Frustration

Sunday was a nice day so I decided to work with Sundance. I brought him in the round pen and groomed him for a while. Then I went and grabbed a feed bucket and flipped it over to see if I could get on him bareback. He didn't want to stand still for that and he's too spooky (and tall) for me to jump so I brought in the saddle. He got tacked up and I led him into the center of the pen to climb on. I sat on him for a minute then asked him to walk. He took maybe three steps then decided to throw a hissy fit.

He tucked his head into his chest and started bucking. I was trying to hang on and pull his head up to no avail (it didn't help that he was only wearing a rope halter). Lucky for me it wasn't rodeo horse bucking but more like crow hopping and he was staying in place. He finally started to calm down but I was pretty mad that he did it in the first place and I wasn't thinking. While still sitting on him, I made the mistake of yelling at him about his tantrum and that threw him into another fit.

Sundance finally calmed down again and I was able to climb down. He has never done anything like that before so I started thinking that maybe something with the saddle or the pad was bothering him so I removed the saddle before he could go off again. I asked him to run around the round pen a couple of laps, switch directions, then we worked on hooking on. He did great with that and was following me around and paying attention. I brought the saddle back in and put it back on him and lead him around a few times. He did fine no buck or anything. I was talking to mom about it and ran my hand along the back end of the saddle and he acted like he was going to go off again (maybe I bumped it?). He calmed down and we stood there for a couple of minutes before I took off the saddle again.

He's worn this saddle and pad many times before and has never had this problem. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm beyond frustrated and I keep asking myself what the heck I am doing with three green horses. I am not a trainer and I like nice, relaxing, uneventful rides- not run away horses or broncs! I am so frustrated and am about ready to start thinking about finding one or more of them new homes and just getting an old broke "been there done that" type horse... but I love my three too much to do that and I guess we are just doomed until we get it worked out. *sigh*

The day didn't end all bad though, we let the horses out in the field to graze for an hour and I got a cute 35 second video of Shoni that cracks me up. :)