Two weeks ago my horse, a four year old gelding that I have owned and trained since his birth, reared and flipped backwards on me during a trail ride. We slid down a 15ft embankment on my back. By sheer luck and miracles at work, I walked away with only bruising, scrapes and a spot of poison ivy.
My horse, Speck, is honestly very well behaved and trained. However, he does have a bit of an attitude when he doesn't get to do what he wants. He has shown this ugly habit of rearing a few times before but he recently has seemed to get over himself and we have ridden the trails a few days prior to the accident without any issues. He isn't spooky in the slightest, nor is he hot or hard to handle.
What happened was that he wanted to catch up to his buddies that were a little bit ahead of us, so I allowed him to get into a lope until he got a little too excited and threw a couple of bucks so I slowed him to a walk and he didn't like that. Once we got into a walk I felt it coming, so I started to circle him to keep his feet on the ground and that's when he pinned his ears and went up like a rocket. Now, his rears are seriously vertical. I hugged his neck in my best attempt to stay on and that's when I felt him start to tip over. Before I knew it, we were sledding down the embankment on my back and I felt my back crack all the way down my spine. Luckily he didn't launch himself off of me when he got up and ran to his buddies.
I love my sucky-attitude horse, but this rearing crap NEEDS to stop. How do I go about breaking this habit? He only ever offers to rear when I'm asking him to do something he doesn't want to do, which is usually to go faster (he doesn't like to work hard or go fast, which is why I'm so puzzled about him rearing when being asked to slow down for once)
