Re: [RC] help with trail shy gelding - Barbara McCrary
I recently sold a gelding I had worked with for over 3
years to my 13-year-old granddaughter. The horse was great on technical
trails, but a violent, explosive spooker on roads or open country...at a trot,
that is. At a walk he was much better and manageable. My
observations: 1) Sometimes it is not possible to take the spook out of an
individual horse...they're hard-wired that way. 2) A confident rider has better
luck than a timid or fearful one.
Here's how it shook out for us and the horse: The
teenage g'daughter is a good rider, fearless, much younger than I am, and
bounces when she hits the ground. The horse does not spook as much with
her as he did with me, as I was riding defensively all the time (outside of a
walk) and the g'daughter does not. The horse also was/is much better in
competition, since he had/has other horses around to protect him from the
boogers out there in the world. I often think some of his nonsense was
carried out for entertainment value..."What are you doing down THERE?
You're not supposed to fall off when I jump 6 feet sideways without any
notice."
Refusing to go is one thing, and should be dealt with,
but spooking you may never cure...and then again he may change, but don't count
on it.
We have a young mare we bred, and her refusal to go
forward at times is being dealt with. She was submitted to a lot of
Parelli training and is now out on the trails with a younger rider than I
am. She gets a bit balky occasionally, but the rider pushes through
it. We think she will overcome it as she gains age and
experience.
I was wondering if anyone could give me advice. I have a gelding
that use to do endurance, was retired for a while, but now I want to do an LD
with him. He has the experience, I don't so logically he would be a
great horse to start with.
One problem is that when alone, he is either refusing to go on trail or
spooks left and right (I think it is a trick to get me to give up). We
spent a few weeks re-establishing respect and are still working on that.
I know that I need to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard but I
don't know where to start.
Has anyone had this problem and can anyone give me some advice. I
have the Anderson stuff and do some of the Parelli stuff. Is there
anything else I can do?
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