Problem Horse: Bucks Rider Off

so i'm here with kelly and uh what's your horse's name dakota dakota here with dakota and you've been having a little bit of trouble with him from what i understand could you kind of tell us paul you've had him a little bit of the history and kind of what are the main challenges you've been having with him um i purchased him two years ago it'll be two years ago in august from katie's corral no history on him bought him grade he was estimated by the vet to be approximately six years old at the time he was very thin when i got him and um started out okay we went trail riding right away like to dodgeville no problems but obviously i think it was because he was underweight didn't have the energy to do anything yeah you were just showing me a picture and he was he was pretty underweight when he first got him he's it looks you wouldn't even almost recognize him looking at him now but but he's he was how old when he got him um approximately six of them he was six was eight now okay so so he might have bulked up a little bit in that time anyways but yeah okay um and so so how did the trail riding go when you it went too close we cantered a little bit we just did whatever mostly walk and trot but it went well um we took the longest course that day so so when did the trouble start to happen or what was the trouble that you were having um the first time there was trouble was back at where i was boarding i took him out into the field and we were just i went to lope on him and he did a jump sideways and instantly it threw me on the ground so i was thinking probably a balance issue with me um then things were going fine again and then pretty soon we'd be out on another ride in a field and he would do the same thing and i kind of wondered if it was something that he had learned but that's what he could do to get me off um i had somebody suggest that possibly the saddle i had wasn't fitting correctly and found out that the saddle i bought was semi quarter horse bars instead of full okay so i had a saddle fitter come out and fit him and i bought a saddle they made a saddle for us and things started going really well he no longer was doing that side move we were doing great um and then probably i'm trying to think a year ago this last january i was in an indoor lesson and went to canter on him and this was with his old saddle sorry and he went to go canter but did the side hop again the saddle was too loose i came off broke my tailbone different things so that i was off of him for like six months um he has even since with the new can saddle started doing the side hop thing too so have we decided it wasn't just the saddle is that why yeah at first i thought because he really settled into it and it was like he almost took a deep breath and it was like a good thing so i thought that was over but yeah it's been bad too yeah it it's i i don't know what the saddle is but yeah saddle saddle fit would definitely change things i personally don't think a lot of horses will just do a full on bucking spray or really dramatic moves from just an ill-fitting saddle i mean pending there isn't something like really sharp pointing at them or something like that but it just a lot of times people want to blame the saddle and i think yeah i want my horse to be fully comfortable and make sure my tech fits great i'm not saying that i'm just saying i think if a saddle isn't fitting 100 correctly doesn't necessarily justify going into a buck or a big jump or something like that but there's a lot of people that see a horse do that and their first thought is always it's always the saddle fit or it's always oh their back is so or something and i think we just need to appreciate a little bit that bucking is or jumping sideways or kicking out is a way for a horse to object in some way to something either because they're a little scared or they don't want to go forward or various reasons but that's one of the ways they communicate to us they don't appreciate what we're offering them and it's feedback you know and so yeah we're going to look at the tack but we also want to look at the whole picture of everything else that was going on what did you do what did he do what was the situation was he um feeling uncomfortable and a little bit stressed was he really relaxed what was all going on so is there any other details that i should know before we get started and since part of that so i'm terrible at talking on the fly so what you reminded me was that we had kind of i had kind of come across that decision too was that it was communication from him and that what did i want to say here that um there was um i've been taking lessons um every other week with somebody and we switched to a different girth for him a neoprene girth and i hopped on him and it was crooked so i shifted my weight and asked him to walk on and he immediately went into bronc mode he was full bro and what it was it pinched him so it was he was communicating that there was something wrong yeah so so i don't know i don't know him and you but that doesn't add up to me a cinch a different cinch pinching him a little bit doesn't equal a bronking bucking spree to me yeah like that's what i'm saying is that doesn't it i i am really big on getting horses to understand what we want helping them feel comfortable doing what's best for them having good fitting tech taking good care of them all those things but at the same time i want to have a little bit higher levels of tolerance where if you just switch your girth if that's all it takes for him to to decide he's gonna buck there's probably more to the story there is what i'm getting at than just that and and the other thing that we haven't gotten to is you didn't call a saddle fitter you called me so so there's somewhere in here that you're not you're you haven't really disclosed yet is that you do feel like there is some level of behavioral issues because that's what i do um and so so if we were if i was a saddle fitter here you know then we could carry on with that that talk but i feel like there's i'm sniffing that there's a little more to the story here than just saddle fit because i'm terrible at it um but but tell me kind of why why would you call me and not a saddle fitter if if you feel like it was mostly attack issue i'm gonna excuse me i'm gonna keep getting closer here so we can get you on the mic here definitely i think that i'm kind of a lovey person with him he needs to learn more respect for me okay i kind of was thinking maybe you need to train me and not him but there are definitely holes in his training for instance he trips when he's um trotting he trips when he's loping which i haven't done a lot of on him um there's just communication yeah maybe we could also say leadership you know you know leadership of you like i run into this quite a bit where people really want to be their horse's friend and i want to be their friend too but i want to be their leader first and you know you'd be amazed at how upset you can get with people on facebook or youtube by just saying horses need a leader to me i've had really good examples of leaders in my life just as a person and saying somebody's a leader to me is a good thing i'm like i'm i want a good leader because then i know exactly what i'm responsible for what i'm supposed to do i have support when i need it i feel more comfortable taking on the next thing because i have leadership there to support me right i want to be that for my horse i want to be a comfort zone for them that they can trust in what i'm asking them to do that they feel safer when they're with me that they feel um you know more courageous in in life and in situations because of a good leadership so i don't see leadership as being the boss or being dominant over them or showing them who's boss or you know any of that kind of stuff that's not what leadership evokes for me um but just just the way like even they're winning that saying his hurt isn't here even though i'm going his hurt is here but we need to communicate that to him that his hurt is here and he doesn't need to worry about that um so yeah so that's what i'm saying in the last time that he doesn't see me as his leader and someone he can trust uh you know when he say that again last name when was the last time he came off him um about three weeks ago okay three weeks ago and that's what prompted the email to me and that sort of thing i mean i'd been thinking about it but it just is very clear to me that he does not trust me as his leader and that he's fearful and he's acting out because he does he's unsure how many times have you come off of him oh my god i'm trying to say it out loud probably 10 10 10 times wow wow so again it's interesting to me a lot of people want to claim saddle fit something pinch them that we would love to have like pretty easy like it's pretty easy to swap out your cinch pretty easy to even swap out a saddle pending a couple thousand dollars maybe difference there but sometimes there's more you know ten times like i'm just going that's not a big enough reason for a horse to justify a horse blowing up and bucking us off i want to have higher tolerances bigger thresholds where a little bit more could go wrong and they would still be a partner for me you know because life isn't perfect things happen things come up cinches don't fit perfectly all the time like i just wanna no of course i wanna i want the best equipment for him i want him to feel good i'm not saying that but i am saying that he he's got some role in this too of being being there and that's that's what i'm interested in is figuring out if who's i'm figuring out i'm trying to figure out who started it you know and that means you know like when you're a kid and you're in the back seat and the parents like who you know who started who started that little thing back there um and i need to know who started it meaning did you get on and you clamped down with your spurs and said yeehaw let's go down the trail 100 miles an hour some people do and i'd go well your horse didn't appreciate what you were offering there or were you get on soft and easy and you had them cinched up you had what you thought was a good tack good you want to put that neoprene cinch on him if you thought it didn't wasn't finish pinching him or something um and so i'm going okay did he not hold up his end of the deal and and be a partner while you were mounting him and adjusting the saddle and that sort of thing so so that's what we need to figure out so i think what we're going to do next is we'll get out in the arena i'm going to have you just move him around a little bit on the ground and i just kind of want to see how you and him interact and we'll go from there all right sounds good all right thank you very much [Applause] so it looks like you've been doing some groundwork with him yeah is any problems with the groundwork stuff does he buck with the saddle much when you first saddle him he has he has he used to not but and was sorry he um do a lot of bucking under saddle doing groundwork but in the last month he has started so he's he's started bucking more um when on the ground when being saddled comes stuff i did just yesterday switch him back to his fleece girth got rid of the neoprene thinking maybe that was yeah again causing him does it change anything um he wasn't as bad last night gotcha all right can i see it counter them a little bit and it was that the last time you wrote him three weeks ago and what how'd it go it was fine my confidence is just shot okay so you wrote him for half a lap last night but you were terrified the whole time i wasn't terrified um yeah yeah that's understandable um and you know one of the hard things when you when you have an accident with a horse is that we can read each other's kind of feeling like there's a there's an energy or a vibe that's kind of being put off it's like if somebody walks in the room and you can tell that they're they're really happy or they're really upset you can just tell they don't have to say anything you know they don't have to slam the door to know something doesn't feel right about that person they're a little off or they're a little whatever so what i'm getting at is if you're a little nervous and you're on a horse you can't fool them you can't hide that from them and we really need to be a confident rider for our horse to give them comfort and so that's one of the reasons why you know like certain people that are good at starting colts are good at starting colts is they are projecting this confidence into that horse and so if a rider has lost their confidence with a horse sometimes it's hard for them to offer that horse that leadership and that feel of the positive attitude so that's something that we're going to have to keep an eye on and take a look at but the groundwork seems pretty good you know the horse seems fairly willing to to move for her and ask for things right now i'm my thought is i'm leaning towards um he gets a little worried a little nervous for various things and that's why he spooks sideways or bucks and it doesn't take much of a change of equipment to kind of trigger that but that still comes from him being unconfident and he's kind of learned because of how many times this has happened in the past two years it lends itself towards a horse learning to get relief with the rider coming off and that's going to lead to them doing that behavior more so what we need to do is we need to raise those thresholds and those tolerances by challenging the horse with a few things on the ground and release the horse to being ridden so we're going to hopefully set it up to where riding this horse is the easiest thing he did this afternoon but we're going to set it up in a way that's getting that horse to think and use his left side of his brain more and more and get more comfortable all right kelly i think i've seen what i needed to see um it's okay i'll take it from here and uh you're good with me challenging him a little bit you're like that's why i came all right so i'm gonna test them with a few things here without the saddle then we'll go ahead and saddle them up we'll go from there so two things that can startle or scare horses one is rhythmic motion rhythmic pressure and one of the most scary things to horses is steady pressure steady pressure so if you take a and i use this example a lot because where i really learned this idea is from wild mustangs if you have had a wild mustang in this arena and you you had two of them let's say so you got one over here and you got one over there and i got a stick and a flag down here with mine and you got a halter and lead rope on yours they've never been handled before but you know say they're in a pan we're gonna let them out and both of us are it's a competition who can get their mustang to the other side of the arena quicker and i can herd mine down there but you have to lead yours down there with a halter and lead rope which one's going to get there first the one's leading as soon as you put a feel in that halter and lead rope that horse is going to panic and feel like the world's coming to an end for that horse because it's it's a it's an innate instinctual response to push into pressure if the predators got a hold of them that's that's steady pressure that's our saddle that's our legs that's the bit when we pick up a feel or the you know reins whatever you're using on their on their head um the fairy are working on them the vet so almost any wreck that you've ever seen happen with a horse it's almost always caused from steady pressure or a failure to yield to steady pressure okay think of a horse tied up to a rail and they felt pressure maybe the horse stand tied there for days and days years and years and then all of a sudden today some you know somebody walked by too quickly and it set them off and now they're now they're pulling back um it doesn't take much to get into that place and so we need to prepare our horses for that and expose them to steady pressure and that kind of thing so that's what i'm wondering to myself about him and because of the issues with the cinch and you kind of kind of isolating your focus on it's about the saddle in the cinch well it's like that's steady pressure so i don't go the saddle i go steady pressure that's what i'm thinking we'll see we'll see if my theory is is true here or not with him i know the theory of steady pressure is very scary to horses another example and i use the mustang example so again here first thing if i if i put a little rhythmic pressure on him i'm asking him to go forward but his first response was to go sideways now he's not getting relief for going sideways he's gonna get relief from the flag when he goes forward wait for it wait for it wait for it he's still trying to go sideways there do you see the change there so his sideways is in his move right so i'm not going to release him when he goes sideways i will release him when he goes forward see that time it met forward and then i quit i quit because he went forward right [Applause] now the other thing that's interesting to me kelly is i wouldn't get on a colt if they can't handle me just working this flag a little bit because especially trail riding you don't know what's going to happen out on the trail so what i'm doing is i'm asking him to get in in harmony with my intention he's reading the flag instead of reading me think of the flag as the scary bushes on the side of the trail the other horse spooking the the dog running out from underneath you the the the turkey bomb taking off out of the wood you know what i mean like stuff happens out there right and so this is gonna be that stuff happening but i'm not going to wait for that stuff to happen to me i'm going to go ahead and be prepared i'd rather be prepared than lucky you see what i'm saying here and so i'm just going to work this flag now he can choose to get bothered by it or he can relax and then it'll go away it's his choice when when this goes from rhythmic motion which is what it is now to rhythmic pressure is when i change my intention right now i'm asking him to move that's rhythmic pressure now it's rhythmic motion i changed my intention he needs to read that if i was staring at you guys watching or kelly you could feel that right if i walk up to you like this do you feel the pressure there's a lot of pressure there right versus if i just walk up over here like this i'm like do you feel any pressure no because i'm not looking at you i'm just here even if i was like trying to kill flies on the ground or something with the flag you know it doesn't matter the flag moving it matters where my eyes are where my belly button is where i'm i'm putting that pressure you know um i don't know if this works for you guys at home watching but if i went like this that feels like more pressure like there's there's pressure there but there's something changing inside me every time when i do that you know it's like and so i i you learn as a horseman to turn it on and off so it's like oh this thing is friendly let me just pet you let me use this to get those flies off you we're just friendly here and then when i want him to move i switch to border collie mode see him look at me now and he's like oh i better i better move away from that now i go to labrador mode you know does that make sense you just you just change it and you can see he this red you can it doesn't take too long to teach a horse this this this resonates with them so now he's getting comfortable with it i like to have it go from down low like horses can see things pretty well up here they don't see things super well down here and so it's kind of scary to have things go from low to high so it's one of the tests that i do pretty frequently with them is i'll put it down low and i'll put it up high when we do the mustang taming which i keep referring to just learned a lot of skills from that um i tell people keep your whips up all the time until they get more tame because if you start doing this with a mustang they're gonna go like that and strike at it and you're gonna you could teach a pattern of them striking at things so we got to be careful about when you're transitioning from side to side keep it up high because it's easier for them to see it so when i'm trying to test a horse like him that's not a mustang and you can see he's already settling into me messing with him he's like oh you're trying to scare me i'm like yeah you caught me you know it's a game and the game that he's learning is when he acts like a prey animal i won't give him relief from whatever scaring him when he switches and he challenges it and he tries to understand it he switches to a left brain side and goes what's that then it goes away and then i evoke that curiosity side so we end up strengthening that thinking side of their brain i like to think of it like a muscle the more you flex that muscle the stronger it gets okay so that's feeling pretty good um you know there's a few tests that i want to do with them with a lariat rope here but before we get to that i'm going to go ahead and saddle them up um hey mary can i ask you for a favor somewhere over there by that round pen there's a lariat rope with a blue honda it's a 45 foot long rope can you grab that for me so we'll see if the saddle is to his liking or not it should fit him pretty well i it's the saddle i use on my horses that are built pretty similar to him it's a one of my favorite kinds it's a jeff smith shout out to jeff smith saddles they're not sponsoring this video but maybe they should be it's got a nice wide tree but it's proven to work on a bunch and then you know for horses that are a little bit goosey i like to just use just a nice thick felt pad nothing nothing fancy there to you know have any weird unique high points or low points or anything like that you just sit on the fence post right there mary would be great i'll come grab it thank you very much you're hired so when i saddle up a horse i like to do it two or three times where i tighten up re-tighten up that cinch so i just make it snug enough that hopefully if they jump around a little bit it'll stay with them i don't want it super loose where it'll roll underneath them that'd be dangerous um does your saddle have a back cinch too okay so that's not new so this is just snugged up right now and now i'll just kind of walk them off a little bit with it and the last thing i want to do is like send them off at a canner and really try to i don't want to startle them you know when we first first saddle them so i'll do it up kind of slow and then usually they all kind of breathe in a little bit of air when you first saddle them so let them just kind of kind of wind down from that there we go now we'll go ahead and tighten this up once i make sure that he's accepted the saddle then we'll test him out on some of the things that i think will really get to the to the heart of the issue which is steady pressure now you guys notice in the video you're sweating a little bit it's like 90 degrees right now it's it's a warm out here and this it's kind of abnormally warm for wisconsin but we got a warm one out here today so you know usually i kind of pride myself on the horses not getting too sweaty in the video because i i really don't use tiring them out at all to to help with training i'm all about getting to their mind and building a connection but when it's this hot out we're just going to be sweating even just standing around well he seems to be packing that saddle around pretty good i also like with a horse that likes to buck with a saddle i like to send him over some obstacles so we got a couple here in the arena that work pretty well very good and we gotta of course got to see him into a little bit of a canter oh so yeah there's a little bit of him and if if that's all it takes to bother him i know that saddle fits well i know those cinches are good cinches that one that's on them is almost brand new and it's a really nice quality cinch if he's getting that tight he's getting tight from steady pressure caused by the cinches so they're going to release them on forward so that tells me we got to do more things with steady pressure to get him comfortable that's and that will also speak to his core nature if he's if you're riding him down the trail or around the rail the arena and his baseline is just a little bit tight because he hasn't fully accepted your cinches well then it's no wonder that things get worse in other situations where you ask him to canter like here he didn't buck they'll ask him to canter you're seeing how it kind of makes sense now so it wasn't really about cantering or trail riding or you it was about him needing to be more okay with steady pressure so again he's doing the sideways thing pressure stays on he finds relief moving forward he needs to know that it's okay so forward is the opposite of buck buck is whoa stopping feeling like he can't go forward so that's why i'm going to release him on forward forward is our friend in this case the worst thing i could do is be shutting him down every time he goes forward faster than i wanted to which is another thing that beginner riders kind of will get themselves in predicaments with that a more confident rider might not on the same horse doing the same pattern the same thing is if they're holding that horse back with the reins a little bit and you have a horse that already is feeling a little tight that's going to amplify that situation you're nodding your head is that does that resonate with you that could happen okay so we've kind of got him accepting the sad a little bit didn't take too much but just just by putting that saddle on him got him a little bothered so now i'm going to go ahead and get my lariat rope out here in a second and i'll just show you a few different ways kind of another lesser detail but still an important one for this horse his feet do a lot of different things there's a lot of commotion going on there and if i was working with him on a regular basis i would be more particular about getting his feet to have more motion meaning doing what i want more of the time there like that that was a motion canner good emotion to it the other ones were all come ocean it doesn't really matter they counter can or they do this they do that it's commotion and so one of the things i teach people a lot is that there's a start a middle and an end to every sequence that we do with horses and if you don't have a lot of people a lot of training programs emphasize the end you know don't release on a brace finish at the right moment it's the release that teaches we emphasize the end what about the start how did it start did we set it up in a way that the horse found the right answer right away the first try and that's a really important thing especially as you get into more maneuvers it's just a it's just a point that's not emphasized enough in my opinion so we're going to mess with them with this layer of rope here a little bit and we'll go from there so i like to you know those of you that follow my channel i you know i like to put this layer rope on every which way possible i do a thing called rope therapy where i just get a horse to follow a feel from any part of their body with it with him we're going to do a little bit of the uh the summary the summary version we're just going to kind of go to it through a few points because we could spend the whole training session just getting them soft which i would if we were doing this you know for the next month but if we're just kind of seeing and doing evaluation tonight if this is kind of what's been bothering him don't crowd me though put a feel there see if he's okay with that so he's handling that on his hindquarters really well that's good good job now i'm going to put it on a hind leg so when i do it here i just like to see them wear it a little bit make sure they're okay with it some horses get bothered there and then i'll just pick up a feel on it and i'll just kind of see what their response is he had a pretty good response i don't like how he's so quick to to push push through with his nose that's a little bit of a hole so it tells me he's actually maybe a little bit more comfortable in his right eye than his left eye but see me calling him out on these little things on the ground is what makes it possible to release him to being ridden i'm just being picky about little things and impressively he's not getting too bothered about this here i don't like that though do you see how you're so comfortable to just push through right there there that's also might be a little bit of a self-confidence issue you know he's he's wanting to get confidence from me but in this scenario i'm asking him to be comfortable out there at a distance i'm going to put it on one more spot here we'll test test it out see if we can get him to pick his feet up a little bit there we go so i have it over my saddle and then it's just going to tickle him back here a little bit too so we'll see if how well he handles this here so the idea is that it's a lot more ticklish back there by his flank oh we're not getting any reaction there so this is actually a pretty big surprise to me how little reactions we're getting here and i wonder how much of this is me calling his bluff a little bit a couple times there like when he ran sideways and i didn't take the pressure off um of him just kind of going oh okay my my usual stuff isn't gonna work today you know what i mean and and it actually might be a little bit less about him getting really bothered and more about him having learned to do some of those moves does that make sense but we're not really going to know till we go ahead and get on and see what we got under saddle sound like a plan all right [Applause] the way the way he's acting today is this seem like pretty good pretty bad pretty pretty normal so if i asked you to ride him tonight you'd be like you'd feel like oh i could ride him or [Applause] that's what i was kind of thinking more spooking [Applause] so i just want to make sure i got a little control he feels pretty heavy in the bit so i'm just doing some yields these are what we would call suppling exercises that if things went bad i would want to be able to bend him and have this be a relaxing thing so i'm just bending him and waiting for his feet to slow down for him to feel soft that's when i'll release which is this and i'm just doing there's two of them there's yielding the hindquarters and then there's a one rain stop and these are the two things i would do with any horse if i was on a trail or any other time and if they it's like if you're training a dog it's nice to have a dog understand no no means whatever you're doing stop don't chew on that pillow don't eat the cat don't you know climb on top of the counter okay no right so when i pick up the rain for this horse if he spooks or if he trips like that it's like it's like no don't do that does that make sense it's just really simple it's not you're in trouble it's not a punishment it's just no like just stop we're not going to do that and so you're interrupting that mindset and you're just saying no we're not going to do that the other thing you said when you got on him the other night you rode around the rail i'm not a big fan of going to the rail because that's actually a place that horses can get spooky at much easier than in the middle i would rather ride him in the middle he's for for what you've kind of said is your purposes of just enjoying a nice quiet trail horse to me he's a little bit more sensitive to my leg than i would want for just that job he's plenty sensitive if i wanted to work cattle and do spins and stops and high level performance maneuvers um but for just trail riding to me he's a little bit reactive is what i'm getting at to the legs and stuff so i would want to what i would do is i would bend him around right now i put my legs on him and to get my to take my legs off is get quiet now the legs come off just like the flag the flag's not going to go away because you reacted to it the flag will go away when you get soft and either stand still or just move forward and so um i would want him just to get a little bit more dull to the legs just a little bit because again if he spooks and you clamp down a little bit which is going to be most rider's natural instinct i would want him to be a little less reactive right now if you've got a hold of him it would be go and if you said go and whoa at the same time it's going to go to that way that's what that leads to so i would want him to get a little bit more desensitized to the rider's legs also you hear him calling out and doing this that's a horse that's going to be more spooky because he's not paying attention to the rider which is why every time he does that i'm going to take a hold of him and do something and basically i'm saying no pay attention to me no don't pay attention to the other horse yes pay attention to the rider because if he's paying attention to me pay attention to my seat my legs my reins he's not going to be a spooky but if he's thinking outside the fence the whole time well of course he's going to be spooking at things right how would we grade that stop one out of ten a seven is pretty good i would i would give that about a three and my point is again if you want a quiet safe trail horse i want good brakes if you want a safe vehicle to drive down the road you want a good brake system you want to be able to stop when you want to stop right so that's another thing that i would work on with him is getting that stop a little stronger a little more emphasis on the stopping part i love the feeling of a horse that when when i sit and set my hands it's just they can't stop quick enough you know it's a great feeling to have foreign the other thing i know you don't canner a whole lot and if i was working with you regularly working with him i probably wouldn't canter him a lot because i don't want him thinking about going to that gate very often unless you're really ready for it i would get the trot really good and the brakes really good i know it's fun to canter but unless you're going to be cantering him all the time if you only can or once in a while it can rev them up a little bit more and and it kind of says yes we go to this gear sometimes and it's like if you don't go to that gear very often then there's no reason if you squeeze with your legs a little bit after he spooked on the trail ride that he should think canner you see what i'm saying um again if you know if you're cantering all the time then it'd be a different story and it would actually be a helpful thing there see if we can't get a right lead here there it is so he's got a nice lope but just for you riding him i just wouldn't want him thinking to go there quite so quite so fast no different than if i would say i was training for you i don't need to teach him to roll back and lope off and do do quick moves because where those quick moves live is right next to the same box that spooks live it's a higher higher energy and now again if we're doing it all the time it's a different deal like cantering him all the time would be really good for him to just kind of decompress a little bit but my advice to you would be if if you weren't going to canter him a lot i wouldn't canter him maybe at all i would just maybe on the ground a lot but in the saddle just walking trot that way if you if you did get a hold of him he would go oh we don't can her like she doesn't she doesn't want me to go faster but it's like oh if every other ride we do want to go faster on the trail like that's going to be the answer then i don't know it's just an it's an idea but i definitely would spend some time getting him a little bit desensitized to my legs um which is what he's kind of doing just as we work here i'll squeeze him here maybe i'll squeeze him until he backs up and then i'll release just just take a little bit off don't don't do it i'm not trying to teach them to spur stop or just some weird thing i'm just doing it enough so that if you like you just take see like right now i'm squeezing right there i just want him to question i want you to be sure you want to go that's how i want to feel on a trail like i want them him to go yeah she really wants me to go forward right now not um let's go you know let's go and then okay any other questions what do i need to do so are you going to recommend sending him to a trainer i guess i want it's a good question i haven't i haven't seen you ride yet and so i don't know how comfortable you are if you were if you and i were gonna continue working together i would put you on a horse that i know what they're gonna do and i would see what your riding skills are and then from there if i'm like oh yeah she's got this i'd be put i'd put you back on him but with a stronger warm-up a warm-up strong to ride soft plan um i will say my riding skills are not strong if if yeah if i was like nope you need to learn a few things to be a better rider and leader for this horse well then we would do that on a different horse because this doesn't you know it doesn't make sense to keep putting you back with this horse if there's a there's a something that you're learning a new technique a new feel that would be my recommendation and then from there we would decide if if somebody else could be riding him he overall he feels pretty good um like the pieces are there it didn't take too much you know we just you just pulled up here in the trailer and unloaded him here we are you know like that's a pretty minimal setup you know and he he handled it pretty well um i don't feel that he's really strong about wanting to get you off i feel like because i warmed him up strong and made it easy and then because i picked little things to give him a hard time about to communicate to him i'm the leader he didn't test me with big things but if i let those little things go they they build up to a big a big thing where he's doing his own deal you know even on the ground so for instance where he didn't want to move forward and he was going sideways instead which is great he can go sideways but he does it with you and with somebody else that was working him on the ground much bigger than he would with me with me he's lazy about it probably because our energy was higher i meant it a little bit more which is more of a natural leadership for him you're coming into it as let's just play together let's just have fun which is great if he's acting like a partner but it's not great if he's not if he needs leadership because he's getting worried he needs somebody to to take control of the situation go nope you're okay cause i'm okay and and we're gonna we're gonna work through this and so i do think you need to you need to think about a stronger warm-up like pushing his buttons a little bit more on the ground to release him to being ridden i think that's really going to be the secret sauce because he still is too is a little too disconnected from my liking i'd like him to be a little bit more committed to the rider it's like even though he's standing here in position mentally he's over there with the other horses again that's a horse that was more likely to spook and do that but the good news is we don't have to do anything real dramatic to get this it's just chipping away some little things here yep there's just been a handful of things that were just kind of off um that i think will make a big difference all right so we just finished up the session here with the dakota um just can you kind of give me a an idea of what um resonated with you what you're going to take away from this this little evaluation i can some of the things that resonated with me and that i knew about but i think i make excuses for him is that i need to be a stronger leadership have my focus directed more towards him so he knows that i mean business and maybe not just wanting to be his lovey-dovey friend all the time i saw him respond to you very easily and that's what i'm hoping to get to yeah excellent um was there anything that surprised you about what i found with him or anything that was different that you weren't expecting um i obviously yes i liked how he calmed into you and was very good with you very quickly i know that he reads my anxiety and he feeds off of that the other thing that surprised me was how well he took the lariat on his legs and stuff he's seen really for not having that done by me in the last two years i've owned him very pretty calm about it yeah yeah i agree he surprised me with that and that's why it's evaluation you know you gotta gotta try some things figured out and i told you as we were kind of getting him out of the trailer that if he handles it well it seems like no big deal but some horses they get really worked up and you just got to test a few situations and i think overall what we discovered was good news it's just some little adjustments that she needs to make in her leadership and warm up strong to ride soft that's one of the big big takeaways and then we need to build your confidence back with a horse that um is a little more of a steady eddy a little more proven and um get you doing some of those and um kind of build your confidence back up and then we'll put the two of you back together it wasn't too big of a hurry to be on him but go back to what we were doing okay i'm excited sounds good well thank you very much kelly for coming out it's great working with you and dakota thank you and uh we'll keep you guys posted on where we go from here you

Channel: Ryan Rose

Views: 708,871

Keywords: Problem Horse, Bucking, Horsemanship, Horse training, Ryan rose

Id: AQF6J952Aug

Length: 48min 35sec (2915 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021