I came across this clip on Facebook. From what I can gather, the backstory of this horse is he was an off the track thoroughbred who learned this rear technique early on and used it as his go to move. The owner went to extremes trying to diagnose a physical ailment through vets, chiropractors, etc. Eventually, they retired the horse to pasture, but his behavior became more extreme and health waned and he was ultimately put down. Its a sad story but sometimes the the reality we face as horse owners. Sometimes, a horse does have something cross wired in his brain. As a trainer, if I were just judging this 30 second clip, what I would focus on for this horse is calming his insides down, and making sure his brain feels free. A horse feeling stuck, and rearing and/or bucking in display of this stuck feeling, is an all to common thing that happens to people and horses in ALL walks or disciplines of our industry, from recreational to performance...so before anyone gets judgemental about the particular discipline that this rider has chosen for herself and horse...it is an across the board thing that we should study and work on fixing ourselves and our horses before the confusion gets dangerous. Lastly, Ive seen just as much of this kind of trouble with horses ridden in bitless bridles (if not more), as I have seen with horses that are ridden with bits. Ok, so how would I help free a horse, similar to this horse, up and calm him down? I first would treat him as a colt who does not know how to move off with a rider for the first time. I would work on being able to lead his feet to the side, forward, and backward using a bit or hackamore (which ever i felt was best for the horse), FROM the saddle. By doing this, I am hopefully showing the horse that even though the cue, direction,pressure, is coming from the very front of him (which since he is a prey animal should stop or turn him...think of herding and directing cattle or sheep or deer etc) he is still free to move forward, he is not stuck in one spot. Next, I would work on visual exercises, because horses are naturally visual and spacial animals. They learn to yield from a feel very very well and accurately, but it is a taught thing, and something they have to learn to dismiss what nature tells them to do which is to fight it...and thats the part of a horse that most of us struggle with. Visual tasks and exercises such as weaving through trees, barrels, poles, whatever you have lying around, gives a horse a beginning and an end to focus on, and can help him to make sense of the directions we are giving him. It can be a very clarifying thing for the horse to experience. And finally (this is a very simple nuts and bolts kind of diagnosis..anything more needs to be individualized for the specific horse/rider combination), I would slowly ease my way back into nonvisual tasks, such as arena riding, and then ease my way back out to visual tasks whenever I felt the horse get the slightest bit stuck in his brain. Just food for thought :-) -Kalley
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 15:54:27 +0000
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