From: Chaaka
Hi Jessica, and thank you so very much for all you do for us novices. I have tried to get help from the pros before, and the answer to my questions have been.....buy my tape and it'll answer all your questions. Well, surprise, it doesn't. Thank you for just plain caring.
Now, to my lovely pal, Chondo. He is a coming 4 yr old. He is very well ground trained. Has perfect manners. Is a real card, steals my soda bottles, and walks away with it, licks my face when I'm not looking, carries his own lead rope, just really funny! But anytime he gets upset or nervous, he bucks like a fool!! And he's good at it too! I was riding him one day, about 45 minutes, and all the other horses went one way, and I was headed back to the barn. About 1/8 mile away from the other horses, I asked him to lope, and he bucked me right on my head, stared at me spraddle legged for a minute, and then took off and ran back to the other horses. I peeled myself off the ground, walked up and got him, backed him about 1/16 of a mile, got back on and got to the same spot and asked him to lope again. He trotted, but never loped.
Well, since I could never trust him, and I am a very novice rider in my 50's, I sold him. Now the people want to know if I want to buy him back. They said he was just going through the terrible 2's that all horses go through, and that he is fine now. He has passed the "phase" that causes all this. Is this true? Is there really a phase of terrible two's? He did buck with them once, and never did it again. I just don't have a good saddle seat. I haven't figured out the riding part yet. I wasn't afraid to ride him when he bucked, but I am now. If he senses that, won't he buck with me again? Thanks so much for listening. Chaaka
In the incident you described, I don't think your horse actually ever did anything wrong. An unbalanced rider - as every novice is, whether she's in her 50s or in her teens - is very difficult for a horse to carry, especially a very young, undeveloped horse. Whoever thought it was clever to put a novice rider of any age together with a two-year-old horse.... ought to be taken out behind the barn and given a severe talking-to (at least). I don't think that Chondo tried to hurt you, and I'm sure that you didn't mean to hurt him, but the two of you could have hurt one another very badly indeed. Here's how your story reads to me - one sentence at a time. This is a little bit like the game where someone shows you a picture and you're supposed to find all the errors in the picture. ;-)
"I was riding him one day, about 45 minutes, and all the other horses went one way, and I was headed back to the barn."
Okay. I see two problems just in this first sentence:
Nobody, least of all a novice rider, should be riding a green two-year-old for 45 minutes at a time - it's too hard on his very young body.
A novice rider should not be trying to make ANY horse, least of all a green baby, go one way when everyone else is going another way.
"About 1/8 mile away from the other horses, I asked him to lope, and he bucked me right on my head, stared at me spraddle legged for a minute, and then took off and ran back to the other horses."
More problems:
When you're on your way back to the barn, you WALK. You don't trot, and you certainly don't lope.
Baby horses have difficulty balancing themselves and their saddles at a lope - never mind trying to balance a rider. It's difficult for them even when the rider is expert.
When a horse can't balance and he's being pushed forward, he'll typically throw his head forward and down and try to get into a lope - or he'll throw his head up high and try to stop. Which action he chooses will depend on his degree of discomfort, his degree of fear or confusion, and the amount and type of pressure he's experiencing from the rider's legs and hands. Nervous novices trying to get horses to lope will typically pump their upper bodies, which makes it difficult for ANY horse to pick up a lope, and impossible for a youngster. When a horse loses its balance at the lope, or going into the lope, it will often buck - once - to get its balance back. You'll see this if you watch horses in a field - if they get going too quickly, or on a steep downhill, you'll often see the more unbalanced ones give a single buck to get their balance back.
When the horse has a rider on board, the situation is even more difficult, and can be confusing for the rider. If I had a dollar for every time I've been told "the horse bucked me off", I'd have thousands of dollars in my hand. If I had to give back a dollar for each time the horse actually stumbled, tripped, pecked, or twitched, and the rider lost his or her balance, fell off, and THOUGHT the horse had bucked.... let's just say that I MIGHT have as many as ten or twelve dollars left.
Once you were off, staring at you was a perfectly normal reaction - he'd probably never seen anyone get off so fast, much less sprawl on the ground on dismounting. ;-) Running back to the other horses is one of the two utterly predictable, normal, actions he could have taken - the other would have been running back to the barn.
"I peeled myself off the ground, walked up and got him, backed him about 1/16 of a mile, got back on and got to the same spot and asked him to lope again."
Getting up and going to get your horse, no problem, that was sensible. But why on earth would you back him for 1/16 of a mile... or at all????? First, backing is NOT an appropriate punishment, even if you thought the horse needed to be punished, which he didn't. Second, it's damaging to the horse. Third, there was no reason to punish him in any case, he hadn't done anything wrong. Fourth, even if he HAD done something wrong, by the time you had your hands on him, there was no way he could possibly associate your actions with anything that happened five or ten minutes before - he just thought you were being horrible to him for no reason.
After making him back for punishment (which is not good for any horse, especially a youngster), you got on again, okay, and then went to the same spot and asked him to lope. WHY? He was still too young/green to be asked to lope, especially after what was now more like a full HOUR of riding - and you were still headed toward the barn.
"He trotted, but never loped."
He trotted because (a) he was tired, (b) you had a death-grip on the reins, (c) he hadn't enjoyed his experience of loping, and (d) after the last experience, he wasn't sure he even understood the cue. In any case, the last time you cued him to lope and he DID lope, all hell broke loose - and as far as he knew, it was all because he loped when he wasn't supposed to. When you cued him to lope the second time, he probably thought "Okay, whatever that means, I know it doesn't mean lope, so.... I don't know what it means...I'd better do something... I guess I'll trot."
"Well, since I could never trust him, and I am a very novice rider in my 50's, I sold him."
He sounds very trustworthy, actually, and very good-natured - but not suitable for a novice. That's not a reflection on you personally - green youngsters are not good choices for novice riders, full stop. And at two, he was not just green, but far too young to be ridden like that - a few minutes under a light, experienced trainer, toward the end of his two-year-old year, would be the very MOST time he should have been asked to spend under saddle on any given day. Forty-five minutes or an hour under even the very best trainer would be too much - and so would even five or ten minutes under a novice rider.
Everything he did was normal for a very young, green horse, especially one with far too much being asked of him. Everything YOU did was normal for a frightened novice rider with no idea what she could reasonably ask of a very young, green horse - but what's "normal" is often wrong, as it was in this case. THIS is precisely why the "green horse, green rider" combination is one to be avoided.
The potential for disaster increases exponentially when you add up everything the horse knows and everything the rider knows... and the total doesn't even add up to one single clue. (See the HORSE-SENSE archives for more discussions of the Clue Factor.) The bottom line is that in any horse-rider combination, ONE, at least, has to know what he's doing. Selling him was probably a good idea, since there was no way either one of you could teach the other one anything useful. Green horse - green rider is a very unsatisfactory combination, and a very dangerous one.
This horse sounds like a sweetie, but please don't confuse a game-playing, "fun" relationship on the ground with a functional partnership between horse and rider. Once you're in the saddle, everything changes. If your expectations are unreasonable and/or unclear, and he is nervous and/or uncomfortable, the two of you are going to be an accident waiting to happen.
"Terrible twos" isn't a horse phase - at least, not in the sense that we use "terrible twos" to describe human toddlers who have reached the point of saying "NO" (and using it every ten seconds). Two-year-old horses are babies - young, immature, undeveloped youngsters. Their bodies are changing from day to day, they don't balance themselves the same way from one moment to the next, they are teething, and they need to be out with their friends, growing up into nice horses that can be started under saddle, lightly, by an experienced rider and trainer, in another year or two. At two, horses simply do not have any of the maturity, focus, experience, and wisdom that can make a horse a good equine babysitter for a novice rider.
For reasons of human greed, ignorance, and impatience (or all of the above), horses are often started as yearlings and ridden as two-year-olds, but this goes counter to all principles and practices of sensible training, as well as all the realities of equine physical and mental development. Unlike many human toddlers, horses are typically very sweet, quiet, and malleable at two, which tempts many trainers to start them under saddle "before they get big enough to cause problems". Unfortunately, the problems caused by starting them too early are problems that affect the horses' athletic potential and long-term soundness - but that's another soapbox. ;-)
Every year, I work with hundreds of riders and horses. Many of those riders began riding as adults. I can assure you that you are by no means the only novice in her 50s - there are a lot of people out there who didn't have a chance to begin riding until that age. You can learn, you can enjoy riding, and you can do very well, but please take some basic precautions.
Riding helmets and suitable shoes are essential, but they're just the beginning - riding and training are not skills you can teach yourself. If you haven't had lessons before, it's time to begin. If you've had some lessons, but they were taught by someone who thought it was a fine idea to put a novice rider on a green two-year-old for a long ride... then you need lessons with a much better instructor. Visit the American Riding Instructor Association's website (www.riding-instructor.com) and see whether you can locate a certified instructor near you. Stock seat, hunt seat, jumping, dressage - don't worry about the specialty area, just find someone who is qualified to teach you a basic balanced seat.
If possible, hold off on the horse purchase - wait until you've had your first ten or twenty lessons, and then tell your instructor that you're planning to buy a horse. Ask for help in finding and choosing the right horse for you, and don't worry if it takes a year to find the right horse. You'll need at least a year of good lessons before you move into horse ownership, anyway.
Chondo is still very young, and possibly not the best choice for a novice. A year from now, after you've had lots of good lessons, and if your instructor thinks you're ready and likes this particular horse for you, he might be a better choice. At the very least, he would be a year nearer maturity, and you would be a much more experienced rider with a much more secure seat. Right now, buying him would probably not be a great idea - you enjoy playing with him on the ground, but you're afraid of him under saddle, and the most likely outcome would be that one or both of you would get hurt. I'd like to see you live to ride another day - and enjoy it.
Jessica
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