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The Fresh Horse can throw in a buck because it’s happy & full of energy & is basically just feeling good or it might buck because it’s devious and is testing you out to see what it can get away with.
The sore horse will buck to tell you there is something wrong & then it’s your job to get to the bottom of the issue so the situation doesn’t escalate. There are many reasons why the horse might be sore – bad saddle fit, sore back, ulcers to name a few. Even an unbalanced rider can cause the horse discomfort & to consequently buck.
A sore horse that has learned it can get away with bucking may continue to buck after the problem is resolved because it doesn’t realise the problem has now disappeared or because the bucking has escalated from being pain related to being behavioural.
Behavioural Bucking can be behavioural because the horse has learned that when it bucks it gets its own way and so the behaviour has then escalated.
Lack of balance / straightness The unbalanced horse can throw in a buck / kick-up or kick out going into canter because they struggle to organise the strike-off leg and will either try to strike off on both hind legs at once or will strike off on the incorrect hind leg & then kick up to fix the canter lead. This is not actually bucking but some riders misinterpret it as bucking.
Lunging is about developing communication with your horse which then carries through into your under saddle work & handling on the ground including floating. So if your lunging is done by chasing the horse around the arena and flapping your whip at it then you need to watch this video!
Developing communication with your horse can be done through consistent voice aids & correct body language. Body language can be as subtle as a turn of your shoulders more towards the hindquarters or the head, looking down or opening the inside rein (hand that is attached to the lunge line is the inside rein in this scenario).
Be aware of what you are doing with your feet. Are you walking all over the arena or are you stepping in a consistent small circle or pivoting on one foot so the circles stays even rather than the horse bulging out close to the gate and getting strong then falling in on the side opposite the gate and slowing down & trying to stop. Do you step back away from the horse when it falls in on the circle or put your whip in front of you, point it at the shoulder and ask it to move away from you on the circle? Incorporating the Kula Lunge into your lunge training helps get the horse working in a round, connected engaged balanced frame.
When teaching your horse to lunge I work on the "start as you mean to go on" genre which means immediately introducing voice commands even though the horse won't understand them to begin with.
To get the horse moving forward I back up the voice commands with the whip & to slow the horse down decrease the size of the circle until it responds to the command. For upward transitions use an upward lilt to your voice ie. terrrrroooooottttttt and for downward transitions use a downward lilt to your voice ie. waaaaalllllllkkkkkk & use only 1 to two words for each command.
Instructions on how to change direction on the long reins in the Kula Lunge so your horse maintains an even rhythm & tempo & stays balanced. When you are asking your horse to turn on the long reins you want the turns to be smooth and balanced so the horse isn't just falling around onto the new inside shoulder so you need to balance the horse from one outside rein to the new outside rein.
Archie needs to be more laterally flexible so firstly I worked on getting him to move off pressure by yielding the hindquarters, the shoulders then flexing the poll & bending the neck to soften the jaw so he relaxes into the contact better.
Once Archie was moving off pressure with all 3 sections of his body then I did some in hand liberty work with him to test how much attention he was paying to me. I started off with the lead attached firstly to ensure that he was paying complete attention to me as we are in a fairly large arena if he decided he just wanted to go back to the saddling area or just eat some grass, then I took the lead off to see how he would then respond.
Archie followed my body language and shadowed me left & right, stopped when I stopped & moved forward when I moved. We are definitely not up to trot yet he would have just lost interest and stopped or wandered off but that again is part of the learning process.
In order to improve the canter you need to ensure the horse is in front of your leg in trot & then in front of your leg in the canter transition in order to improve the canter. If your horse is unbalanced going into the canter transition then it is much harder to balance the canter. Today’s video of Valley shows the 3 parts of his training session……
The warm-up – transitions within the trot to ensure Valley is balanced, straight and in front of my leg.
The transition – the exercise of trotting across the diagonal to canter is great for getting the horse into your outside rein so that it can make a balanced transition to canter by correctly striking off the outside hind leg. This exercise is also excellent for horses struggling to pick up a particular canter lead.
The Canter – After a few transitions to canter from the diagonal I managed to get Valley to listen to my inside leg and outside rein so he stopped leaning on the inside shoulder and falling around the circle in the canter. This then allowed him to maintain the canter because he was more balanced & made him more comfortable for me to ride.
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