Karen Thomas wrote: > Horses buck (or act out in other ways) > because they are in pain, fearful or confused. Maybe if the young horses in > Iceland had more contact with humans when they were young, the "gene pool" > would mysteriously improve.
i dunno. stjarni spent his first five years in iceland, and has never shown any signs of bucking that i've seen. however, at the school barn, i would say about two-thirds of the horses (all american-raised, which is to say, handled from foalhood) buck from time to time. we had one haflinger ex-broodmare who, once we got her into condition, was an absolute bucking champ -- she could go all the way around a ring in "buck" as if it were another gait. (needless to say we didn't keep her as a school horse; we traded her back to the sales barn we got her from for an ottb, who didn't buck but did bite. sigh.) basically, i'm not convinced that early handling is the secret to non-bucking horses, nor am i convinced that selective breeding is. i personally think that bucking is ingrained far too deeply in the equine genome to be "bred out" (i mean, i guess i've seen even stjarni kick up his heels in turnout while playing with his buds) or even necessarily "trained out" in a conclusive way. it's sort of like biting in dogs -- you can change the threshhold of a given dog to bite by either its breeding or its training, but it is part of *every* dog's behavioral repertoire at some level or other. i think the best that can be done is to assess the individual and decide what it's good for in the society in which it happens to live -- no way we were keeping that haflinger in the riding school, though she may have a great career as a broodmare or a rodeo bronc. (to be honest, i rather suspect that the sales barn would eventually sell her for meat, though i don't know that for sure.) --vicka
