JJs World

Well the riding ring currently resembles a dirty ice-skating rink, so there wasn't a whole lot in the way of physical exercise we could do today. Instead we worked on very basic groundwork (i.e. stopping and standing, moving away from pressure, bending, walking over poles). I won't bore you all with the details of what to me was very exciting stuff, but rather I'll give you a little glimpse into JJs world!

Sexy Man!

As most of you probably know JJ spends his time between being inside and stall and having access to a small outdoor pen. Tonight is actually the first night he will have the door open and thus access to the pen all night(!!). Anyway, JJ has not been turned out with other horses yet but he has some very friendly neighbors - goats!

Well Hello Romeo! (And yes, JJ
is responsible for that broken fence).

JJ the baby, bullied by a goat.

Romeo and Molly are JJs closest neighbors, and while Molly seems a little too shy to approach JJ in his pen, Romeo is always hanging over the fence and looking to share JJs snacks. JJ doesn't seem to realize that Romeo is just a little goat, OR that Romeo is separated by a fence. JJ is actually very submissive to Romeo - poor baby!

Romeo looks for a snack while Molly hangs back.

Well there's your dose of cuteness for the day! Here's to melting snow this week!

Winter Time Blues

Sorry guys - we are currently up to our eyeballs in snow here in the lower Hudson Valley. More blogging fun to come when the snow leaves!!!

I think JJ likes the snow!

Doing My Lunges

Nope, not those lunges! Yesterday, JJ lunged for the very first time in his whole entire life. Did he flip out? Did he rear and buck and bolt like an idiot? NO!!! He trotted around like a perfect gentleman the whole time.







Lunging is basically exercising the horse in a relatively small circle on a long line (like a lead line but quite a bit longer). Race horses are never lunged as part of their training or workouts, so this is an entirely new exercise for OTTBs, and you never know how they might react. JJ was AWESOME.

Bad Pony on Lunge

Bad Pony on Lunge

 Some horses try and pull all kinds of crap on the lunge line, but JJ acted like an old pro!

JJ on Lunge!

Since JJ was so awesome yesterday lunging to the left (the only direction racehorses ever go), we tried him to the right today too. He was certainly very unbalanced, but acted perfectly fine. YAY!

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!

Just For Kicks

Yep that's right - he's got a name! Just for Kicks is his show name, JJ at the barn. A friend of mine came out to meet him so I'm happy to report that we've got loads of pictures today! I walked him in the ring twice and gave him a good brushing (not on cross-ties... Have yet to tackle that one), but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

He's a skinny boy, but we're
working on fixing that!

JJ in his "playpen"

Getting some lovins' :)

Look at those teeny tiny ears!

Hanging out in the ring!

What A Difference A Day Makes

At 11:30PM Friday night I got a text from Sue (barn owner) saying that the boy had calmed down significantly and was like a different horse. She also noted that he ripped his (brand new) blanket and that I should bring a needle and thread in the morning. Me? Needle and thread? I had to ask Mike if we had any but he said no. I headed to the barn around 7:30 this morning empty handed, save for a thermos of hot coffee. My car thermometer read a whopping two degrees F.

Horse: 1, Blanket: 0

I arrived to find a seemingly content horse munching on some hay. He had finished all of his mash from the previous night which I was very happy to see. I checked his blanket only to find that whatever rip Sue had seen the night before had turned into a shredded massacre. He was far more friendly this morning and seemed almost cuddly. Er, well, at least he didn't back into a corner when I came near his stall. In fact, by the end of today he was following me around! He loves to be scratched around his ears and at the withers, and doesn't seem too head shy as long as you move slowly.

I put him in a stall with a small "playpen" paddock attached so he could spend some time outside and see the farm. He was very interested in all the horses in the riding ring all day - probably wondering why they were moving so slowly. When people or horses came to and from the barn he got very excited and bucked around his little turnout space like an idiot. But a cute idiot.

Better pictures tomorrow, I promise!

Training-wise today I worked on two things. Well, kind of. I want him to be comfortable with me touching his head and I want to be able to have access to his head when I need it. He's too tall with too long of a neck to be head shy. So one thing I did repeatedly today was apply pressure to his poll and release the pressure when he dropped his head. I was actually somewhat surprised by how easily he dropped his head and how quickly he caught on to the idea. The only other "training" type thing I did with him was walk him down to the ring and around in circles in the ring for about 10 minutes. He had a few bucking and rearing episodes but if I handled it without freaking out it couldn't have been that bad! I did have to put a shank over his nose. He is still a baby and quite strong.

I unfortunately did not get a chance to take any good unblanketed pictures of him today but will make it a priority tomorrow. I am definitely going to want before and after pictures with this guy! I also have yet to name him. The barn kids have begun calling him "Manity", as he somewhat resembles a TB mare at the barn named "Vanity". I would just as soon call him Stupid (pronounced with a lisp), but no one else seemed to like that. At any rate, I think I'm leaning towards Gambler's Choice for his show name.

It's a Boy!!

So. A lot of new things today. Well, at least in the past few days. Yesterday I (quite stupidly) decided to purchase a horse over the internet, sight unseen. He is a four year old thoroughbred, straight off the track (as in, he last raced in December). He is about 16.2, chestnut, and very, VERY lanky - partially because he is built that way, and partially because he was clearly neglected at the track and very underweight.

First night in New York.

He loaded the trailer in West Virginia on Thursday evening, and arrived here in New York this evening (Friday) at 5:50PM. He came off the trailer very carefully and fairly quietly. He was not blanketed and shivering violently due to the cold and, of course, his lack of body mass. He managed to keep all four feet on the ground on the way up to the barn (as in no rearing or bucking), and only had one moment of spook when he saw the hay ladder stretching down from the hayloft in the door of the barn. He got over it fairly quickly and without too much drama.

As soon as he was in a stall we put two blankets on him. He is very well behaved when you have him on a leadline, but loose in the stall he will make his way to a corner. There is no aggression in this action, it seems like he is just afraid. Clearly he has not been treated well in his life. I'm glad, if nothing else, that he is in a better home now. I don't know what the future will hold for the two of us, but I do know that we'll be taking it slow. More pictures tomorrow. I don't have a name for him yet.