Bucking horse can happen in an instant. I remember one time I was at a horse clinic and we were riding our horses around this arena. A woman rode a horse with a demeanor that had a habit of bucking and rearing as she worked the lunge line. I took my eyes off her for a split second and turned around, and there was the woman, lying on the ground. The horse didn’t feel like being ridden and he did something about it.
There’s only one sure way to keep him from bucking: don’t ride a horse. The fact is that it is completely natural for a horse to buck, especially when someone or something is on its back. To understand why they do, all we have to do is go back to our fundamental understanding of a horse. A horse is a prey animal, and as a prey animal, it is always looking for an escape from threatening situations. Bucking is a defense that evolved to ward off a predator from prey animals. By challenging the rider, a horse can escape the situation.
A horse may resort to bucking out of fear, lack of confidence, or defiance. In the case of a green/untrained horse or one with a history of human abuse, bucking is likely the result of fear. Sitting on the horse’s back taps into his instincts, which tell him it’s a threatening situation. So he instinctively resists to save himself from the threat. Horses are all about escaping to survive.
But as we mentioned earlier, a horse that knows better, one that has learned to live with humans, may buck for entirely different reasons, namely out of disrespect for the rider and deciding that it doesn’t want to be ridden. The beauty of bucking, if there is one, is that minimizing the chances of it happening comes down to the same cure, regardless of what is going on in the horse’s mind.
Before I get to that, is there anything I can do in the heat of the moment to keep it from bucking? First of all, if you can stop it, there will be a great deal of luck involved. Chances are you’re going to hit the ground before you know what happened – horses are lightning fast and can sometimes throw you backwards in a split second. So don’t feel bad if you can’t stop it from happening. Still, there is one thing you can do in a bucking situation. There are two things a horse has to do to buck. These are lowering the head and arching the back. Therefore, one thing a rider can do to stop this behavior is to keep the horse’s head up. As you do this, lower both hands as far as they will go over the kidneys and pull the head up firmly and quickly. Avoid pulling back, be sure to pull up. Going back won’t help. If you’re able to raise your head, the expected result is that, in addition to not being able to get rid of you at the moment, he’ll realize that bucking isn’t an option he can use to get what he wants. .
It would be nice if we could avoid getting into that situation in the first place, and the best way to do that is to take a back to basics approach. To rid a horse of the fear aspect, it needs to trust you as its leader. A horse that realizes that you are not a predator out to eat him and trusts you as his leader will be much more comfortable with you sitting on his back. And at the other extreme, the defiant horse, to rid a horse of a defiant attitude, he needs to respect you as his leader. So we see that the horse that bucks out of fear and the horse that bucks out of disrespect are actually two sides of the same coin. To be safe with the horses, they need to see you as their leader.
A good round pen training course is a good starting point. The idea is to implement a training program using the technique popularized by Monty Roberts which he calls join up. Second, make sure you lead the horse correctly. And third, incorporate a solid lunge routine into your workout. Use your lunges not to wear the horse down, but to make sure the horse listens to your commands. These three exercises will help the horse see you as a leader in his mind and earn respect. They can’t prevent bucking, but they can make it less likely.
