How hard is too hard? Whips

[scally]

The whole point is whips are not there to be used as a punishment, as with all other things they are there to aid training.

A bucking horse is bucking for a reason, high spirits, pain not understanding, to get a rider off a whallop with a whip may stop the horse on that one occasion, but you have not solved why the horse is bucking. Eliminate and correct the training. A horse being ridden forward, will find it hard to buck, reward for good behaviour. If you get a buck going into canter, you can growl or say no, and go back and do it again, till you get it with no buck then reward the good behaviour, that way the horse will understand what you want. Giving a slap for the buck into canter makes the horse anticipate the next canter aid, and therefore will repeat the bad behaviour more often than not as you have not taught what you want.

Horses dont think like us they learn from repetition. If the repetition is a smack each time they go into canter it makes the matter worse.

As you say not your finest hour, but you were honest enough to admit what you did.

 

[lensmith7]

As said, you probably just caught her funny. If I pat my mares bum, you can see a hand mark. She is incredibly sensitive anglo arab with very 'marky' hair.

Remember too, there's no point carrying the whip if your horse knows you'll never use it

 

[smirnoff_ice07]

Think it depends on the horse - my old pony could be a right little sh*t with a huge attitude and sometimes needed a smack to get him to pay attention. Am not saying i ever leathered him, as ex riding school he is very thick skinned! My youngster on the other hand is very nervous and the most i would ever do is a tiny flick with a schooling whip as a back up, very occasionally, if i actually used a stick on him he would be absolutely terrified!

 

[livetoride]

As you have found, a dressage whip can easily mark the skin, but, depending on the horse's skin, a good quality jumping whip with a big leather flapper can be used quite hard without raising welts.

Very occasionally I will give mine a hiding, although I would only ever do so with a jumping whip and only for dangerous behaviour (e.g. kicking out hunting) or really serious disobedience.