I have a 4 year old arab mustang gelding that I’ve
been riding roughly for a year. We’ve started slow because he is
basically lazy and his mustang mom kind of “quit” being interested
in going out on the trail and I didn’t want to push him and have him quit
in the same way. We did do one 25 miler this year and he did
fantastic. Camps well, is very steady after the initial excitement and
seems to enjoy trail work. Good thing because he flat out will not move
in the arena. All of his riding raining has been done on the trail and
there are a lot of basics that we missed because of this.
Like many green horses, he is nervous about horses behind
him on the trail. He wants to turn his head and look at whoever is behind
him and has occasionally thrown a little buck, but I figured he’d just
get used to others in time. We do ride out with other horses fairly often.
But he is not getting used to it, instead seems to be getting worse and he is
getting aggressive. Now he is pinning his ears and I feel the potential
for him to kick and he is starting to lunge toward other horses.
He grew up on big pastures with 3 to 6 other horses.
The boss mare has always protected him, so he’s sort of been at the top
of the pecking order. Within the last year, I put a mare in the pasture
that had a rocky start in life – she spent 6 years with no other horses
and I got her because her second owners couldn’t deal with her reaction
of kicking when she was first introduced to horses. I shuffled her around
until she learned to deal pretty well, although she attaches herself primarily
to mares and is initially aggressive toward geldings. But they had space
to figure things out and didn’t have too many problems. This is the
only horse that would have ever really been aggressive toward this gelding and
taught him some bad behavior, although we really don’t have any ongoing
problems in the group.
I don’t really know why he is behaving like this, but
either way, I need to get it stopped soon. Should I just try to inundate
him with horses around him, or focus on one or two horses at a time? What
kind of determent should I give him for bad behavior? I know I really
need to do some arena work and get him softer in his responses, but I’ve
never seen a horse so flat out determined not to move in the arena. He is
incredibly strong and stubborn and I know I need to balance not allowing this
behavior with not pushing him too hard so that he completely decides not to
cooperate. This horse is a phenomenal athlete and I believe once we work
through this, he will be even better, but I’m just not sure how to work on
it. I think this horse has 100 mile potential and when it’s just
him and his buddy mare he is a dream to ride. Although I’d hoped to
get him on a 50 this year, I will take things as slowly as needed to make sure he’s
a long term horse. Or maybe he just needs to do enough of ride to be too
tired to worry about horses behind him?
I’m sure I missed some pertinent detail here, so
please ask if there is info I can provide that will help with any ideas in
dealing with this problem. I really do not want to continually worry and
fight with him when it comes to the safety of others on the trail. I ride
him with a bosal hackamore, which is the only thing he has liked and responded
to. He is very strong and knows it and it is exhausting to fight him when
there are horses closer around him for long periods. I have access to a
good trainer for help if needed, and plenty of people to ride with which are
somewhat able to put their horses where I need them.
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