Rearing please help!(sorry its along one)

IMO forget trying to sort him out and send him back if you possibly can. It is simply not worth risking serious injury. x
 
Gosh poor you, glad you're ok. If it was me I would try and send him back, especially if you're looking for a horse to have fun on not one to re-train and risk injuring yourself!

As someone before said, rearing is one thing, but serious rearing like that is quite another. Mine will rear occasionally but usually he can then be ridden forwards out of it and will carry on good as gold after. But even still I find having to put up with that now and again frustrating, as never know when it might happen so its always a worry. He reared and slipped on wet grass with me on a hack a few weeks ago, fell over and gallopped off. It does make you think! I don't really want to have to resort to draw reins just to hack as it seems like a downwards spiral, but it could be safer.

I do sympathise with you, its not an easy decision.
 
Rearing is the most dangerous of evasions and rearers know exactly what they are doing the sequence of napping and not getting away with it put your horse into phase two which is rear and get rid of rider. I have seen it a million times. I am sure there are riders who would work through it but frankly having done that myself been put over backwards with horse landing on top - Do you really want to knowingly do that? Recently we were offered a show hunter to take to Dublin this year so we started her fitness programme with some hacking - first time in arena big heavyweight hunter goes straight up and when she was unable to dislodge daughter, did 360 rodeo turn corkscrew bucks until daughter off. She was back on the horsebox that evening. Good luck with your decision but usually project horses are project horses for a reason. Forget the vet checks, napping and badness - send the horse back.
 
Sounds like he is rearing because he can't get his own way and it is a way of evading what you are asking him to do. Please do not be tempted to 'crack an egg between his ears' or pull him over which I have heard people say before now. Both these things are dangerous and do not work. I would consult a chiro and get him checked out first and foremost. Then his saddle fitting, check that is okay. If everything is okay then I would take him in to the arena in hand, and make him work hard on the lunge before attempting to sit on him again. Lots of rewards for going forward and lots of leg if he wont. Be very careful not to pull with the hands and block him when you ask him to go foward, as this can make a horse rear.
 
I had a horse which reared, but only if we were on our own. I had lessons on him, persevered, tried to ride with company (all the usual checks done) but he kept doing it...gradually i became firghtened, when he stood right up (as yours did) one final time i thought "that's it". He was too much for me to handle so he went back to ireland.

Please be very careful. Good luck whatever you decide to do.
 
I'm with Icemaiden, I'd try hacking him, in company, and let him have fun. If he has been walking all over his novice owner he may well have learned how to get out of work.
My mare, who was 4 when I got her, reared continually once I got her home but doesn't do it all now. Doesn't sound like they were as high as yours though, but it wasn't nice.
 
I bought a 4 year old years ago from a private home. The owner admitted she was terrifed of her, and woudl never be confident enought to ride her. Her daughter had backed her and had started her under saddle. When i went to view her the daugther rode her round the school. The mare was very green and very bloshy, and the daugther could barely keep her away from the sides of the school fence. I got on her and she was a bit better with more leg and less hand. Then i took her for a walk down the lane, she went forward then decided to try and stop and threatened to go up. I span her and sent her forward, she went forwards. The owner admitted to me that the daugther wouldof gotten off at that point, and the horse generally got away with napping.

I bought the mare for a lower price than was advertised as i felt with consistant work and time she would come right.

We went through a phaze fo her trying to stand up to get otu of work, but she soon realised it would not work with me, and the rearing stopped.

If the horse came from an unexperienced, unconfident rider, then the chances are it has napped/gone up with her, and she has bottled out, and the horse has learnt this behaviour works.

I compelatly went back to basicis with the young mare i bought, i spent weeks lungeing and long lineing her, i had a saddle fitted to her and checked regularly as she was still growing. It takes time.

It does sound like this was nappy behaviour, and the horse started when it got to the school. I feel if it was pain the horse woudl of reared before you got to the school. If you decide to keep thehorse then you need to get a full health check sorted out, have the tack checked and start from scratch. if the horse has been out of work for a bit, its probably becasue it was too much for the previous owner to handle.

I woudl spend the time to get the horse back to fitness, do planty of ground work to strenghen its back. Then see how they go.

One thing i will say, after owning a few rearers in the past is that, they never forget how to rear and there will always be a chance that they will go up again.
 
Honestly I have to say that I totally disagree with all the people saying to perservere. Why perservere with a horse that so far has shown the potential to kill you? x
 
QR

Take it back. Don't mess about or even think about persevering. You don't deserve getting hurt in the first week for the money you paid for that horse. Its done it before and it will do it again.

The longer you leave sending it back, the more grounds the old owners have for claiming you caused it.
 
Your life and future health is the most important thing. You have not had sufficient experience dealing with a rearer in the past and my advice would be to send him back without any delay or further expense. Even if it was a private sale if the vendor failed to truthfully answer a question or mislead you then you can send it back.
 
IMHO I would send it back asap. I wouldn't bother trying to perservere with it. you were only tryng to ride it in the school and rearing 8 times means that t meant business. You had to have hospital treatment and next time it could be worse. You don't need to try and find out if there's something physical wrong with it, let the old owners do that. It could cost you alot of money as well as your health
 
I liek the way everyoen seems to be saying to pass the buck!
If the opwner wont take the horse back , then surely people cant be suggesting the OP sells the horse on again!

Op i dont knwo how much you paid for the horse, however you did buy it as a project, and weather that means you got it cheaper or not i dont know.

However i think the best thing to do is to contact the owner and maybe see if you can get at least a partial refund and do right by thehorse, so that it dosnt get sold on again to someone else and end up killing them.
 
Ah, but if the question was never asked.....

I am not sticking up for the vendor but I imagine that this horse was not much money( as the term 'project' was used) and therefore there is always a case of Buyer Beware.
It is then up to the purchaser to prove that the vendor knew the horse did this- easier said than done.

I'm afraid you might have to see this one out, the same as I did.
 
No body is suggesting that the OP just passes the problem on - king Charles - rather that she returns it and there is a huge difference henry between a horse that needs an experienced rider and a horse that rears 8 times vertically and goes over backwards!!
 
[ QUOTE ]
QR

Take it back. Don't mess about or even think about persevering. You don't deserve getting hurt in the first week for the money you paid for that horse. Its done it before and it will do it again.

The longer you leave sending it back, the more grounds the old owners have for claiming you caused it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't agree more.
 
If I've not put 2 and 2 together and come up with 5, the previous owner of this horse is on the Intelligent Horsemanship website and appears genuinely bemused by the behaviour. And thinks he needed more time to settle.

You both seem to be reasonable people. Why don't you sit down together and sort this out? Whether that means she takes him back, you work together on him or some other alternative.

It's obvious you are both committed horse lovers and I wish you well whatever the outcome.
 
if you are going to stick with the horse, maybe try putting on a harbridge training aid so that if the horse does rear he will have difficulty going up so high as he cant get his head up???? never dealt with a rearer but just an idea??
 
I bought a horse which behaved almost the same - except I managed to ride him a few times before it started. It was like he couldn't handle any pressure building up and it was exactly the same immediate reaction - rear straight up, straight away. He did it with me 7 or 8 times, up to 6 straight up rears in a row, the number of rears was getting more as he got fitter. He even did it when being led out to the field in hand. I kept riding him because I didn't want to feel I was getting rid of him without giving him a proper try first, but it just got worse. He even reared 6 times in a row as I was walking him round the arena on a long rein, saying "good boy". I think he had realised that I wasn't going to let him away with any of the nonsense he had got away with before, such as napping and bucking, and hence rearing was the ultimate trick in his armoury.

I got rid, back to the dealer. I would seriously have considered putting to sleep if I had not been able to get rid of him. There are so many horses out there who don't rear, yes it can sometimes be "cured" but is it worth the risk? Even if you lose your money, your health and life are worth more than the horse will have cost you. FWIW I felt I could have got this horse to the stage where I could have ridden him very carefully and 8 times out of 10 he wouldn't have reared. BUT I would have had to avoid doing anythign to upset him and not had a horse that could do anything that I wanted to do. This horse was fab at groundwork btw and had obviously done a lot of it. The previous owner was a novice woman in her fifties who was probably over-horsed, barely rode him and let him do too much of what he wanted and didn't work him properly. Such a waste of a horse.
 
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