When Every Option Feels Awful: Struggling With An Impossible Decision for a Dangerous Horse

It started slowly. The horse came to me, a few years under saddle but quite green, and he was charming and uncomplicated until one day, he wasn't. Shortly after mounting one day he bucked me off in a blind panic. I was injured. But I healed, and I got back on later, and slowly built up confidence to the point where I was riding him as confidently as I was before.

There were two more bucking incidents, neither while mounted but rather while wearing a surcingle, and shortly after the girth being tightened and being asked to work. That's classic cold backed behavior, and after a veterinary investigation (revealing no mission critical reason for that behavior), I was relieved. While cold backed isn't a barrel of fun, it's at least relatively predictable, and manageable.

Except that then, months later, he bucked me off again, this time at the 15 minute mark. That's not cold backed behavior. But sometimes horses are young and strange, so I wrote it off and rode on.

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