08/17/2026
Dr. Deb Johnson recently wrote a post about the role human impatience, cheapness, and ignorance may be playing in the physical problems we see in horses. I had so many thoughts while reading it because, although I may not agree with every conclusion she drew about posture and kissing spine, she is absolutely right about something important: horses are paying every day for what owners, farriers, and trainers do not know—and are often unwilling to learn.
Last night, I watched a video of a horse that had supposedly “learned to buck.” The trainer’s solution was to tie milk jugs—likely filled with rocks—to the saddle, put the horse on a longe line, and deliberately create more noise, fear, and chaos. She had absolutely no control of his hips or hind feet, yet confidently presented his reaction as a behavior problem she was fixing.
Then I watched more of her footage, and it became clear that the milk jugs were not an isolated lapse in judgment. Horse after horse was tight, braced, and mentally unprepared while she climbed on. In my opinion, at least half of those c**ts were not ready to be ridden, and she appeared to have no idea how to connect a rein to a foot, properly prepare a horse for the saddle, or help one become genuinely relaxed.
Honestly, I would have been afraid to get on some of them—and I have been starting horses for 30 years. That is not because I am timid or unwilling to ride a difficult horse. Experience teaches you to recognize when a horse does not yet understand enough for getting on to be fair or safe.
The absence of fear is not always courage. Sometimes people are not afraid because they do not know enough to recognize the danger in front of them. Remaining aboard a tight, confused, unprepared c**t is not evidence that the c**t was ready or that the rider is competent.
That horse did not wake up one morning and decide to become a bucking horse. A horse can only do one of two things in any moment: what he thinks the human is asking him to do, or what he believes he must do to survive that moment. His bucking came from somewhere, and tying rattling objects to his saddle beside his front feet did nothing to help him understand what the human wanted his feet to do.
I actually commented on her video, which I rarely do on another trainer’s page because it is usually pointless. Too often, egos are too big for any real learning to happen. Van Hargis had already questioned what she was doing, and because she appeared to take his comment well, I thought there might be an opportunity for a genuine conversation.
I told her the horse had not simply decided to buck; he was doing what he believed he needed to do in that moment. She disagreed with that entire premise. She also insisted there were no holes in her groundwork, even though the additional footage showed holes big enough to drive a truck through.
The horses were tight and braced. Her cues were not thoughtfully connected to their feet, and several of those c**ts were clearly not prepared for her to climb aboard. Yet because she does not know what complete preparation looks like, she cannot see what is missing.
That response told me even more than the original video did. Experience should make you curious about what the horse’s behavior is telling you and what your preparation may have failed to address. Inexperience, especially when paired with confidence, allows you to blame the horse, declare your groundwork complete, and never question what you may have created.
Proper preparation begins long before someone steps into the stirrup. It starts with good halter-breaking and groundwork that teaches the horse to change eyes, thoughtfully follow a feel, and understand that forward is the answer. The horse is free to have an opinion about what is presented, but the handler must be capable of directing his feet thoughtfully and kindly through his fear.
You do not stop a horse from bucking by attacking him harder than he can fight back. You thoughtfully take control of the feet that allow him to buck. Figuratively, I want to attach the inside hind foot to my inside rein or lead rope, redirect the hip, give the horse an understandable place to put that foot, and release when he finds the answer.
That is not the same thing as merely looking at the horse’s hip and getting it to “roll.” Done without a true connection between the rein and the foot, that can create even more bracing. A horse must learn to ride from back to front—to drive underneath himself with a hind foot and organize the rest of his body around it.
That requires timing, feel, preparation, and an understanding of how the reins connect to the feet. Tying milk jugs to a saddle requires none of those things. It may eventually produce a horse that stops reacting, but a horse giving up because escape feels impossible is not the same thing as a horse becoming relaxed or understanding what you want.
This is one of the greatest problems in the horse industry: confidence is constantly mistaken for competence. Social media rewards the dramatic reaction, the person willing to climb aboard anything, and the before-and-after video in which the horse eventually becomes quieter. It does not ask whether the horse was thoughtfully prepared, whether the trainer could direct his feet, or whether that quietness came from understanding, exhaustion, or shutdown.
That is what makes this bigger than one trainer and one horrifying video. People will continue sending her their horses because she is confident, she gets on, and she produces footage that looks impressive to people who do not know what they are seeing. Meanwhile, the horses will carry the fear, bracing, confusion, and physical consequences forward.
And this brings me directly back to Deb’s point about kissing spine. These tight, braced, hollow horses—ridden before they understand how to organize their feet and bodies beneath a rider—are exactly the kind of horses she is warning us about. They are not learning to become soft, balanced, and confident under saddle; they are learning to carry a rider while protecting themselves from pressure they do not understand.
If a horse repeatedly moves with a dropped back, rigid body, disconnected feet, and tension through his entire topline, we should not be surprised when that way of going eventually has physical consequences. I am not saying poor training is the only cause of kissing spine. I am saying that a trainer’s lack of understanding about how to prepare a c**t and teach him to organize himself beneath a rider can create patterns of bracing, compensation, and dysfunctional movement that place that horse at greater risk.
Owners also bear responsibility. Too many want the fastest and cheapest route to a rideable horse, and too few investigate what is happening when they are not standing beside the round pen. “She got on him” and “he quit bucking” tell you absolutely nothing about the quality of the training, how that horse is using his body, or what he actually learned.
More time alone is not the answer, either. Thirty days with someone who actually understands preparation, the feet, timing, and release may give a horse a valuable foundation. Ninety days with someone who understands none of those things only gives that person ninety days to create more fear, confusion, bracing, self-preservation—and potentially movement patterns that follow the horse for the rest of his life.
The horse is never wrong. That does not mean dangerous behavior should be ignored or allowed. It means the behavior is information, and the trainer’s responsibility is to understand that information well enough to direct the feet without creating more fear and confusion.
Deb is right that this is a human problem. The horses being produced by training like this are the very horses likely to struggle physically later—not because they were born incapable of carrying a rider, but because nobody helped them understand the rider or taught them to organize their feet and bodies beneath one.
Some people will call this trainer brave because she climbs onto horses that are obviously tight, braced, and unprepared. I don’t call that bravery. I call it ignorance—and the horse will likely be paying for it long after everyone quits applauding the ride.
**tstarting **tstarter
