Horse people...How to procede from here???

[welsummerchicks]

So someone said before it looked like her stifles were bothering her? Or just assumed, that since she was having problems picking up the canter, it is always stifle that causes that (I'd say that's too broad of a generalization).

--Wellsummer I gather that you would say, if not lame at trot, canter her every ride and she just needs to get over it.

If the horse was mine, I would prefer to have a good leg vet work through a diagnosis and find out what's wrong, if anything, before I resorted to that.

--A dressage friend has told me that but I am disinclined to agree with her because she has lost her last 3 dressage horses to lameness, mostly from over work/use, and she is fully of the oppinion, work them till you can't. Mare has so far improved so I just figured time and work would do it.

'Work them til you can't' can mean a lot of things. You can take it to mean something real negative if you don't like the person. 'Work 'em til you can't' can mean anything.

Like all riding sports, a lot of people try to 'do dressage' on an unsuitable horse, without enough instruction, without good footing to work a horse in that way, without conditioning the horse. Their horses will probably develop leg problems. They don't mean to do it wrong, they just don't know any better.

HOWEVER...and this is a real big HOWEVER...if the person is into dressage real big time, or ANY demanding riding sport, ANY horse he's going to do that with is going to have to retire SOME DAY. Only SOME horses go on and on and on in a sport. They are the exceptions, not the rule. No different from a race horse, a reiner, a big jumper, etc. Then there are injuries. Horses can get hurt getting in and out of a trailer, in turnout, or just in their stall. Not all these things heal well. Some of these things develop into a chronic problem.

Too, if he's like most people who aren't rich, he's getting horses that aren't perfect. They have some limitations, like the five foot tall basketball player. Legs not quite straight or what have you. They are going to go as far as they are going to go, and then they will 'drop down' to a lower easier level of work or retire. This is just a part of the harder riding sports. It doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong about EVERYTHING. And it doesn't necessarily mean he's mistreating his horses or working them to death.

--I would LOVE to canter, and had set a goal of doing the canter classes this year. I can't enter the classes if she bucks and quits. Now I have tried to just apply leg and smooth it out but that works half the time. The other half she just quits, and then I am back to canter transition and a probable buck. We have cantered about a dozen times when she willingly just went into for me. Mostly on trail when she was feeling good.

As I said before, I don't know because there is no diagnosis from a veterinarian. It could be from just not cantering, or it could actually, yes, be a serious problem. Arthritis in a joint, an injured ligament that did not heal properly, who can say. It could be an old injury that has healed shortened up and stiff and needs to be worked out.

If it was my horse, I need a good leg vet to do xrays and other tests to determine whether something is wrong or not before I decide what to do.

It really is not at all unusual for horses to do what your horse does, just because the rider doesn't keep them going, they don't get cantered enough, or they are lazy. The PROBLEM is the horse was lame. Not a little lame. That makes it LESS likely that there is no physical issue.

NORMALLY, horses don't just buck and carry on and refuse to canter. It could be something you're doing while riding so it's gotten to be habit, it could be a medical problem. Without a good leg vet going over the horse, you can't tell.

 

[Akane]

Horses who are not prepared to canter with a rider do quite frequently buck and carry on with no physical problem and without the rider doing anything specifically wrong. I have a mare who was hell to train to canter. Her ground work was solid, she'd never bucked at a walk or trot, her transitions in those 2 gaits were great, and she was found to be 100% sound. She had done wonderfully at several training clinics and trail rides. For some reason though she would hold off cantering and if you just kept pushing she'd eventually explode. Multiple conversations with other trainers and a vet didn't really reveal anything and no one's ideas worked. She'd even canter just fine with a saddle on and no rider. Eventually we realized that while there was no pain and her teeth were just fine she for some reason panicked when asked to canter with any pressure on her mouth. Took her back to a running hackamore for a week and now she canters just fine. She's been a handful and the exception to every rule from the day she foaled.

It also could be that it hurt before so now she is against trying it. Some people claim horses don't remember pain like that but I've seen them get conditioned in to avoiding something due to pain to the point that even after they are completely healed they'll throw strong enough fits in order to avoid doing what used to cause them pain that they create other injuries. Her going lame could have more to do with her bucking fits than her cantering. I had a gelding crack a hock because of a bucking fit. Working her at a canter on the ground would really help narrow down the problem. If she comes up lame cantering without a rider and without any major fits or you really can't get her to canter even with no weight on her then I'd try to find a vet who can look at her. It can be extremely difficult to find a vet that is really good at lameness though. The 2 near me try to write everything off as founder or bruising even when there is no sign of either. It's like pulling teeth to get them to do an xray and even then the 1 vet can't seem to read them. I request that xrays be mailed to another vet and if they won't agree I end up driving the horse to that vet half a state away. I can do flexion tests and pick up lameness better than the equine vets near me.

 

[welsummerchicks]

"I'm better...than the equine vets around me"

Old Chinese saying, 'When you are the smartest person in the room, time to be very scared'.

LOL.

 

[patandchickens]

If it were me, the first thing I'd do is to find a REALLY GOOD equine chiropractor. Note that many are not really good, indeed some are semi useless. If it takes several times the money to cajole a further-away REALLY GOOD one into coming out, I think you would find it well spent.

Then have him/her see the horse "in action" (doing the bucking-when-asked-to-canter) thing as well as the normal in-hand and stationary examination.

If you happen to have a brilliantly-good lameness vet available, that'd be an acceptible substitute of course, but IME they are scarce as hen's teeth. A REALLY GOOD equine chiropractor is not a substitute for good vet in most cases but in this case I think it is, or maybe even better.

It is possible the chiro person will find something sore or out of whack, or that you have saddle-fit issues. It is also possible they will say "honestly, I don't see much of anything wrong with this horse". Even that would be very USEFUL. Because then you could approach it as a *training* issue with a clear conscience so to speak.

So if it is a physical issue then obviously you would work on that first and foremost.

But if it is at least partly a training issue, then it is almost certainly due to the horse not being asked at the correct moment and correct balance, and/or that even if she now IS asked when in the correct moment/balance she may have enough of a history of being asked "the impossible" in the past to have formed a habit of stiffening up and resisting and bucking.

In a perfect world, the first step would for you (and your trainer -- it is not uncommon IME for pros to be a bit deficient in this too) to learn how to properly balance the horse and then ask in the right way at the exact right moment of the stride. You are not going to learn that on THIS horse though. And it sounds like this horse may have enough habit formed that *just* being impeccably correct may not be enough.

So I am going to go against what are usually my strongly-held principles <g> and suggest that you work in the roundpen or on the longe, and train the canter depart as a trick, to a particular cue. It is up to you exactly what you pick but I'd suggest a word or other sound (preferably something you won't do accidentally at other times). Work on this consistently without being obsessive or overly pressuring the horse. Wait til you get to the point where the horse is pretty much 100% reliable at taking up the canter when the person holding the longe line gives the cue. Now tack the horse up but leave her on the longe. You will probably find that she relapses, so work back (probably over a term of days) to get back to near-100% reliability.

Then finally put a rider on the horse, on the longe still, and have the rider JUST SIT THERE while the longe line person gives the canter cue. It is really important that the rider pretend that nothing interesting is going to happen and not try to participate in any way. Once it's working reliably, switch to the rider giving the verbal cue instead of the longe line person. Then stay on the longe circle but without the longe line attached. Etcetera.

This will take A While with most horses, and in a sense is a very crude way of solving the problem, but provided you are sensible and have reasonble judgement about how little/much to do in a session, it pretty reliably WORKS, more or less irrespective of one's riding skills.

JMHO, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[EweSheep]

If you dont have a willing rider, you can use sand bags drapped over the saddle for weight so you can lunge or work with your horse from ground.....just an idea.

Hope you can resolve the problem soon! Hopefully nothing very serious.

 

[seymore0626]

Any possibility of a video of her and her antics?