cure for bucking?

[tbone]

Grrr T-Bone finally has unfortantly devolped the habit of bucking and with me on him!!!! They only way so far I can stop him is by pulling his head to my leg/one rein stop him. I was wondering is there a better way to get him to stop and keep him from bucking??? Would ever time he started to buck pulling his head to my knee help so that he learned bucking equals head to her knee?

[stephydoo]

i found that with my old 6 year old horse his bucking was a way of showing he had too much energy and or was getting too excited or bored.

first you can try lungeing him for a bit before each ride, add a bit of new stuff into his routine, ie if you usually school, go on a hack

[jUmPingIsLifE]

are you absolutly positive that his saddle, bridle, bit and everything fits him fine? tbone still could be growing, and with the work you have been doing he has probably put on some muscle in places so that the saddle no longer fits.

also, if you can ride it out...just try to keep going. When autumn bucked with him i would keep him going and just growl a little (he knows that the growl means he was naughty). By stoping he could learn that bucking is a way out of working (if he bucks, you will stop him and he doesn't have to keep going). not sure if that bit was all true but it was something someone told me and he seems to make scence.

[LisaS]

You say he has just started bucking T-Bone, this makes me think it could be pain related, teeth, back or maybe pain from the saddle.

I don't know the history of the horse but if he is young and you have been working him then he will have changed shape. Maybe get a saddler out;)

[tbone]

His saddle and bridle fit fine as I have also let him lose with no tack on in the round pen while I stood thete and worked him he kicked the wall and bucked artound the arena.

Lol stephydoo this was on a hack with my 2 friends lol and no it wasn't a spook or bolt situation. He also stays out more like 23/7 nowdays as he usually gets to hyper staying in the barn half the day.

I don't know it could bve his teeth I may ask my instructor if she will have a look at them before I get a vet out there.

I think it may have something to do with the 5 year old stage of testing me. Lol this summer he tried tons of stuff on me so I suspect this is his way of testing me some more.(Lol I think he learned about bucks from his friend Pinto;) )

Jumpingis life- It does make sense lol sounds like something my natural horsemanship instructor would say lol.

(Lisa lol my horse is pretty much done growing or atleast everyone says he is ;) but you never know. )

Thanks everyone I may ask my instructors next week about these little(more like big lol) bucks!!!

[Chikumz]

Sam, T-bone may be done growing but if you are working him then his shape will change as his muscles develop.

[tbone]

Its not his tack as I have said he bucks in the round pen without tack too!!

[Alex]

Hi Sam,

It's still a good idea to get him checked over. He could have a sore back which hurts even as he's working in the round pen, even if he's not under saddle. A sore shoulder would also make roundpen work painful. If you can, I'd get his teeth checked by the dentist, and the rest of him vetted.

He's only a baby - so excited bucks are a real possibility too - and I think the best advice I ever got for Milly's bucks was to ride through it. Try and sit out the buck, talk to her sternly but keep her moving. The problem with the 'head-to-knee' thing is that T-bone will learn to associate bucking with stopping work. It's better if you keep him going - lots of positive reassurance when he's good, and a firm voice when he's naughty. This has worked wonders with Milly, who used to be a bad bucker. She still tosses in an excited buck with me occasionally on hacks, but it's very rare :)

I know the others have said about the tack and I think they're right - you said your tack fits, but when was the last time it was actually checked? T-bone will muscle up with work and even just a couple of months can mean his shape has changed considerably.

I hope you get the bucking sorted out :)

Love,
Alex

[Shiny McShine]

Horses usually buck out of either pain, frustration or excitement. As everyone else has pointed out it is very important to make sure that pain is not the cause because if it is and you don't sort it out then you will always have problems in one form or another.

If a horse is bucking out of frustration it is usually due to the rider, they may be giving incorrect aids or signals, or not taking notice of the horses responses. It is a good idea to consider this and just check (or get an instructor to check) that you are giving consistant, clear aids. This frustration could also be from the environment he is living in. If he is not getting enough exercise, or is getting too much feed, not enough social contact etc. then this could make him frustrated and cause him to buck either ridden or not ridden. Just something to consider there.

On the other hand T-Bone may just be fresh and excited, and the bucking and kicking could just be him kicking up his heals and having some fun. He might be excited, again, because of excess feed, not enough exercise, or some excitement regarding other horses.

The first thing you need to do is find the cause and sort it out. If he is in pain, remove the pain. If he is frustrated, try and find the cause of his frustration and change it. If he is excited you may need to change his routine, providing more opportunities to relieve this energy.

Once you have sorted out the cause of the problem you may still need to deal with the actual bucking. If he has been in pain then the bucking may continue after the cause of the pain is gone, out of habitual fear. Bucking can become a habit even after the initial cause of the bucking is long gone.

I think it is best to discourage bucking by doing as you have been and stopping the horse using one rein. I don't like to try and ride out any bucking behaviour because, for one it can become dangerous... the less dangerous situations you put yourself in the better, in my opinion. Secondly if your horse is bucking out of excitement for example, then he may treat it as a game. While it may be fun for the horse it is not something you want to encourage him to do every time he feels a bit happy. I think the best thing to do is to stop, calm the horse down, then continue from where you left off. It may seem like riding out bucks makes you a better rider, but in the end I think the best rider is the one who can avoid the problem in the first place.

Hope that makes sense :).

[Waikato Valuta]

i'm not sure how to explain this but i saw it at a monty robert clinic a few year back.

He had a long peice of rope that he tied to the saddle then took it bettween the ears and down the side of the face then it sliped into his mounth and sat on the gum.

There are knots along it to stop it slipping. then when the horse tryes yto buck the rope puts pressure on the gum this hurts a little but also releases claming endophins into the system.

i've never used it but saw it work very very well at the clinic i went to.

[NZhorserider]

You can do your own check on his muscles to see if he's in pain. Use your fingers and with pressure, stroke along the spine and muscles. If he flinches, puts his ears back etc, he is ovboiusly uncomfortable.

He is young. I ride at a stud, so I've ridden a heap of young horses and they can be unpredicatable and energetic! I haven't known ours to buck, but they're in work all the time, so they have the steam taken off them!

How often do you ride him? 17hh is a lot of horse, so he's going to need a lot more exercise than a pony would. What are you feeding him? Some horses get excited over certain hard feeds.
I would lunge him for about 10 minutes each side before you ride him.

He also could be getting bored.

I would get a horse dentist to check his teeth. I think they're meant to be done every 6 months. It can add years to their lives if their teeth are kept in good condition. It would also pay to get the saddle fitter to check that his saddle still fits him.

He could be trying to assert his authority over you. He probably thinks that bucking scares you, so he subtly gets his own way.

Hmmm, Grace is rambling here...

When I'm riding and a buck is thrown, I just ride the horse through it. I just ignore it and keep going foward. If I have a dressage whip I give the horse I flick, then keep going.

I hope this helps
Grace:)

[tbone]

lol thanks everyone! :) I will try the little pressure thing next time I go out. It wouldn't be his teeth as they just got done recently.
I'm pretty sure it was ecsminet as we were out in the field hacking and having fun when we decided to canter. He stays out about 23/7 or 22/7 depending. He currently as my instructor wants to put more weight on him during the winter is eating 1 scoop of oats lots of hat and grass. Could the winter effect this a bit? (I have some friends who claim they can't ride in the winter there horses are so nutty.) The saddle should fit as almost evertime I have a lesson my instructor cheecks to make sure the saddle fits properly. :) Thank you all!!

[jUmPingIsLifE]

once the weather starts turning colder here autumn is a nut! he spends half the day racing around the pasture:D and when i ride he is just a bomb waiting to expload ( i can't feel his whole body just like "COME ON LETS GO" the slightest squeez from me and he is off haha). and when it snows, he just goes crazy playing in the snow:D

[tasha]

Kally used to buck, in fact she still does as it has ingrained as a habit now. The reasons she bucks vary. It started with a pinching saddle which has been fixed. Then it was due to her pelvis being out of alignment, it still does every now and again so she has chiropractor treatment every 3 months. This was dispite instructors telling me it was just high spirits etc.

I would say that 90% of horses that regularly buck do it out of pain from their teeth, ill fitting tack esp. saddle, injury or harsh riding.

I denied it being a pain response for years, I now feel very guilty that I just didnt listen to her. Because of this, everytime I hear someone saying about their horse bucking, I say this:

Please please get everything checked by a reputable person in that field. Vets mostly have little or no clue about teeth, get an equine dentist out and Im sure he will surprise you! (A 13yo pony I know had a wolf tooth removed by a dentist, it had been there since the age of 5ish and had worn smooth on one side where the bit had rubbed it!! She had had her teeth done regularly by vets.)

Can I also add a little points raised by others.

Wakito Voluta's suggestion about the rope Im sure worked very well with Monty Roberts, but this sounds like a very difficult and dangerous thing for someone to just go try out. So pease do not give it a go without supervision from someone experienced in the method, after you have ruled all pain responses out.

NZhorserider's muscle testing: Yes this will work But: there is a reflex point on the back roughly where the cantle on the saddle goes which causes the back to dip and the horse to flinch away from it. This is perfectly normal-all horses *should* display it.

Pulling his head to your knee should only be an absolute emergency thing. You could damage his neck hauling his head about like this, make him fall over, deaden his mouth, pull the bit through his mouth. If you do it to the same side all the time this will develop his neck on one side more than the other.

Think about this: imagine you have a piece of rope coming out of your head above your ear. Someone tugs it hard in a downwards postion, pulling your ear to your shoulder. Do this movement fast and jerkly right now. When I do it, I feel the muscle in the opposite side of my neck stretch quite painfully, feel slightly disorientated for a second or two, and a slight click in the base of my neck from my spine. I would soon get mad at the person repeatedly pulling the bit of rope!!! (Then think that the rope comes from lying across your gum in your mouth..extra ouch!!)

[Shiny McShine]

Just thought I would clarify in response to tasha's post, that stopping with one rein should only be asked for gradually, ie. it is something you have to train your horse to do. If you ask for anything too suddenly you will have problems. In any case it should never be a jerking movement. :)

[tasha]

Yes I agree totally Shiny. I think of it like the ejector seat in a plane/James Bond car etc. Extremely useful, but can be dangerous and damaging if you do it wrong, and only for use in emergencies.

[FreedomStar]

In addition to useing the reins, nudge him sharply with your heels. That should get him to pick his head up and move on forward.

[Waikato Valuta]

i reguarly use the one rein stop and have never had any problems with it.

I get a massuse out every now and again and she has never said anything about neck problems.

I started doing it from wa;lk but now i can do it at the cnater and even a gallop when i ocasionaly lose controle on a trail. I dont just jank though i bring the head around smothly but quikly.

[Shiny McShine]

Originally posted by tasha
Extremely useful, but can be dangerous and damaging if you do it wrong, and only for use in emergencies.

I use them all the time, not just emergencies... because you have to teach them. If you only used them in emergencies they wouldn't work. It's like saying only wear your helmet when you are going to fall off... you need to be prepared. I have personally had alot of success with one rein stops, so please excuse me for shilling them so much, I just think that alot of people overlook them, and are missing out on something handy :).

[Lucy J]

Ciara has just got over a stage of bucking everytime canter was asked for. Similar to Tasha, Ciara did have some pain problems due to teeth and wrong fitting saddle. When i started working her properly again she was really stiff and my instructor advised me the bucking was due to her having a need to flex her muscles and was something i would have to work through. a few weeks on as long as she is warmed up properly, the bucking has stopped. i find that when she did buck the best thing was to get using plenty of leg to keep her moving forward and to do my best to keep her head up. plenty of leg is good though as it is hard for them to buck and get their head down when moving forward.

[tasha]

You regularly pull your horse's head round to your knee???

Sorry but I think that is unnecessary. I dont know if it is something more in practice in America than here in the UK, but I cannot imagine it it very pleasant for the horse and I cannot see what good it would do on a regular basis.

One of the exercises I had to do with Kally that a physio prescribed was to get her to stretch her head round to the girth area using carrots. She said to not do it for too long at a time and to build up getting them to hold it there for 2 seconds or so. This was because it is difficult for them to do and any more would be counter productive.

[Lucy J]

yes, i was told to do that exercise and also stretch the horses front legs forward to stretch the shoulder muscles before tacking up.

[Alice]

Tasha, I don't think this is a North American thing. Have never heard it to be common practice here. I have heard of it being used by a western trainer to discipline a horse, but haven't heard of it used often.

[Shiny McShine]

Originally posted by tasha
You regularly pull your horse's head round to your knee???

Sorry but I think that is unnecessary. I dont know if it is something more in practice in America than here in the UK, but I cannot imagine it it very pleasant for the horse and I cannot see what good it would do on a regular basis.

One of the exercises I had to do with Kally that a physio prescribed was to get her to stretch her head round to the girth area using carrots. She said to not do it for too long at a time and to build up getting them to hold it there for 2 seconds or so. This was because it is difficult for them to do and any more would be counter productive.

Yes, it is something I do regularly... of course once my horse has learnt to stop off the weight aids it is not something I need to use unless I have a real emergency. Once my horses have been trained this way I can usually stop them using only my weight aids, and control any exuberance by slightly flexing their head to the side. It does take a good while to build the horse up though and I definitely take things slowly, it is never something I force the horse to do... ie. I don't literally "pull" the horse's head to my knee. If a horse is inflexible then I will only ask him to bend as far as he finds comfortable.

At any rate if you find it uneccesary, that's good. My aim is always to make these kind of things unecessary... it's a sign of a well trained horse, and a good horse/rider communication. I am in Australia so I can't really comment on it's use in America, but I am not really concerned with who uses it or where they are from... for me it is something that I have had positive results with and that is what speaks the most to me.

Perhaps it isn't completely pleasant for the horse when he is first learning to give to the pressure on the bit, however I use it as an alternative to pulling on both reins to control my horse, as personally I consider that to be much, much harsher and unpleasant for the horse, and unlike the one rein stop it only make the horse pull harder and resist more... which in my opinion does not do anything for the horse's well being or the rider's safety. I don't consider it any harsher than teaching the horse to accept any other of the basic rein aids... it works in the same way, pressure and release.

Using it on a regular basis, I beleive, is beneficial in the same way as repeating any training is beneficial. If you do not do it regularly you do not get a great deal of progress. My aim is to teach my horse to relax by giving him less to fight. The more I practice the more my horse learns to respond to my weight aids which always precede the one rein stop. When I relax my body in the saddle my horse learns to relax too... reinforced by the one rein stop if he doesn't respond to the more subtle aid.

It is quite similar to teaching your horse to accept longitudinal flexion I would say. We all know that if you force your horse into an outline too quickly or too harshly or in the wrong manner it causes problems, yet done correctly it helps the horse to carry himself in a way that is beneficial to his whole way of going. Lateral flexion works on the same principle, except it applies more to the horse's mental way of going than his physical way of going. I always start practicing one rein stops from the ground, in a similar way to what your physio advised you to do with Kally. By the time I get on a horse they are physically able to handle it.

If you choose not to use one rein stops, I have no problem with that. There are many riders who have never used one and never had a problem and I'm not here to force anything upon anyone. However, I do beleive that there are people out there who are having problems for which this exercise may be of benefit... and that is who I direct the advice to. Take it or leave it.

On another note...
Originally posted by Lucy J
i find that when she did buck the best thing was to get using plenty of leg to keep her moving forward and to do my best to keep her head up. plenty of leg is good though as it is hard for them to buck and get their head down when moving forward.

Yes, this can be quite effective with some horses, but with others you must be careful using this approach because if your horse happens to be particuarly flighty then it can just intensify the bucking... if you know the horse then all well and good but if you are not sure about how the horse is going to respond it is probably safer to avoid bucking all together.