I too, say this is not normal and dangerous.
I am sorry, but it costs just as much to feed and house her as it does to feed and house a normal horse, who needs your love and kindness now.
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I agree. I think she sounds spoiled and hasn’t been pressed at all. Her reaction, repeatedly, to being pressed is concerning. If she were mine, she would be with a trainer experienced with these types of horses and be under vet care. I’d be radiographing her neck and poll to see if there is any concern.
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If this is primarily happening during farrier visits or when you’re handling her hind feet could it be that the farrier is holding the hoof too high, making her uncomfortable and throwing her off balance? She might be tolerating as long as she can until her balance shifts too far and she falls.
Next time see if he’ll hold the foot a little lower.
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This is such dangerous behavior. 4 times this behavior has happens which makes it a habit for the yearling.
I’d send her to pro training with someone really good and get their opinion. Plus a full vet work up.
Life is way too short to deal with horses that rear.
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If the horse has neurologic issues no amount of training will make it safe.
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No one is arguing with that. But if a horse, especially at only a year old, has neurological issues so severe as to justify this kind of behavior, then that horse probably needs to be euthanized asap.
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I’m wondering too if there’s some molly coddling going on when she goes down. “omg are you ok?”
I’d make being on the ground the WORST CHOICE she’s ever made. Have a noisemaker or something to scare the bejeebers out of her when she’s down, then when she stands get right back to what you were doing with absolutely no break to catch her breath.
Obviously the vet check can’t hurt but I’m with @Montanas_Girl. There are acceptable and unacceptable ways to deal with stress and pain. She’s firmly in the latter.
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And that is a definite possibility, sadly. Training to fix the behaviour should not happen until that has been ruled out.
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Yes … but for all we know, this horse may have been attempting to communicate discomfort in milder ways, not been heard, and had to resort to extreme behaviour. Or not. We don’t know. And then there’s the nerve pain thing. IF nerve pain is the cause of the behaviour, I think almost anyone who has suffered nerve pain can say that “over-reactions” can happen. I remember once telling a doctor that my pain was “more of a smacking pain.” “???” “If you touch it I can pretty much guarantee that you will get smacked no matter how hard I try not to smack you.” “Got it.” lol
I’m certainly not diagnosing this little horse and certainly hope it’s strictly a learned behaviour that can be unlearned. But, for me, it’s not fair to attempt to modify the behaviour until an obvious behaviour that is occurring within the first time frame for physical abnormalities in the neck to be causing it.
For safe handling in the meantime, I’ve outlined butt rope use above and I believe a couple other posters have also outlined methods that do not involve pulling on the head or potentially causing worse freak outs.
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A butt rope works great with newborns because they are small enough that you can kind of (gently) tow them along with it if needed without pulling on their heads. Usually, a tiny nudge is all it takes to get them walking.
A butt rope doesn’t work on a full sized (or nearly so, in the case of a yearling) horse because you no longer have the size advantage to make it effective. It’s also extremely dangerous with one that has already demonstrated the propensity to go over backwards - you are providing the horse with a pivot point, essentially, so it is even more likely to go over, and probably with more force. You only have to watch the trainwrecks that come from people who try to use a butt rope to load resistant horses to understand the danger involved.
None of the training techniques that have been suggested (except for the person who suggested tying the horse, which I would never, ever, ever do with any horse that isn’t 100% solid on giving to pressure) will in any way hurt this horse or do any damage to a potential physical issue. None of them involve “pulling” on the head or neck in any way. Done properly, teaching a horse to give to pressure actually involves very little real pressure. That’s the whole point of teaching this essential “equine good citizen” skill.
I can’t imagine how one might propose to do any kind of meaningful diagnostics on a horse that can’t be safely held for the vet?
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It seems that teaching this filly to drive forward instead of get pulled/drawn any way would be one of the first training techniques to work on. I’d probably be dead serious about personal space and start teaching her some very basic hindquarter work, short but serious sessions, not endless circles.
I’ve grown to really like Ryan Rose as well; he seems to have a good hand with horses and also a good teacher. He has a lot of ground work, personal space and rearing videos that offer good illustration but IMO anything done with this filly would have to be by very capable hands with excellent feel and timing, small effective doses. Horses in general as a species hate to fall down; for this one to use it as an escape route is concerning. I think the goal now would be that she never do it again b/c training and handling never get her in that spot again but if she does I agree to make it a very unfun experience and increased pressure until she’s back up and moving forward.
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Chemical restraint is a thing. It’s not that hard to imagine.
In regards to butt rope or (my preferred arrangement) figure 8 rope, it is nothing like loading a horse with a longe line. If in doubt, you actually can let go and nothing awful will happen. This comes from someone that’s used figure 8s on hellion calves and absolutely will not get within 100m of someone loading a horse with a longe line around the horse’s butt.
I’m also not a fan of the method in the video. For me, that’s way too much head and neck pulling for my liking on a young creature.
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You cannot perform a lameness or neuro exam on a sedated horse.
If you haven’t worked with a lot of remedial horses, it’s very easy to underestimate the dangerousness of these types. Yes, rule out medical issues, of course. As much as is possible with a horse that can’t be safely restrained, that is. But the horse still needs to be trained, too, so that neither it nor a human gets killed in the process. There is no other safe option.
Halter breaking cattle cannot be compared to trying to lead a resistant horse. Cattle have a lower center of gravity and are significantly less likely to go over backwards. If “just let go” worked with this horse, she wouldn’t be repeatedly going over backwards even without a butt rope.
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No you cannot, but you sure can get radiography.
Clearly you have never worked with Holsteins aka the hooligans of the cattle world.
Just let go is to keep the handler safe. That is always 100% top priority - keep the human safe and #2 try to keep the horse safe.
And no, we don’t actually know if just letting go (in time) would keep this particular horse from going over. We have NO idea of the owner’s ability to read the room nor their reaction time.
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Holsteins may be large, but they are pocket pets compared to “eared” beef cattle. 
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The filly may be quite smart and has learned an evasion that is successful every time. Or the filly has something pain wise going on that is causing the reaction (with an evasion that the filly has now learned to relieve the pain). Obviously OP can’t fix either on their own nor should they try to. I would start with radiographs under sedation - this filly could have a fracture or something going on that the owner is totally unaware of. When the filly has been cleared by a vet, I’d send this filly to a trainer where the filly is solely handled by the trainer until the issue is resolved. OP, I would also suggest you then take lessons from this trainer when you work with this filly. Medical issue or not, fixing this type of training issue is going to take impeccable timing and the forethought of a professional. The filly also deserves a professional who isn’t going to manhandle her and make her life miserable.
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Thanks for the suggestions, all. A couple things stuck out to me, especially when a few of you mentioned that although she may lead, it doesn’t mean she actually knows what to do outside of follow along. So then I started thinking - maybe she’s not as halter broke as the breeder led us to believe. Maybe she was halter broke to the point that she could be caught and since she’s a pretty friendly creature, she just follows along without actually knowing why. But when she feels pressure, she feels trapped and her successful way of getting away was to pull back and over. Her front feet never actually leave the ground, she just sits down on her haunches and flops over.
So I tested that theory. I haltered her in her field and started leading away from her friend. She followed me until her friend stopped and then she no longer wanted to follow nicely - normally, we bring both babies out at the same time and she wanted to stay with her friend. She stopped, I gave her a gentle tug on her lead and clucked my tongue and she sat back on her haunches. Seeing as she was on a hill, she flopped over backwards like I expected she would.
Since I expected her reaction, I had enough slack in the rope that I didn’t let it go when she went over and as soon as she rolled, I got her back on her feet and clucked at her again to move forward. As soon as I saw her head start to go up, I got after her haunches and started disengaging them so she would step away from me. We did that a few times in both directions and then I asked her to drop her head from gentle pressure on the lead. She did that very well every time I asked.
I asked her again to move forward with a gentle tug on the lead rope and a cluck to come along and away she went, without an issue at all.
I got her into the round pen and we did more of the poll pressure and hindquarter disengagement. No issues. When I asked her to back up with gentle pressure, her head went up again and she started sitting down. I quickly went to disengage her hindquarters and get her to move her feet, but she was already committed to the flop and she ended up just kind of laying her her side and quickly getting up.
This is a pretty smart filly. I’ve watched her reason through gate clips, treat dispensers and a whole bunch of other brain teasers. So I got to thinking - maybe she’s smart enough to reason out some pressure and release stuff on her own without human intervention and added pressure. Our round pen is pretty safe so I dropped her long lead and let her wander around on her own while dragging the lead. The first time she stepped on the lead with her front foot, her head went up, but she couldn’t actually evade the pressure like she was used to because her body weight was working against her. So she stopped and I could see her brain turning. She had pressure on her face, but couldn’t go over… then she moved her foot and the pressure went away.
She kept moving and stepped on the lead again. Pressure. Head went up, but she didn’t try to set back. Her ears flicked around. Her foot moved. Pressure gone.
Little lightbulb moment.
Stepped on the lead a third time. Head stayed down, foot moved off, pressure gone. No attempt to even back up.
She did this a couple more times on her own before I picked up a flag and started putting a little pressure on her to keep moving. It only took about 3 times around the 60-ft round pen before she wasn’t even trying to pull her head away from the pressure. She’d step on her lead, her ears would flick and her head would drop and then she’d move her feet and solve her own issue.
After that, I picked up the lead rope again and we did a little more work with pressure in hand and I introduced the “back up” pressure again. No hesitation, she dropped her head to the pressure and backed up. First try was just the thought, second try was a whole step. Progress.
We ended the lesson by having me pick up her feet, and kind of stretch her legs around like a farrier would. Normally, this would cause her to sit down too. This time around, we had no issues. She stood as well as I’d expect a baby to stand. Entire lesson took about 20 minutes from start to finish.
We repeated these lessons the next day. Before even attempting to lead her from the field, we worked on pressure and hindquarter disengagement. She didn’t even try to stay with her buddy when I led her up from the field. Gentle pressure and a cluck and she followed. Her feet got sticky about midway up the field, but she started following again after a gentle tug and cluck. No attempt to sit back.
Got into the round pen, more pressure exercises, backed up like a pro with a low head and calm face. No attempt to evade pressure or sit down. Handled her feet, cleaned them, stretched them out onto buckets to imitate the farrier stand. No attempt to evade or go over backward. This entire lesson took a whole 10 minutes.
So I think our best bet now is to treat her as if she’s not halter broke at all. Start from square one. Trainer will treat her like an unhandled baby. Vet was out a few weeks ago for vaccinations and I had asked her to check the filly over because I was worried about an injuries and the vet said everything felt normal in her neck, poll and shoulders. Recommended some bodywork initially, but said they would do x-rays if I wanted. She just didn’t think they would show anything based on her physical exam. I’ll take that with a grain of salt.
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Boy that’s a great update. Fingers crossed for you and for her that she forgets this was ever in her toolbox.
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Fantastic update!
She sounds like a fantastic candidate for clicker training.
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Thank you. 
I’m feeling a little more confident now. Something I forgot to mention - we did these lessons while my husband was ripping apart a stock trailer to fix. There was lots of noise, lots of scary things happening… and this filly still made that kind of progress.
I think our plan is still to sedate her for the farrier in July, just as a precaution even if we make huge leaps and bounds between now and then. Both the trainer and vet suggested this, just in case nerves are a catalyst for the filly. If nothing else, the sedation will help take the edge off and she’ll feel less stressed and having a good experience in la-la land might help reset her habit of sitting down during trims as well. Like the vet explained - having a small dose of Dorm gel won’t sedate her so much that she’s unaware of life, it’ll just make the edges a little softer and happier so her brain stays a little quieter.
I warned my husband that we seem to have a super smart horse on our hands and we’ll have to adjust our way of thinking to handle her. You can’t give a horse like this even an inch of leeway - we need hard boundaries and no exceptions. We have to imagine an invisible box around us that this filly doesn’t get to come into under ANY circumstances that aren’t 100% our choice. No hand feeding treats. No letting her touch us first. If it feels cold to us, we’re on the right track.
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