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By: Regan Lou
on June 04, 2012
in General Questions
Rating: 0
So my exbronc, most of you have heard of him now, I have thought LONG AND HARD about.
I bought a soft saddle for him thinking he would enjoy being ridden in. Well as soon as I sat in the saddle he tossed me hard. Sooooo I thought of maybe sending him to a retirement home. But after much thought, I have come to the conclusion of restarting again from the ground. But this time differently. I started to teach him to ground drive yesterday and he took to it like it was his favorite job. Usually he won't walk or jog on the lunge, he will do a super active fast powerful trot on the lunge. But he was walking, and jogging on the ground with the ground driving. So I figured maybe this will actually work.
I need your thoughts on my plan (Sorry for the long rant here lol)
So this is what I'm thinking-----
~Teach him w/j/l with ground driving.
~Once he's great with that. Start putting the saddle on, and work towards his bridle.
~After that, put a rider (my boyfriend) on him and ground drive from there. (now my boyfriend can ride out bucks and knows how to do an emergency dismount if anything goes wrong)
~And if Buster does well with the rider, start walking on just a lunge line.
~Then take it away, and try riding like he is a greenie. stay at walk/jog for a month or so. Work on him keeping his attention on me and his feet. Work on some obstacles..
So this horse was once a bucking bronc? If so, be very careful putting a rider on him... he is probably good enough at bucking that he would get just about any rider off within 8 seconds... and every time he gets somebody off (whether it is properly bucking them off or due to an emergency dismount) he will learn more and more firmly that he is doing the right thing. A lot of effort is put in to training bucking horses to buck! Getting the rider off is their "release of pressure" and thus their reward.... so I would be very careful with that step of your plan... do lots of half-mounts (and lead him off with a rider half-on) and full mounts and dismounts before actually ground-driving him with a rider.... Basically, I think your plan is good, just be very careful with that one step - and maybe use lots of little steps (leading him with a sack of feed on his back...)
You could try it. but my first thoughts were perhaps you should just aim towards carting him and I cant agree more with what Serena said. But will also ad alot of times these broncs are bred from the best bucking stock money can buy so it is bred into them to buck, then it is trained into them...it is what they do. Please be careful.
why dont you just teach him to drive?
Obviously this is something he's interested in and it doesn't stress him out.
He might not ever be able to be ridden, safely.
Since he was a bronc, it's going to be pretty difficult to get him to accept a rider. he's been trained to get a person off his back and each time he does it, it just reinforces it in his mind that that's what he's supossed to do.
