How to help a horse accept the Saddle without bucking

Hey everybody, welcome back to another video. In this video we're going to be showing you how to help a horse that's bucking with a saddle get to where they're finding relief being saddled and accepting that saddle better. Let's jump into it. So I'm here with Shogun, he's a four-year-old and he's my intern Kyle's horse and we've been having some trouble with him where every time we saddle him he wants to buck with a saddle. It's not terrible, he doesn't blow up with it but he just humps around with it and we can warm him up out of it and eventually ride him safely and that sort of thing. But we're wanting to get it better than that to where we can just saddle him up and go. Now we've made sure this wasn't a physical issue and we've also experimented with changing saddles and pads and we've experimented with that to see if maybe it was something with his scapula and where it was touching him, all that sort of thing to make sure that wasn't the issue. And what we've landed on is that it's likely him feeling claustrophobic with the cinches. So a horse can buck with a saddle for various reasons and there's a whole host of physical reasons they could be bucking. It could be the scapula or the shoulder rotating back, poor saddle fit, saddle pad they don't like, that sort of thing. But we're going to take the approach today of let's get him used to steady pressure and try to release him to being saddled. We're going to see if it's a better improvement. Now we've warmed him up on the ground doing kind of things we normally do but we haven't saddled him yet so I'm going to play with him with layer rope now as kind of our final stages before saddling him and see if that helps. So let's get started with it. So those of you that have been following my channel, you guys know I'm really big on getting a horse to follow a feel with steady pressure really well. See if I can get him to step into it there. And so the first place I'm going to test this on him with him is his hind leg. And this is a spot just above their hock that horses can be particularly protective of. So if you work with a young baby horse, they're really protective on their pole right behind their ears. They're really protective of their hind legs and they can be really protective of their flank area. So these are all areas that I'm going to look at here with the Slayer Rope. So I'm going to put a feel on it here. You can see we got a reaction. He's like not sure but then he thought through it right there and we'll release. So there I'm I tried to release him when he started to stop but then he kind of he got tight again and so that wasn't a great time to release. Now I'm going to hold it again. I'm going to wait a little longer this time right there when he relaxes and now I'll release it. And there you can see him shake his head. He's kind of letting his head down. He had a little lick and chew but you can see that did bother him a little bit. So that means we moved the needle. We were able to find that claustrophobic box in his brain and expose that and get him to come through it and be settled. So one of the things you have to understand is I don't have to have a saddle on for him to get into that I feel claustrophobic box. Okay this this can happen when you put them into a horse trailer. It can happen when the farrier's got their leg up and they're working on them. It can happen I'm walking them through a narrow doorway. You know it can be anything that think of it like a box in their brain that there's different things that put them in that box and so the hind this rope on a hind leg put him in that I feel claustrophobic box just like the saddle does. So the premise is if I can expose him to that going into that box and realizing that bucking with it doesn't equal relief that settling getting calmer slowing down and relaxing equals relief. The idea is that he's going to get better and better at it. Okay let's go ahead and turn him here. Now the thing why the saddle is tough is it's not like if he stops bucking out in a circle it's not like you can run up to him and loosen those cinches right away. I mean I guess you could try but essentially I'm not going to do it when I'm riding him we're going to keep those cinches snug so the saddle doesn't roll. So the point is that with this lariat rope I can give him instant relief and loosen it when he finds the answer. Okay so that's why this works better than just saddling him and leaving him saddled and saying oh just deal with it which just isn't going to be all that effective anyways. And again you know there's probably a few of you that have trained one or two horses that you found a way to get it to work with just leaving a saddle on but once you start training a lot of horses you start realizing that certain horses have a hard time accepting that and it's mostly because they feel claustrophobic. You know not it's not about the saddle it's about him feeling claustrophobic. You know it's kind of interesting I was talking to Kyle about this the other day some horses have trouble with going to different environments some horses have trouble handling rhythmic pressure where you bring your life up and put pressure on whether that's a dog running by or a person being noisy or whatever it is some horses have trouble feeling claustrophobic some have trouble with all the above those are the ones that end up being particularly difficult. So what's interesting with Shogun is he handles pressure really well he handles new environments and obstacles really really well but this is the one thing that he's still kind of holding on to and so what I'm getting at is if you can really learn how to diagnose and figure out exactly where the problem is coming from you can get to where you're not chasing symptoms okay because if you made it just about the saddle you'd be kind of chasing your tail around in circles but if you can understand that he needs to get help feeling less claustrophobic in various situations then you can find other ways to approach it more than just leaving a saddle on him for a long time. So let's do that hind leg rope again one more time and then I'm going to move the rope to a different position and the last position I'm going to finish with him on is having that rope back here not quite as a flank rope but kind of back in that area so put a feel on here. If you're interested in learning more about getting a horse to to give to steady pressure with the rope I have lots of videos of doing this with different horses that were really difficult with this on my Patreon page so there'll be a link in the description below if you want to see those those other horses getting some what I call rope therapy and the aka that just means getting them to steady pressure. Steady pressure is just innately one of the most scary things to horses. So I went ahead and switched out to a rope line here so it's easier for you to tell the difference between the two but now I have this rope around his neck now if he pulls on it it is going to tighten on him okay and so you would want to be careful so what I'm showing you here this these are professional horse development strategies this isn't something I'm saying everybody at home should go and try I'm just sharing with you you know a training session that I'm doing with this horse and kind of bringing you guys in on it for a for a behind the scenes look here. So now what I'm going to do is run it between his front legs and all I'm going to do is ask him if he can lower his head with this so again if you if you ever work with a little baby foal one of the most common things you see happen is people put a halter on right away and they pull on the leader rope trying to get them to lead and they rear up and flip over little baby foals and the reason that this happens pretty regularly if a person doesn't know how to a young horse and we have a video coming up on that soon actually the reason that happens is innately horses are really protective of this area right behind their pole because if a predator was going to go after them this is the area that they would go for you know if you watch the national geographic channel with zebras and africa and lions going after them you know this is the area that they they try to strike and so it's just the horses are just built in as being defensive and protective of this area that's why it's also easy to teach horses to pull back if you don't set it upright so we got to be very aware of this and we got to teach them to really follow a feel in a way that's very achievable and easy for that horse to accept otherwise you can run into teaching that horse to really resist that pressure the next area that they're really protective of is this flank area right and then this hind leg here and so those are just baby horses are just innately very fearful of things touching them or mustangs if you ever go work with a mustang you'll see they're very protective of those areas a lot of times the first area that you can make contact with a mustang with is sometimes this area by their withers usually this is an area that is easier to make contact with and then also their nose but actually the withers is usually the most typical you know sometimes it's the hind quarters but this area is actually on a young or a mustang is easy easy place to get a starting point from so a little side note there so now i'm going to put a feel on it here and see if i can ask him to just give and lower his head down there so he's turning his head which is fine but i'm looking for that head to go down not just turn there it is so i released when it just slightly went down and then you saw him drop it even further than that okay so go ahead and do that again so put a feel and you can do this in a i prefer to do this with a lead rope on as well because i don't want things to get too western here so i can use that halter to control him more because you don't have any control with this lariat rope setup so put a feel on it hold and wait so there he's feeling a little bit tight because he knows how to give to press there there it is but this is just a particular harder one for him to give to let's try this at a walk here i'm going to clock a little bit to kind of keep him walking now can you see how quickly he gives i had very little reaction i'm going to move on from this right away because he i'm just not getting any brace there so that means there's not really any area there that i'm going to improve and move the needle for saddling him because he is pretty pretty tame in those areas and when i use the word tame think about um that means the horse is not going to their natural instincts um their natural prey animal instincts when they're tame when they're not tame that's when horses are going to be using their instincts to run away flight from fear resist pressure push into pressure if you get them if you if you push the envelope too much that's where a horse can turn defensive and start biting kicking you know that kind of thing too but that's their their their last resort okay so now we're going to go to the kind of the hard spot here so we're going to build a big loop here and we're going to let him walk through this loop and then right after i get this loop um get him him kind of tame with this area the next thing we'll do is put that saddle on him straight away there we go now i'm not really wanting this to be a flank rope i'm just kind of wanting this to be to represent the cinches on the saddle a little bit so this would be more of a colt starting technique that i would use to where i'm just going to pull on this and just expose him to that pressure and we'll start it here and kind of work our way back but this is a lot thinner rope than the cinches are and so he's going to feel it a little bit more the cinches ideally would be more comfortable so again the premise is we're going to try to release him we're going to try to release him to being saddled okay so go ahead and pull on it good so we got no no reaction whatsoever to this which is great so now that means we have we have a green light to go ahead and slide it further back so i'm going to go ahead and move it a little bit further back there oh there we got a reaction so if we're getting a reaction with this is actually kind of a good thing because this means that we can prepare him to release him towards that saddle good now there he's moving forward and that's the other thing i want to release him on forward here not standing still forward without bucking so i'm going to go ahead and release it there let it kind of hang down and then i'll put a feel on it again hold it now again you can see it's not all the way back where it's not a flank rope but it is pretty darn far back more so than the back cinch and that because again that's the idea that i want to release him to that back cinch because he feels claustrophobic but the difference is when he stops bucking with this i can go ahead and release it right away now he doesn't feel anything there compared to that saddle now i slid back a little too far so if i pulled it tight there it would be a flank rope and that's that's uh let me get this around my spur that's not what i'm going for okay so we're going to go ahead and bring it forward there again oh that was good see it's back there pretty far no reaction that time a little bit of reaction at the canter very good gotta watch your ropes here make sure you're not stepping and getting tangled up in anything again this is a professional technique i don't recommend everybody go home and try this i'm just sharing with you a strategy that we're using to help this horse hopefully accept the saddle a little bit better again it's getting kind of far back there i don't want it to be a flank flank rope well maybe i do and we'll just have it be a light let's kind of tickle him a little bit with it there we go so that ended up being a little bit further back than i wanted but i really just did not want to release um on him when he was still reacting to it so we'll go ahead put it forward again and i'm just going to do the one side today tomorrow we might do the other side very good good so we'll go ahead and take that and i'm going to go ahead and saddle him up kind of straight away right now and we'll see if this is if this was helpful so you can see he's really relaxed for saddling here he's in a good frame of mind to be saddled we challenged him with some things so hopefully make this look look a little easier you can see he's licking and chewing he's releasing he's not associating the saddle with any sort of pressure now i never tighten up the cinches really tight the first time i saddle the horse i i like to uh you know you could really teach them to not like to be saddled if you tighten them up right away you know no different than if you had somebody else putting your belt on for you in the morning and they just cranked that thing down as tight as they could get it you might not appreciate that so we're just going to kind of let him have it on here and i'll just kind of walk him out to where um where we're going to circle and then i'll tighten it up a little bit more because right now if he went to buck in or running around it could it could slide around on him and i don't want it to slide so we'll go ahead give it a whirl so i was doing the the rope on him to the left so we'll go ahead and start this to the left we'll just let him wear it a little bit here so a little bit of protest there not too bad kind of ask him to canter here again a little bit of a hunch there not too bad he's cross-firing in the hind leg so he's a little bit amped up there we go now what i'd really like him to do is blow out and have a big release that'd be kind of what i'd be hoping for i like that canter he's got working for him right there i think he's wanting to blow out we'll see if it's in there okay let's go ahead and bend him down here just let him decompress here for a second and then we'll go the other way he just took a deep breath there just kind of wait on him here so you can see he's getting more settled with the saddle which is good you know he's not trying to trot off this time head went down so now i'm going to ask him to trot kind of lead him into the canter here basically i mean i'm trying to lope him off just nice and soft see if he can step into that lope without bucking really nice so typically he is a little worse to the right than the left and so that's part of why i went to the left first and i would call this a success this was you know it was better he wasn't perfect with it but i feel like we're on the road to a nice strategy here try that canter one more time make sure it wasn't an accident but you can just see in his expression how relaxed he is in the lope there where the head is at we're trying to blow out right now i can hear him making some noises we'll just let him keep cruising here and see if he can find that blowout there it is so because he blew out while cantering to the right which was kind of the biggest bugaboo spot with him as far as accepting the saddle i would i would consider that now to be a pretty huge huge win pretty significant because he relaxed and he found relief cantering to the right so that was a really good setup and i think you guys got to see kind of the difference there so whatever it is that the the rider the human not with the horse whatever it is their goal is it's just default for the horse to feel like whatever they're trying to do load into the trailer stand still to be saddled canter off do a leash whatever it is they're innately going to feel like the human is trapping them in that position so it's our job to be playing chess with the horse and not tic-tac-toe and what i mean by that is we need to be two steps ahead of and we need to release them towards the goal not try to just power through and push them into the goal and just try to make them you know be in the position we want them in set it up ahead of time where you can release your horse to your idea and the horse will get sweet on your idea and not only will they do it but they'll seek it they'll want to do it so hopefully this video helps i appreciate you guys watching make sure you hit that subscribe button we'll see you guys on the next one