How to deal with a rearing and excited youngster

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MagicStars

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My pony managed to chip his sesamoid bone and so for the last few months has been stuck in a very small pen during the day and in a stable at night (he is used to living out 24/7) and now the spring has come he is very excited and has ALOT of pent up energy! at the moment he is 100% sound in walk and about 90% in trot I keep trying to walk him up to the manage where ground is softer to trot him but he has got into the habit of rearing at the slightest new or possibly exciting thing. He isn't too big (13.2) but quite a stocky new forest and I want to stop this behaviour now (he is 4yrs old btw). Using a whip just winds him up more and he already wears a bridle with blinkers when being led about because he tries to run off alot, and is pretty strong! He is a sweet natured thing but just wants to do his own thing and is quite frankly tired of being cooped up. Also rearing isn't the best thing for his leg which I want to heal asap, anyone got any tips?
 
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if he is does his care change?

if yes then get vet out and trot up the once and if he is sound then change the care, if not then don't worry about trotting up.

youngsters (and some elders) find it really hard when turn out is restricted, combine that with fact spring is in the air and it is not surprising he is playing up, if you have to do it then get some sedation from the vet but if not stop trying before bad habits are established
 
Agree with the others there is no need to trot him everyday, if his not calm when his in his pen or stable get him on a controlled dose of sedalin to keep him from exploding, keep leading him to a minimum just from pen to stable so he has less chance of misbehaving, I had my mare on 3 months of box rest recently and only managed it by giving her dope most days, I often find the more walking and activity you do with a horse that is on restricted rest the worse they become.
 
Can't he go out now? I would have thought he is best left for a month after being sound without being asked to do anything
I've never heard of blinkers to calm them down, they use blinkers in racehorses to perk them up.
Maybe ask someone a bit stronger and more experience to see if they can manage him.
 
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MagicStars said:
My pony managed to chip his sesamoid bone and so for the last few months has been stuck in a very small pen during the day and in a stable at night (he is used to living out 24/7)?
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What is the plan for your pony? Is he going back to living out 24/7? Does this depend on trotting sound?
 
sorry I should have made it clearer I'm not trying to trot him everyday or anything just every once in a while, also I just thought talking him to the manage might be a bit of enrichment, yes eventually he will be living out 24/7 again and he was in the process of being broken to ride and drive which is still the ultimate aim. I think he will probably be ok to be let out into a field by himself now (but I don't want to put him out even by himself unless he looks pretty sound) but when he is with his friends he can get silly (how he did his leg in the first place) so he's not ready for that yet.
 
I can totally understand that you want to make life a bit more interesting for him by walking him in the arena but you're setting him up to fail. He will have so much energy and excitement that he can't think straight and that's not the time to try training and teaching him things.

It sounds like his general manners and ground work is poor so that'd be the first place I'd start. Have him somewhere where he's relatively calm (so his pen or stable) and teach him to respond currently to pressue and learn to move history feet etc. If you're not sure how to do ground work exercises then get an instructor out to show you. Once his manners are spot on then you start repeating the exercises in more exciting situations.

I'd specifically deal with his rearing in one of two ways. Which depends on my assessment once I'd seen the pony. I'd either reprimand the actual rearing firmly or completely ignore it and give him something else to do. You cannot know which one will be more effective without seeing the overall picture. Ditto the excitement and excitable behaviour.

I have a significantly larger youngster who used to occasionally rear and bounce with excitement. He responded best to reprimand then praise. My friends rearer would have*had*a hissy fit if I dealt with him like that, which is why you need to fit the response to the horse and a generic general response doesn't work.
 
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