unheard of and would not be welcome. Arenas are for training, round pens if they exist are for working in side reins for fitness, etc. If someone was just standing in the ring with their horse, it would draw a lot of side eyes and judgment.

OP please do consider tossing $40 for a month of Warwick Schiller. He gets a lot done with very little moving of the feet. You can make incredible strides with a nice flat area in a sacrifice paddock or corner of the ring. It’s more about learning how to read and communicate to him than carrot sticks and endless circles.

[oldernewbie]

I understand that. I guess the more important point to my post is that she most likely didn’t cause this problem and how far is she willing to go in light of that? Not only a risk to her wallet but also her very person and anyone she she has work with the horse.

Short version: I think you got screwed OP, now what can you realistically do about it?

[Blinky]

I am sorry you are going through this and yes I do not think this is new behavior.
But-I’ve seen so many times where a horse is flown over, in quarantine, shipped somewhere, then started riding. That just seems like a lot for a horse to go through in 30 ish days.

Can you give him a couple of weeks to settle in and start over? I just think sending him to a cowboy now is going to add to this problem.
I also agree its time to talk with a lawyer or if your trainer has done alot of business with the seller its time they get involved.

[Bogie]

Please be careful. Rearing is terrifying. Especially when you have a horse that really goes up, not just getting light in front. I bought a horse that would rear when he felt trapped. I didn’t realize that he’d been ridden in draw reins before I got him (nowhere to go but up) and, even worse, his previous owner would get off when he reared. Guess what? He figured out pretty quickly that this was a way to get out of work that made him uncomfortable.

But, he never went all the way up. He mostly was using it as a warning. I was able to work through it but it took a long time and a lot of patience. Much of it involved changing the discussion. When he started to feel trapped, we did something else, something that was easier. Almost like a relief valve so he could let the steam come out. Part of it was riding him bitless (he had a very thick tongue and low palette so many bits were uncomfortable). Part of it was finding him a job he liked better – he turned into an excellent first flight foxhunter. He loved to hunt and it reinforced forward for him. I hunted him in a bitless bridle and he was the bomb but if you put a bit in his mouth he would start to get anxious and float behind the contact.

I also had a full vet workup on him and they couldn’t find anything wrong. He’d just learned bad habits because they worked.

Good luck and stay safe.

[piperluvshorses]

Thanks for all the responses. Yes I’ve watched the Warrick Schiller videos many times - pretty much from the beginning of the situation. I use the area he rears in as our break area - we stand relax there then work where he wants to be which I’m assuming is by the gate. We were making great progress until we went outside one day and walked the trail - he went up. The worst day by far was taking him off property to the eventer - it pushed him over his threshold. What I don’t understand is why on a loose rein out on our walk away from the barn would trigger it - is it barn sourness? I’ve reached out to the “reputable” barn and broker - who contacted the old owner - they claim horse has never ever had an issue. I find it hard to believe I caused this issue as I had been riding him with a loose rein super easy walk trot canter as well as a loose rein walking the property.

I have done some groundwork with him and he has gone up when pressed from the ground - say if I ask him to switch directions with him and move his feet. He gets over it but it’s there. At this point I have to deal with it as in find a solution so the posts with advice are helpful thank you. The posts which say just be done…not helpful. The good news is he’s young and with the cowboy he doesn’t do it - ever. I do feel that it would be good to get him offsite - out on the trails working cattle being a horse as one of the posters said - if anyone has any suggestions for trainers on the West Coast that would do this let me know. I won’t pass off this problem to someone else as it was passed off to me. Part of me wants to warn people of the barn in Holland I got him from but part of me doesn’t want to be that bitter person. If anyone here is looking at horses in Holland let me know and I’ll PM you the name of the barn - I would not repeat not buy a horse from them.

[Spudsmyguy]

A horse my husband had reared one time when I went out of sight ahead of him on a trail. The horse’s hind feet slipped and he fell on his side. Luckily my husband was able to push himself away. Horse stood up shaking and never, ever reared again.

A horse I have now, my TB came to me with a rear installed which I found out about the first day I had him. I had tied him to groom and he went up. I contacted the seller and she claimed he had never reared (yeah, sure) and that I must have done something to make him rear (no). She offered to buy him back for less than half what I paid for him because now she had to “fix” the problems I caused. I declined. I still have him, he doesn’t rear anymore and I love him to death. He didn’t want to event so he is my trail horse and has a home with me forever. A sweeter horse you will never find.

[wanderinglemon]

Yikes, that is tough. I’m so sorry for the situation you’re in, bonding with and learning your new horse is such an exciting period and this is definitely an added stressor.

I agree with the other posters who have mentioned groundwork, especially since you said he rears when you do the groundwork, if you can work through it on the ground that will help you translate it to the saddle, and be much safer in the meantime.

I have never tried the Warwick Schiller methods, but have used other methods geared towards english riders with success in different problem areas.

[TheDBYC]

I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but perhaps an equine Reiki practitioner could help. In human medical science there’s an increasing body of evidence to suggest that the body retains an “imprint” of past trauma at the cellular level. I do people Reiki and am not specifically attuned to horses. Yet sometimes, if I inadvertently get close to an affected area while grooming a horse, I’ll get what I guess you’d describe as a flash/image related to the event that caused the trauma imprint in that spot. There’s some equine reiki practioners locally who I think have proven invaluable in unpacking some complex cases with behavior issues.

Adding: Silly as it sounds, I’ve gotten good results sending images to horses. Whenever possible, I like to be the one grooming & tacking up a horse I’m meeting for the first time. I use that time to visualize us having a successful, enjoyable ride together. I’ll visualize a minor spook & me calmly & confidently catching & supporting him with my aids. 9 times out of 10 I can get the horse to synch up his breathing to mine, too. And that becomes extremely handy if something anxiety provoking happens during the ride & I need to get him to snap out of it & return his focus to me.

It isn’t a magical, Spirit Riding Free cure all. Horses don’t think the same way we do. I’m not talking to them nor expecting them to talk to me. (Let’s face it. It would be terrifying if they did ) He’s not going to tell me his life story & that he needs to be scoped for ulcers. It’s just my way of reminding myself to be sure the container for my energy is strong & free of leaks. And showing him that there’s enough strength for him to lean in a little. He just has to focus on me.

[touchstone]

@BostonHJ

Rearing is to horses what biting is to dogs - a really terrible habit that they develop because it works! Horse rears or dog bites, and we generally say NO but in the end, the rearing horses or biting dog has the upper hand. The more they do the behavior and realize it gets them out of whatever they’re looking to avoid, the more ingrained it becomes, and quickly.

This is consistent with my experience too. There may be lots of reasons why a horse starts rearing. But once it’s worked enough times in a row, they tend to keep doing it. And it’s a really dangerous behavior, so it’s not at all irrational to give up in the moment when it happens, even if that is ultimately self-defeating.

I agree that it is worth trying to discover whether there’s a physical reason for the behavior. But you may also want to come to terms with the possibility that this is part of your horse’s toolkit now.

I used to be brave about pushing through this sort of behavior. But, at this stage in my life, I just say no.

[BostonHJ]

For my horse, yes, a walk on a loose rein in a field is actually where the rearing first surfaced. I had owned him for a few months and he was such a calm dude I almost came off because I 100% wasn’t expecting it. He was a very cold horse so you really had to know him to know when it was coming, though once you knew him, it was pretty obvious. I did some things like lungeing him in the field since I knew I could hold on to him, but the thing that actually fixed the problem was having a young professional who wasn’t scared of his garbage ride him through it. We were at WEF for a good chunk of this so she would ride him and I would hand walk-him in the beginning, since with a chain he wasn’t getting away from me. He had zero chances to have a rear succeed in getting him out of work and within a few weeks I could handle his mini-tantrums when I felt them coming - hacking out or walking over to the show was when it might happen. The second I felt anything might set him back, we went off into a brisk trot or even canter and we might fly by the problem sideways but he wasn’t going up. The problem was squashed early (he had just turned five, and I suspect had luck rearing a few times but not many) and he turned into an extremely solid citizen. I owned him for a few years after this and it didn’t show up again. FYI he did have super, super mild ulcers and was treated for low levels of Lyme and neither made any difference in his demeanor in any way.

[IPEsq]

Maybe contact Warwick and ask if he’d take this on? He doesn’t do a lot of training anymore but seems to still take a horse on now and then. He is on the west coast.

[mvp]

OP, you don’t say how old he is. Sometimes, this is a young, athletic horse way of saying No. And when they are young, they don’t quite know yet that they don’t get to burn down the building because they don’t like their boss.

I think you got it right when you said that this horse doesn’t know how to bring his emotions back down. I know that’s a paraphrase of what you said. I hope it’s an accurate summary! In other terms, I’d say that this horse doesn’t know how to “self-sooth” when the training gets hard.

Lots of horses work out a similar issue by being tied and asked to wait for an unknown amount of time. This is a classic part of Western colt training. Your horse may or may not have had this skill involved. If not, you might think about giving him another, low-mileage, safe, simple, everyday opportunity to get his knickers twisted so that he can untwist them himself.

If my interpretation is right, you might have a few things. 1. Baby horse decides he Doesn’t Wanna. (Sure, if you make it easier, he won’t get to that I DonWanna threshold). 2. When he Doesn’t Wanna, he rears/starts to throw molotov cocktails. But really, he starts that because it was easy for him, You think “911!” He thinks “Look, I just don’t want to get closer to the rocks and I’m being driven toward them, so UP seems a good compromise.” 3. Once you guys are in this spot, this young horse who doesn’t yet know that He Must Follow Orders (or at least try), gets extra scared because you keep driving, and the rocks keep not moving, so he’s trapped.

Equally important, young horse/new horse doesn’t yet know that you can provide him with security, too. So when you start kicking him to get some forward to solve the rearing problem, he thinks you are just in competition with the rocks for which one is his bigger problem. He hasn’t yet internalized the information that if he just stays with his rider, she’ll keep him safe. Of course, this doesn’t bring his adrenaline back down (and remember, he doesn’t do this very well for himself yet), so there’s no obvious or especially good option for him. When you rev up your kicking to get him to go forward, I think you get him to also ramp up his emotions and then and keep popping up. Again, that’s because the rocks haven’t stopped being scary and you aren’t offering him any help, but rather, you are turning up the pressure. So he just makes worse and worse decisions.

I have a couple of suggestions, taken from basic cattle-ing.**. 1. When he locks onto something scary, let him stop and look. Your goal here is all four feet on the ground, him thinking and his experiencing a dissipation of adrenaline when facing something scary. Going toward it or around it or getting him to not look again by the next lap around the ring isn’t the point. Rather, the point is to give him a new experience of confronting and conquering fear.

No, you won’t have to do this forever and he won’t because a horse who needs you to stop and hold his hand. Rather, when you teach him that you will allow him to go as slowly as his emotions need, he won’t fight with you about that and when you suggest to him that he can keep going past something scary, he’ll believe you. But he needs to have that experience over and over before he builds his faith in you and the way you’ll keep him feeling safe.

BTW, he might be having these worse hang-ups when he’s on a loose rein or after some time for a few “baby horse” reasons. It can be that your kind, relaxed ride isn’t providing direction for him, so he’s free to look around. But also, he doesn’t have the support or your structured ride. In short, he might feel that you have abandoned him, which is fine…until those horrible rocks show up. Then he really needs your help. In other cases, where he belatedly takes umbrage at a familiar object, it can be a bit of the same (because you aren’t directing him so much), or because he passed his threshold for the length of work he thinks is possible. Then, when he offered an opinion about that (and remember that you guys have less than a month together), you put the kind of pressure on him that’s amping up, not calming down. He doesn’t think he’s wrong to say “check, please” because he hasn’t had a job yet. But when he does and you guys get into it, he can’t mentally get back out because he doesn’t know how to put his mind back on you. And he doesn’t know that putting his mind back on you earns him peace.

So when you find something that makes him balk, stop and face the scary thing directly. Let him stand there until he seems bored. BTW, bored isn’t looking away with any speed; that’s fear in the form of “I can’t stand to look at it anymore.” Rather, you should feel him stand there like he’s waiting for 10 hunter rounds before his turn. When you get that bored posture and feeling, pick up one rein and just suggest that he turn left or, right, 90 degrees and walk way as though you are done watching it, too. Walk around a big, casual arc on the buckle and then turn to face it again. If he doesn’t seem tense, close your leg and gently suggest that he take a step forward. If you get one, stop and let him chill. Stand there, and again turn sideways and leave when you get that bored feel.

2. Same stuff, but with some cattle.

**The unparalleled virtue of cattle is that they teach an insecure, backward-thinking horse that the pressure on him is released when he goes forward toward the thing he fears. Your job as his rider, then, is to take him to scary things and help him manage his emotions when he gets there so that he feels more confidence in himself. When he lives through that, he will gain confidence in you. And then the ride you gave him-- you closed your leg and said “I don’t care, go forward” will work the way you expected it to. But it sounds like you don’t yet have enough credibility with him to be able to put pressure on him AND be his savior from that pressure.

I also think ground work and long-lining can be useful if he’s a scaredy-cat. The idea is that you should be able to bring him to something scary, with you in front, and then eventually be able to send him to something scary without being between him and the bad thing. I don’t know how spooky he really is. If he gives lots of things a hard look, the ground stuff can pay off. If, instead, he’s reasonably brave but has these little glitches that turn into rearing, I don’t think the problem is fear so much as his inexperience in emotionally tolerating pressure and continuing to think and to try during it. To me, rearing is just not thinking.

You’ll notice that I haven’t said a whole lot about rearing as opposed to any other way of exiting, stage left in a big way. Yes, the rearing as something he’s doing as a response to pressure matters. But all else is about how he is taught (or has not been taught) to accept the pressure his rider puts on him because you set it up so that being with you is safe.

I had your horse, but an alpha mare who preferred to turn and run from things rather than rear. Teaching her that when I sent her to cattle, they would move from her and she’d be The Man was something that has transformed our relationship. This mare will now both march down to things she doesn’t wanna, just because I said so. And she knows how to stop and think in the face of fear.

Two things will make this horse safer for you to ride. 1. He learns that he is allowed to stop and think when the chips are down. 2. He is “honest” or that his emotions are legible to you in his demeanor. If you can read him and he develops the skill to think, he won’t have to say No in that scary, escalating way of rearing repeatedly.

I hope this helps. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Also, I haven’t live on the West Coast for a long time, but if you tell me where you are there, I’ll see if I can think of some names.

[TKR]

Alot of good suggestions. I’ve been there as well and rearing is simply a resistance to doing what is asked. It could have a variety of reasons - afraid, overfaced or just purely “not gonna” and see if you are intimidated enough that the horse is rewarded by getting away with it and out of work. I know alot of the old school folks with very secure seats, would kick hard during the rear or give a hard tap with a whip on the butt or behind the girth to make the horse immediately leap forward, thus negating the rear and resistance. I don’t know if you have that skill level or not. If he lacks confidence, that is something that just takes time and patience as well as firmness in not accepting a rear as a “no”. I would be careful not to make it worse by pushing too hard and just find a way to get a positive response. Disengaging the hindquarters and putting the horse in a circle give him a place to go safely and takes away the horse’s control. Because that is what it is. Short periods of work and adding things that are hard a little at a time and being prepared to diffuse the resistance is about the only way to make it work. Strong arming and too much pressure is not the answer. Good luck!!

[piperluvshorses]

mvp1 - This is excellent and very insightful. I very much like this approach and a bit of a AH HA - that’s why the cowboy wants to work cattle with him. I must say the cowboy has been doing a lot of long lining with him everywhere and very much wants to take him to the ranch. I didn’t send him out to work cattle yet as we need to do the month of Ulcerguard. I did actually go stand in the scary corner for 10-15 minutes multiple but I don’t think I got until that bored cock a foot point - something I will definitely do. He still wanted to walk away from the scary spot - tho very quietly. Thank you - super insightful - he’s 6 so I’m hoping he’s still considered young.

[fordtraktor]

Good post, mvp1.

OP, one thing to keep in mind is that some are saying that rearing is a taught behavior. That isn’t true, it is a natural response to pressure. Watch a field of foals/weanlings…horses rear in the field from babyhood. It is as natural an instinct as bucking or spooking or any other reaction. As such, helping understand the horse through its natural instinctive responses is important, so that you can teach the horse to cope with pressures of all kinds in a different way.

[mvp]

I’m glad all that helped. If we were standing together in the ring with your horse, this would all become crystal clear in about 20 minutes.

With the scary corner, you might have a really wonderful, easy, low-mileage trust-building opportunity. You can do this with a rope halter and long-ish lead, one between 14’ and 18’.

The goal is to be able send him ahead of you into the corner. Ideally, you’d think there’s no way in hell he’ll do that when you are starting out. That’s good because the goal is for him to change his mind about how you help him deal with his own fear. The more sure he is that he can’t do it, the more impact you make on him by supporting him as he does it.

Start with where he’ll stand while looking at the corner but relaxed. Don’t let his young boy mind wander; this is class time. If you know how to do some ground work where you send him in a circle or an arc and have him reverse direction, do that. When he gets to that side, he doesn’t get to bulge into the circle toward you/away from the scary corner. Rather, stop him on the circle while he’s facing it. Let him stand there for about a breath. If he blows at it, that’s perfect. Turn him around and go the other way. Let him stop again, but he can’t just run past it, bulging the circle in.

When he’s stopped, facing the scary corner, after a moment, pick up the bight of the rope and send him forward a step or so. Stopping and stiffening is ok. Turning toward you and around (as you have taught him to do before) is ok. Anything quick or “cheaty”-- running past it, bulging in, is not OK. His hitting the end of the rope in an attempt to run off from the corner and the exercise is really not OK. Always fix that first so that he makes keeping a loop in the rope his responsibility.

All you are doing, then, is making arcs back and forth away from the corner, with him stopping when he gets tense. You can move closer to the corner, but he still gets to stop and look when he gets worried. If he stays there and looks, and then you turn him around, you have just rewarded him (by allowing him to leave the place where he was as close to the corner as he felt safe) for having tolerated the pressure of being in that spot. You sent him there, you held him there, you released him. He needs to have that experience of you as his handler when the chips are down.

The idea is that you give him the options for managing his fear. He doesn’t get to choose his own way and just punt. And he really doesn’t get to do the “non-thinking” thing of just running past it.

Do this reversal thing a few times and get him light on the end of the rope. When he is, and you can lead him where you’d like with a loop in the rope and/or he seems attentive to you on the ground, pick up the rope, turn toward the corner and march right in there. He should know that he’s not allowed to pull on the rope (because you taught him), so he should come along. If he does stop (and he eventually will look past you/over your head into the corner), that’s him losing his focus on you and putting it back on the outside world. This is you vs. the rocks. No problem, just put him back to work a bit. Have him and back him up a few stops. Here, your hand is on the knot of the rope halter under his chin, his head is reasonably low and there’s no posture that says he might rear. He’s just getting his focus back on you, lowering his head into a relaxed position and doing some low-pressure work.

From there, you can do either exercise again. Sooner or later, he’ll come into the corner following you because you lead him there and the security you/your direction provides is more relevant than the corner, or you’ll be able to send him there out a head of you on the lead. When you are sending a horse, it takes a more sophisticated and complete base in the ground work. But you can work up to being able to send him out ahead of you. Just remember that he never gets to cut back into your space to get away from something. Better for him to stop facing the thing he fears and reversing or then calmly walking past it on the circle. The latter thing will take some time and you’ll have to get very good at reading him to get that. But the point is that he experiences a de-escalation every time he confronts something he doesn’t want to.

See how it’s not about desensitizing him to this corner or stopping that behavior? And it’s not even about having him get into the corner or spend a bunch of time there. Rather, it’s about having go up to a line that his fear won’t let him cross and his trying to cope with that. And it’s about how you are there to both ask him to step past his limit and support him while he does for a moment and then you allowing him to retreat. All this is the process of you teaching him to think under pressure, and you offering him safety. And if he can think under pressure, he doesn’t have to say no to you by rearing or rearing in an escalating way.

[Stonetemplepilots]

This sounds eerily similar to a horse my friend has gotten from Europe for basically free- just paid for the transport. He was a GP horse but broken, would just say NO and go up. Very dangerous… from what I know they are not as kind as we are here with them.

The horse had a slew of physical problems such as ulcers and neck/shoulder problems from rolkur, gadgets etc. With proper care and TLC he is 100% now.

Horses rear because they are at their wits end and just say NO. They are trying to tell us something, I will always believe that, and I have never had a horse rear on me that didn’t have a physical problem.

My horse had pyloric ulcers SO bad. One day he just dead stopped and turned around and bit my leg (15 year old me goes huh??) then starts going straight up. My idiot trainer at the time just thinks the horse is being bad and encourages me to get physical (lol). I ditched the trainer and took the horse to be scoped (4 times), moved barns (needed 24/7 turnout) and we finally got everything under control. For my horse it was kind of a bitch getting him through the behavioral part but with some good riding and good experiences again he is awesome to ride now.

It takes a good deal of time figuring a horse out, especially when they are new to the country and to you! Good luck, it will work out eventually

[mpsbarnmanager]

A mare at my barn had been rearing for months. I watched the trainer ride her and was convinced it was pain rather than behavior. She would suck back then pop up especially one direction and on a circle. Yesterday x-rays showed kissing spines. It’s a thought.