Is Rearing Dangerous?

Rearing is very dangerous for the rider, but it is a behavior that can typically be altered by avoiding situations that frighten or startle a horse. Train a horse not to rear with advice from a riding instructor in this video on equestrian living.

We asked the question "Is rearing dangerous?" Plain up, it is. There's no doubt about it. A horse that rears is a dangerous opportunity for any rider. However, I must admit if I had ruled out every horse in my lifetime that I have known that began as rearing, I may have eliminated some very fine horses, because most often the outcome of rearing, the response that the horse gives us, could be effected by the rider. So we want to make sure that when we look at a horse that's rearing, we try to get rid of the incident that led to it. So in other words, where they may be doing that that's very typical, we give them a big kick at the same time our hands kind of respond with an inadvertent pull, that mechanism right there is often one that will prompt the horse to rear. They often rear out of fear. In our working cow sports, we find some horses that will in fact rear when confronted with a cow. So how do we fix rearing? Well first of all, we take that horse out of the hands of an amateur or non-professional who may not have the safety mechanisms in their background to understand how to handle it. We often can fix them very easily with just eliminating the situation that brought them to rearing, but if not we think of it as with many simple horse training techniques, you must get them forward. So as they rear, if you have the opportunity to know how to put those... loosen the reign, kick them out of it, get them out of the action of rearing, you might be able to fix it. Aside from that, there are a lot of different techniques that professionals will use, but it is a dangerous part of horse behavior, and I must say we just have to take that rearing horse out of the hands of the amateur, and place it in the knowledgeable hands of the professional, and hope they can reverse that outcome.