Pony rears when asked to go through water - ideas?

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pennyturner

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Quiet pony, but a bit paranoid. Convinced there's sea monsters in them thar puddles / rivers, and prepared to do anything to avoid going in - including a spectacular, but controlled and not particularly dangerous rear.

Won't go, even if the whole ride has given him a lead.

What's the right approach?
 
I think confidence and patience. He will need to trust that what you are asking is safe. You know its an inch deep ... he doesnt regardless of whats gone through before him.

Start small and encourage/ reward good behaviour is my advice for what its worth :o
 
Will the pony lead through puddles?

I would start with groundwork. I also find clicker training to be a really good way of getting a horse to overcome its fears. Poor thing is obviously terrified so using any force such as the whip is to be avoided as it will just reinforce the fear.

So start on the ground with tiny puddles. Get the pony to stand next to it, splash his legs with the water etc and progress from there. No harm in getting off if he's being ridden to lead him through until he gains confidence.
 
Wagtail said:
Will the pony lead through puddles?

I would start with groundwork. I also find clicker training to be a really good way of getting a horse to overcome its fears. Poor thing is obviously terrified so using any force such as the whip is to be avoided as it will just reinforce the fear.

So start on the ground with tiny puddles. Get the pony to stand next to it, splash his legs with the water etc and progress from there. No harm in getting off if he's being ridden to lead him through until he gains confidence.
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Agree with this, have always found getting off to re-assure them pays dividends in the future.
 
Elvis said:
What happens when the rider gets off and leads the horse?
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this ^^ one of my ponies refused to go through the local burn and I think thats fair enough if they don't know what the bottom is like. Took wellies, led him through and never had a problem since. start small, maybe do some work on other 'false' surfaces as well to help him gain confidence.
 
Ours was the same, would not budge, either when on or leading & wouldn't follow either. She was then (another day) stood near the water & a friend took her horse in. He started splashing so she positioned him so it would splash all over our mare. She followed him in after that & had a good splash herself 😊 she still wont go straight in yet but at least now she will get her feet wet eventually!
 
Rears in hand if you try to lead him too. What a prat!

Can sometimes get him through shallow surface water - so looks like I need to start with wet tarmac (which he still tries to avoid) and work my way up to deeper water very very gradually.

If he were just a ridden horse I could put up with it, but puddle avoiding is really dangerous in a carriage.
 
I wouldn't mind but he's bombproof with traffic, and can be walked across flimsy wooden bridges etc. which most horses wouldn't go near.
 
A pro rider I know has had good results in asking a horse to go in backwards - turn around and rein back into the water. This may work in a rearing situation in that the rearing won't be effective in avoiding the water. Also have you tried putting him in the middle of a group with horses to the front and sides of him?

Agree on taking it slowly - I haven't had a horse with such a dramatic reaction but my old one didn't much like water and it was hard at first to get him through a puddle. Oddly, XC training with deeper water helped a lot once he would go into it, as he realised it was run splashing and jumping in and out. After that the puddles weren't a problem.

Good luck. x
 
could you use a hosepipe on or around his hooves and progress to letting the water puddle around them maybe?
 
Establish a good steady pace some distance from your chosen puddle. Maintain walk at a steady pace, don't slow and let him think about it and don't speed up or he'll try and jump it. Keep him absolutely straight between your legs, apply strong pressure with both legs and use your back to push him forward.
If he's a driving pony he might respond to vocal encouragement. Just let him know he's not going to drown alone and he might just go for it!
 
Ditto the backwards! Alf rears and spins if I try to get him through water, even with a companion who is happy to paddle. Only way to get him to get his feet wet is to reverse him in - and he doesn't even think about rearing - too busy trying to work out what happened, and how he ended up wet!
 
WelshD said:
could you use a hosepipe on or around his hooves and progress to letting the water puddle around them maybe?
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Ooh - he's never seen a hosepipe; that should be enough to send him 15ft into the air! He is a BIG wuss. We've come a long way, but he's not ready for hosepipes just yet.

Fellewell said:
Establish a good steady pace some distance from your chosen puddle. Maintain walk at a steady pace, don't slow and let him think about it and don't speed up or he'll try and jump it. Keep him absolutely straight between your legs, apply strong pressure with both legs and use your back to push him forward.
If he's a driving pony he might respond to vocal encouragement. Just let him know he's not going to drown alone and he might just go for it!
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If it was that easy, I'd have done it already! Watch that impulsion disappear as soon as he sees the shiny wet stuff... Feel him wriggle out of that straight line. Think that 5ft banking will stop him running out? Oh no it won't - ever seen a big-boned, clumsy pony jump sideways? I have. :)

Backwards. Now that's an idea. I'll let you know how I get on with that. Should be good fun.
 
Sounds to me like he needs a good rope halter and a lot of groundwork so he respects you and trusts your judgement then teach him to have his legs hosed by pressure release from the ground. Although we drive our pony I cant advise you on that as we are complete beginners so learning all about it ourselves. Ridden the best cure for our pony not liking water was to take her to the seaside and paddle in the shallows of the sea before she finally decided that if I walked in she would follow after that she was great. Took ages to get her to the wet sand and finally into the moving water where she could see the bottom but she ended up neck deep in water that day
 
I stood mine out. He spent a long time on his back legs when asked when being ridden despite other horses going in and help on the ground. So I went down with a lunge line, a chiffney, a schooling whip and wellies. Just gently asking him forwards all the time and not allowing backwards or up as a response but never being stressed at him. It took a while but he eventually calmly walked through.

He's still not a water baby but he will reliably go in now. But he wasn't terrified of water to start with so that might not be the best plan for yours.
 
First time I took Dublin out in the carriage, he leapt over a puddle on bridle path, scared me to death!!! That was first time I knew he would jump puddles if he couldn't go round it!! He is miles better now, a few beach trips sorted him out.
 
My horse was very nervous of water in the beginning. As an eventer he had to get used to it pretty quickly!

What I will say is that you really need to start with a nice open bit of water. Trying to get a horse through a narrow dirty looking puddle when he is scared of water is extremely difficult.

Just like you would not start training an eventer by doing skinny fences, you start with them wide until they have confidence and you have control. You need to find a nice airy but wide patch of water such as a water jump at your local XC schooling venue or a gentle river.

It is only after two years that my horse will now go through puddles. He still objected to puddles long after he accepted water jumps, rivers and the sea.
 
Another vote for backwards :)

I used to have to take Ned in the showjumping ring backwards, or he'd rear and I'd never get him in.
I know how frustrating this sort of thing is. It took weeks for me to get Ned past the gate to go out for hacks. Plenty of rearing and hours spent wishing I could just give up and hating his guts!!

Good luck, you'll get there!
 
Now's the perfect time to find somewhere to do this:

2007_0118_132649.jpg


This young lady did still decide one day to object to going down a step into water but as we both knew she wasn't actually scared, more attempting to exert her authority, it meant we could handle her more robustly than if she were scared. She had plenty of field that wasn't under water when I took this photo, she'd just decided that standing in the puddle was a good thing to do.
 
pennyturner said:
Ooh - he's never seen a hosepipe; that should be enough to send him 15ft into the air! He is a BIG wuss. We've come a long way, but he's not ready for hosepipes just yet.



If it was that easy, I'd have done it already! Watch that impulsion disappear as soon as he sees the shiny wet stuff... Feel him wriggle out of that straight line. Think that 5ft banking will stop him running out? Oh no it won't - ever seen a big-boned, clumsy pony jump sideways? I have. :)

Backwards. Now that's an idea. I'll let you know how I get on with that. Should be good fun.
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Ok then; stop hard feed, put him in a full cheek, block him with a stick, find a puddle that spans the track to your yard and have someone stand the other side of it shaking a bucket of nuts. Failing that sell him to a desert dweller :)
 
Fellewell said:
Ok then; stop hard feed, put him in a full cheek, block him with a stick, find a puddle that spans the track to your yard and have someone stand the other side of it shaking a bucket of nuts. Failing that sell him to a desert dweller :)
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Love it. That would work, except that he never gets any hard feed :/
 
How does he react to a lunge whip? When I first got mine he wasn't great at loading onto the horsebox, but show him a lunge whip and he'd go straight in. So when it came to his aversion to water - I spent ages at one Xc trying to make him go through, rears, spins, backing into fencing etc, no way he was going in! So took him Xc schooling and had a friend on the ground with a lungewhip. All it took was for it to be behind him and he went in. Practised a few more times and he's gone in every water since.
 
I used to do a lot of driving in a place with lots of water crossings, so have experience of this :)
You need to take him out ridden with one other good horse. Start small - puddles etc. Once he'll go through small puddles (led if necessary) then ride through, then progress to bigger ones, and eventually a proper water crossing.
It takes time and you have to do it every day, but as long as you progress gradually enough he'll be fine eventually.
Ice has horses that would rather throw themselves on the ground than get their feet wet - but with gradual desensitisation like this they've all happily trotted and cantered through by the end :)
 
Not sure what the consensus is, but my perfect-in-every-respect, bombproof first horse was exactly the same. All we could think was that he had had a bad experience. He was fine if he could see the bottom or if another horse or human led him through. If not, no chance.
I got very good at vaulting on from the ground during hacks, and leant to deal with wet feet.
Apart from that, I would have cloned him multiple times over if the technology had been available, he was that wonderful.
 
My gelding used to be frightened of walking through water but we have a ford at the yard, so he needed to be able to go through it. It's quite shallow in summer/dry weather and deeper with a current that you can really feel in the winter/wet weather.

As iit's on the yard, there's no problems with traffic, so I could choose days when the ford was low and take my time with training him.

Do you have access to a quiet and safe bit of water for training your pony?
 
UPDATE:

Took him out this morning on my own to the puddliest spot I could find.
Backwards is not going to do it. He's got a 'spider-sense' that tells him water's behind him, and he rears going backwards too!

We did get somewhere by carefully putting him through small, shallow puddles, and skirting the edges of bigger ones, working up to going through some medium sized ones, over and over. He did rear a few times, but I didn't push him, so the rears he did were smaller and more petulant than panicked.

Whilst he still wouldn't go through the large puddles, we did end the morning with his feet wet, so I'm counting that as a result - or at least somewhere to start.

My aim is to get him to cross a local ford, which is about 18" deep, and 20 feet across. Today we managed to get right up to the edge of it without a tantrum, which is an improvement - but he wasn't going to go in, so I decided not to push my luck until we've done more puddle-work, and let him cross the bridge.

Thanks everyone.
 
Flicker said:
Not sure what the consensus is, but my perfect-in-every-respect, bombproof first horse was exactly the same. All we could think was that he had had a bad experience. He was fine if he could see the bottom or if another horse or human led him through. If not, no chance.
I got very good at vaulting on from the ground during hacks, and leant to deal with wet feet.
Apart from that, I would have cloned him multiple times over if the technology had been available, he was that wonderful.
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Our first horse was exactly the same. He had been in Blackpool but I don't know whether he had ever been on the beach, or if he had, if he'd enjoyed it or had a bad experience. But her was certainly determined that he wasn't going to drown. He would tiptoe along the narrowest dry spot in order to avoid large puddles. He would cross running water with a lead from another horse though.

OP, I would start with the hosepipe with your pony.
 
Is his rearing instant? Usually they only rear because they're being asked to go forwards and feel they can't, so the only release is upwards. It's rare for them to rear if they're not having pressuse applied.

I personally would make sure you've got a day of unlimited patience and sit him out.

You should be able to feel the explosive point at which he's about to rear so you want to keep him just below that point. Enough pressure that he wants to go forwads to get rid of it (so gentle regular nudges or legs flaps, voice commands, maybe annoying him with a whip) but you don't want him panicking. If you push it a little too far, ignore the rear and keep asking in the same gentle but insistent manner. The aids to walk on should be obvious, unambiguous and easy to follow. Make sure you're not holding him back with the reins, keep his head straight and facing the required direction (a full cheek bit if required) and your legs and voice should be firm and insistent but calm and kind. It is vitally important he is made to face the right direction and he MUST be thinking about what he's doing, not trying to block it out by getting distracted and looking at other things. That's the only time I'd be sharp with him, when he tries (which he will) to pretend it's not happening.

Reward every single little try he makes (that includes stretching out to touch the water with his nose) with lavish praise and a brief and well timed let-up from badgering him.

It takes patience, good timing, lots of time and extra patience but it does work. Getting into a fight about it and having him crash about may eventually get him through a puddle but it's counter productive in the long term as next time all he'll remember is the fight, the panic and the stress.
 
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Kallibear - what's happening is the puddle in front is preventing him going forward, just as if I was holding him back, so the slightest forward ask is enough to make him go up. It isn't quite instant. I feel him tense just before he goes up. Because I know how he's going to react I can take the pressure off just before he goes up, which results in the petulant little half-rears he was doing this morning.

His head position is OK in his eggbut (so long as I balance the contact), so keeping him straight isn't a problem. After this morning I'm pretty certain that repeated schooling through the puddles will desensitise him eventually.

I've no intention of fighting it out with him. The only whip he gets is to his shoulder as he rears, as I pull him round and down the other way. I want him to know that I disapprove!
 
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