I'm so sorry you took a tumble. What a Christmas present from Calvin....stomp! stomp! Seriously, I'm so relieved you're okay.
My sense is that Calvin was feeling joyful. While saddle fit can always be the issue, sometimes its just plain old pony hi-jinks. Your gut instinct is telling you he was just playful and maybe a little naughty....I think your gut instinct has been pretty spot on over the years. Trust yourself to know.
Morgan bucks whenever he goes into a canter while at liberty. He puts his head down and bucks or kicks out a good one. He simply feels good and wants to show it. I think its sort of like us putting our hands in the air and yelling hurrah! In fact, Mighty bucked with Dave a few weeks ago on our trails and he's never bucked before. We hadn't ridden in a while due to the weather and he just plain felt good.
This may not make sense, but I know that after our mega-accident when the tree limb nearly fell on Dave and Mighty and we had a serous 'run for your lives!!!!' event, I was nearly catatonic with fear. I spent a lot of time figuring out how I could avoid having any more trees fall on us. Or, if they did fall, how could I convince the Boyz that this shouldn't scare them. tee, hee. I'm like you....something bad happens and I accept it, but then I have to have a plan in place so that it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. In fact, I realized today that this event happened waaaaay back in 2008. That is shocking to me because I feel like it happened just this year. It has impacted every ride we've had since then, including our trip to Gettysburg. This, despite the fact that we've had so many good rides.
Unfortunately, I think sometimes we focus so much on what happened and how to prevent it that we end up drawing to us the very thing that makes us shiver in fear. I know you've worried about Calvin misbehaving and the fear of it has haunted you for a long time. I understand that because I feel the same way about Mighty. I worry for Dave even when clearly Mighty has taken care of Dave on many an occasion. (More occasions than he's misbehaved)
Fear, I think, is sort of like a negative faith. Fear draws that negativity to us in the same way that positive faith draws good things. I think you're on the right track with being assertive, not aggressive. But assertiveness is a definite boon when dealing with a confident horse like most Haflingers. We were far too mamby pamby and 'oh so gentle' with our horses for so long that we frustrated them immeasurably! If only we'd had some of the old timers in our back yard then, we'd have been forced to see the error of our ways. They are happier now that we have more of a 'get back Jack!' type of approach.
I have tremendous faith in you, Sue. You're strong and determined and way more competent than you feel. Let go of those old ideas of yourself and let the new in. You know so much more these days!
Many hugs,
Karen in Ct
--- In haflingerfriends@yahoogroups.com, "Sue" <sholland91@...> wrote:
>
> I'm starting to feel a little better after my accident on Christmas Day, and I'm going to start riding again, or at least get on, today. As most of you know, Calvin bucked me off out on trail on Christmas Day. He was happy and energetic and threw a big buck while getting ready to canter up a hill. I'm wondering what your suggestions are for correcting a bucking horse. I know about saddle fit and all of that, believe me. I've h
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