Things I've Learned Since Friday

I feel like I should start this post with some background and explanation. First of all, I have very limited experience in training horses and pretty much zero experience with off the track thoroughbreds. I should also let you all know, and this is very important, that I am NOT attempting this project alone!! I am very lucky to be working with a woman who has years of experience retraining OTTBs, and she seems to enjoy helping me work with JJ. So DON'T WORRY!! I have help!!

Mike says blogs without pictures are boring.
So here, ogle at JJ's excessively long tongue. 

I can't believe how much I have learned in just the past three days. Weird things, too. Things I had never really considered before. For instance, racehorses generally don't know what to do with something on the ground in front of them. In their racing life they go from the stall to the groomed track and back to the stall, and never have to look at the ground and worry about stepping on or over something. On Saturday when I put JJ in the stall with attached turnout, he LEAPT over the 6 inch high threshold between indoors and outdoors. Then of course he refused to come back inside, to the point where Sue had to physically lift his front legs over it. Weird.

Many racehorses have never had the luxury of hand-fed treats (or maybe any treats, for that matter). When I was working with JJ over the weekend I tried several times to feed him treats - anything from carrots to horse cookies, but he refused to take anything from my hand except hay. Finally on Sunday afternoon one of the lesson riders asked if she could offer him a carrot. "Good Luck" I said! She basically shoved it into his mouth, at which point he considered it for a few moments before spitting it out. We both laughed and I grabbed the carrot off the floor for a second attempt. I force-fed it to him, and held my hand in front of his mouth so he couldn't spit it out. He had no choice but to chew it up and eat it, and he did. He must have learned pretty quickly that these little orange nuggets are tasty because today he willingly accepted carrots from my hand.

This is my rendition of a horse on crossties.
I had originally just grabbed a picture from google,
but this morning I read that you can actually be sued for doing that so I decided not to take that chance!

Racehorses aren't cross-tied. This is another thing I take for granted - most horses that are regularly handled as babies have been taught to cross-tie (which, for you non-horsey people who probably aren't reading this blog anyway, means ... Uh.. nevermind. Look at the picture for an explanation!). So anyway, another training hurdle. Actually, I did cross-tie him today in a stall such that I could easily escape in case of emergency, but he was surprisingly unphased by the whole experience.





And finally, a list of accomplishments for the day:
- cross-tied and groomed for at least 20 minutes
- 30 minutes of walking in the ring with another horse being ridden (NO rears or bucks. Only a couple steps of spooked trot when the other rider dropped the mounting block. Also, his nose touched the ground several times. That was awesome).
- walked over a crossrail (actually this happened yesterday)
- successfully introduced a lunging whip
- HE'S EATING!