>>>> Well everything has been fine until she started taking her lessons with her in a 70' round pen, doing Parelli stuff...well she has bucked the kid off twice and the trainer almost, but she just has a Very Good seat and she is 22 and Fit as a fiddle and stayed on. So what do they do....keep her in lessons to try to find out why she is bucking. Insane.
It should be pointed out that horses sometime will start bucking for no apparent reason, so I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it was related to the Parelli stuff, not at all. We'll never know exactly what started Gracie's bucking. She'd been under saddle for a couple of years when it started, started by another flavor of NH, just as we'd started other horses. My trainer/friend has started dozens (probably hundreds?) basically the same way. I'd studied with the same NH trainer she had, and had watched him and her start many horses, gently and humanely, without incident - including Gracie. I participated a lot in starting Gracie. All we can figure is that an old suture scar on her rear, which happens to be over a major acupuncture median, became blocked as the scar tissue grew - that's what the vets speculate. She was checked from head to toe with oodles of lab tests, x-rays, ultrasounds, and finally a full bone scan. Nothing really showed up, but you could see evidence of pain and resistance in her back. Finally one single acupuncture treatment cured it. Totally. We went ahead with two more treatments, but the vet stopped before the originally recommended 6-10 treatments. The problem never returned. My friend who keeps her here now owns her. My friend was basically a beginner rider when she fell in love with Gracie. She took lessons for about a year on another horse, starting to ride Gracie in lessons part-time, about six months into the lessons. That was about five years ago and Gracie has never been a problem since. A beginner rides her, or at least she was a beginner when she started. Now, had she been slaughtered for bucking after just two months, would that have removed anything from the gene pool? No. It would have been an easy way out for an uncaring owner, and a waste of a very good horse. My friend uses the Parelli program for groundwork with Gracie. Whatever training that is used with Gracie is coincidental to her prior bucking problem. They are unrelated. She was started with NH, and still is managed with NH. The bucking was simply unrelated. Karen Thomas, NC -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.6/646 - Release Date: 1/23/2007 3:36 AM
