How does natural horsemanship address a horse that bucks?

Natural horsemanship addresses bucking by first distinguishing between the different causes that can produce similar-looking behavior — pain-based bucking, learned bucking that has been reinforced because it successfully eliminated the rider or the training demand, and bucking that reflects the horse's excess energy or inadequate preparation for the specific demand that triggered it — because each cause requires a different response. Pain-based bucking requires veterinary evaluation and treatment rather than training corrections, because bucking that reflects physical pain will return despite training interventions if the underlying pain is not resolved. Learned bucking — the horse that has discovered bucking is effective at removing the rider or ending unpleasant situations — is addressed through training that makes bucking unsuccessful in achieving its goal while making correct responses more accessible. Clinton Anderson's approach involves keeping the horse moving forward through the buck rather than pulling back, which disrupts the bucking sequence and teaches the horse that bucking does not produce the escape or cessation of demand it is seeking. Buck Brannaman addresses bucking with particular attention to its precursors — the tension, brace, and mental disconnection that typically precede bucking rather than appearing suddenly — arguing that a horse in genuine soft engagement with a skilled rider rarely bucks because the training relationship does not produce the accumulated tension that bucking typically releases. Prevention through adequate preparation is the most consistent natural horsemanship recommendation: a horse that bucks during the first rides was not adequately prepared for the physical and psychological demands of being ridden, and the correction involves more preparation rather than riding through the problem. Tom Dorrance's perspective was that horses never bucked at the right person — reflecting his conviction that bucking was always a response to something the human had put the horse through rather than an unprovoked act of defiance.