<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> he’ll walk off voice command but not off my leg. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Then you just need a transition period. Use your leg. If he doesn’t respond immediately, use the voice command.
It shouldn’t take him long to figure out that the leg means the voice command is coming, and to start to respond to the leg itself, rather than waiting for the voice command.
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bumpkin:
Hammie is as well suited for your personality as Elliot is for mine.
I think you would be quickly bored with my little fat bay horse 
Where Hammie gives you hours of pleasure figuring him out and strutting your stuff, i.e. what you two have accomplished that day!!
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Good point, Bumpkin. Reading through these posts, one thing that stands out to me is how well each of us has chosen our respective greenies. Despite the inevitable trials and tribulations, everyone seems to have a mount that really suits them.
Wow thank you for the nice photos Bumbkin. Love those knees. Give us more with YOu in the irons. When you are ready of course.
From Allergy Valley USA
Well, it’s confession time… It has been 5 years since I started my last OTTB greenie (Robbie), and needless to say he isn’t a green bean by any stretch of the imagination (atlhough he gave a credible impression at Biltmore last weekend when he saw the white mounting blocks so graciusly provided by one of the sponsors 
).
It has been 3+ years since I saw the last of all those fun antics you have so lovingly recounted (although there is something to say for working on finessing an in and out, as opposed to merely surviving it 
). But the pain of obedience, suppleness and responsiveness was clearly getting to me… So late this May I took the plunge (again) and got another greenie, OTTB of course (bay, 4 years, 17+ hands, deepest heartgirth I have ever seen 
and a huge hip).
However, since he had a debatable shoeing job from his former farrier, I pulled his front shoes and let nature work on those heels, and he has mostly just been “chillin’” for the past 2 months, so I have been spared the green bean antics so far (except the part where he reaches around and rips the halter off the hook every day).
It was good to read up on this refresher course though!!
Well, I HAVE to take Vicodin occasionally when I’m having severe facial nerve pain. I hate to take it. I hate the way it makes me feel. But about 10 minutes later, it’s like turning off a light switch: The pain is totally gone. Of course, I have to refrain from picking up my credit card and watching QVC, or signing any important documents, because I’m completely wasted… How anyone would choose to take Vicodin to get “high” is beyond me. But I digress…
I’ve asked some of my judge/friends, and they don’t think there will be a problem with “skunk” helmets in hunters. Frankly, I think the International ATH skunk (what I have) looks a little more traditional because it’s blacker. But I’m hoping our sport is progressing beyond worrying about the hue of an approved helmet.
Just take care, Bumpkin, and maybe Hammie should have a long distance talkin’ to with Elliot. You never want to bruise the hands that feed you, you know! 
“Friends don’t let friends eat fish tacos.”
What torture device is that? If it works I must try it!!! I think Jade got all of the perfect lead changes in the family. . .
BNH, why don’t you try a combination of chiro/acupuncture and massage to make him feel better? They all work so well together. Mickey regularly gets all three, and I can definitely feel when he’s in need. He had his massage on Sunday, and he feels so good and smooth and relaxed. She worked out the soreness throughout his whole body so now he’s more comfortable carrying himself.
And, to speak of my fabulous baby greenie…I’m such a bad baby-greenie mom! In our jumping lesson on Saturday, I crashed him through not one, but TWO jumps!!! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! My trainer says that’ll teach me not to lean in too much. It was all my fault. Both times I changed my mind at the last minute…“let’s take the long one”…“no, wait”. Both times he stopped mid-air and landed with front legs on one side and back legs on the other. Shame on me!!! We did fix it though, and redeemed ourselves yesterday.
Today Mickey was perfect - we worked on collected canter circles over a pole and he’s never done it so well!!!
~ batgirl - formerly known as splendid ~
You have given much insight on Shadow’s behavior. I am printing out your hints and will give them to my dtr. She will find them most useful. Both horses she’s had before this one were ottb, but one was 9 years away from the track. The other is her current greenie, but he was in polo training. He was pulled from the track before he was tattooed and tossed into a pasture for a couple of years. He was under saddle for 6 months before we bought him.
We have been lucky enought to have come across such nice ottb’s. I have been hoping we did not make a mistake in buying Shadow, but he is turning out to be such a doll. As they progress, we will see what he is made of.
Thanks for your help. I may call upon you!
Beezer, lots of good luck wishes from this coast!
Anonymous, showpony, I can’t say I have dealt with exactly what you are talking about, but the “personality change” after a few months with an OTTB isn’t unfamiliar… Especially with one who raced for a while.
It’s sort of a good news/bad news thing. On one hand, a horse who has been on the track until he was 6 1/2 was a tough horse. On the other hand he had a lot of time to have that track training enforced and reinforced. And he’s a tough dude. It makes for a more challenging combination than the OTTB who bombed out early because he didn’t want to run.
What I think is that for the first 3 months there is so much change going on, it keeps them unbalanced (mentally). To add to it they are generally pretty physically unbalanced so it’s kind of easy to have your way with them. Then we reach the stage that I call “just enough balance to get away with something, and not enough to do it right.” To say it is my least favorite stage is to practice severe understatement!
I think a lot of OTTBs just get to a point of frustration that you have to work through. He’s got 4 years of practice doing it one way, and a few months of doing it another. Before this he wasn’t fit enough or balanced enough to tell you how much he prefers the old routine (let’s face it, it was much easier), and was pretty much at your mercy. Now he isn’t and he’s speaking up. So I have found this stage to be the stage of 3 steps forward, 5 steps backward, 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward, and so on. I strongly recommend a real sense of humor and alcohol. Also, occassionally I try a week to 10 days off just to see if a little mental break helps if things are really going nowhere. Sometimes it does wonders, sometimes I have a psycho on hand, but you don’t get anywhere with greenies if you are afraid to try something different!
As for the I HATE Your Leg attitude, I would try going back to something that you can a) succeed at and b) puts your leg on his side regularly.
If every time you try an upward or downward transition with leg, and you get a scooting inverted evading mad horse and the next thing you do is try to correct THAT issue, you have sent a bunch of mixed signals to your horse (go forward, don’t go too forward, don’t be inverted, stop pissing me off you stupid horse and so on). So maybe what you can try is lots of circles while pushing his hind end outside the circle. If he gets frustrated don’t worry if he speeds up (he’s the one doing work, you can outlast him), if he puts his head up and inverted, don’t worry about that right now. Right now you aren’t worried about speed, transitions or head carriage - you are teaching him to keep his nose on the path of the circle, his shoulder light and move his haunches off your leg. Now is not the time for other complications. As long as he does those three things, he’s a star. Since you are staying in a circle - just small enough to dictate your will (don’t be surprised if it is much smaller to the right), he can’t go anywhere too fast, and as soon as he realizes that as soon as he is cooperative with his head or haunches, you release some of that annoying hateful nagging rein or leg pressure, he will think about being a player. If he can’t accept this, he can’t accept using his hind end to create energy for an upward or downward transition, but unlike going forward in a straight line, you have a lot more options to dictate your will in a circle.
After he accepts that he must creates energy with your leg pressure (and gets rewarded) you can start to work on creating forward energy with equal leg pressure, but you have to be sure you reward as soon as he gives you the tiniest bit of cooperation!!! Don’t expect him to do it all, but every time he moves forward happily with leg pressure, take your leg off and tell him he’s a good boy!!! If he starts being pissy, just go back and work on that circle a little bit until he figures out that being a player is much easier than his plan of action.
Now he may need some very basic lessons in leg pressure first. If you can’t get him to move off your leg from a stand still - either a turn on th ehaunches or forehand, and if you can’t get him to release his face to the left or right with minimal contact from the standstill, he needs some additional work before you do this exercise!
An optimist thinks we are living in the best of all times… A pessimist fears this is true.
I am adicted to photographs (photo-aholic?). I will grab anyone, shove a camera in their hands and tell them to start shooting. It’s especially frustrating because I love to take pictures myself, but I’m always the one on the horse.
Needless to say, nearly all of Tess’s major moments have been pictorially chronicled (and you can see the proof on the walls of my office. )
Yes, Merry, you and Hammie need more photos!
On Sunday, Belle did her first 3’ jumper class. She was pretty good, and had no trouble with the height.
At this stage in her training, I WON’T ask her to “run” at anything, but I WILL ask for a really tight turn, and a moderately short approach. In the “time first round” course, you had an option of looping round 5 to the right to get to 6, or making a REALLY tight left turn after 5 to a very angled approach to 6. I planned to make the tight left turn, but then take my time getting a straighter approach to 6.
Belle said: “You want me to land and turn? NO PROBLEM!” and turned really sharply. I was expecting to have to work harder at it, and wasn’t prepared for such a sharp turn. I ended up with my right foot still in the stirup, my left foot on top of the saddle, and my arms round her neck. She just stopped and waited: “OK, what’s next?”. I TRIED to pull myself back in the saddle, but just didn’t have the right kind of strength, so I hopped off and remounted.
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LaurieB:
But hey, like I keep telling my trainer, I’ve got time. It’s not like I’m going to age-out of anything. 
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Oh LaurieB! I LOVE this!! I don’t have a baby greenie (someday!!) but this statement should be the Amateur’s Creed! LOVE IT! 
yaaay I can join!!! I am riding a 4yo stud colt now who is just greenbroke (although eerily well behaved).
I had forgotten how much fun babies are. EVERYTHING you do even slightly well is progress. I spend 90% of the time petting him and telling him he’s good. My trainer commented on how I was grinning like a fool the whole time.
fun fun!!
As for the spooky thing I found one thing that really worked was to have some kind of “super-forward” aid that you teach your horse. It can be a cluck, or tap on the shoulder or whatever but it basically means “GO, I don’t care how fast but go now the way I am pointing you”. Then you just have to let them scoot when they spook, but as long as it’s forward it’s OK. I discovered this after I made the mistake of always stopping a really spooky baby when he took off. He then developed the charming habit of stopping dead and occasionally spinning or getting nappy. Once he realised that he could speed up past stuff that scared him he was much better, he got a bit strong but I preferred that, I just gradually brought him back. He got over the spooks too eventually. It just took miles. Anyway, it might work…
Well Wty it is not a “little” purring, but a nice even fairly loud sound.
I always loved it at the track, and especially if it was a horse I was riding because that meant they were relaxed. Which I normally wasn’t haha
So when my beloved Elliot does it, I like to think he is happy and relaxed and it does make counting easier, just as long as he doesn’t lengthen his stride too much.
I’m originally from a little town in Northeast Mass… then school in Pittsburgh, a short stint consulting in Cleveland, and here I am, slaving away for Corporate America.
The weather is fantastic, the people and food are great, the traffic and cost of real estate are less-than-stellar (to put it mildly). I’m also not a fan of how they keep horses out here… I fail to understand why people think it ok to feed just hay twice a day and not turn out their horses. Nevermind what the few turnouts available look like (not just where I’m at, but most barns in the area)… but I digress. I’ve lucked into a couple of great trainers, and my baby is coming along smashingly. Well, he was until I gave him a day off out of the kindness of my heart, and he’s regressed to the point he was at 2 months ago. 
He was such a punk last night that I just got off and gave him a “time out” (by longeing him in side reins until he was pooped). Silly boy. He’ll learn eventually.
Yes, Tigger (show name: “Hot Sauce”) was quite good… finally. I admit I had my doubts. You see, I’m a firm believer that as long as you can gallop forward, you’re kind of out of harm’s way. But Tigger wouldn’t go ANYWHERE in the warm-up ring. There was a lot of movement underneath me, but it wasn’t headed in any direction! So, how fast can Merry dismount from an explosive situation?
I made Beezer lead him around the warm-up arena, then I did the Pat Day running mount alongside the horse, got up in a two-point, and galloped for about 3 minutes. Then we were in business. I swear, I am soooo getting too old for this nonsense.
As for the pee party at shows: Hammie will only pee in a stall. So if we’re at a one-day show I have to beg, borrow or steal a stall for ten minutes so he can pee. Otherwise, I end up with an incredibly grumpy, uncomfortable horse. You can’t jump or hack, you know, with a full bladder!
“Friends don’t let friends eat fish tacos.”
Somehow I find that comforting.
As for JumperEq, what do you mean your mare is evading the bit? You mean that slightly opened mouth, the white slobber flicking back in your face, and the wrinkled nostrils aren’t “normal” or desired? Huh. Maybe I’d better re-evaluate my daily rides on Hammie…
“Friends don’t let friends eat fish tacos.”
So, my horse was going GREAT up until the rain started here last week (and a half). Walk trot cantering like a pro, much to the shock of everyone around us.
Even better, I was finally making progress with the stallion.
Fast forward to monday- 5 days since the stallion has been ridden. Prepared at first for him to be a fruitcake, I get on, ride around, walk trot, no problem! Much to my shock I think I might be training this guy to go around. Well… seems I spoke too soon. As we go to take jst a few steps of canter down the long side, he takes about 8 steps and I was like wow that was too perfect I’m going to stop while I’m ahead. Somewhere inbetween my asking him to trot and him not listening… he managed to buck/twist me off. I have not been bucked off in years!!!
Well… supposedly I managed to fall off of him 3 times before I actually rode through his saddle bronc display… except I dont remember anything from being in the air the first fall to about 10 minutes after I got back on the third time. I learned I’d fallen off that many times when I said “what exactly happened for him to get me off like that” and my customer replied… “which time??”
Oi… what a great way to start my professional career.
2 broken ribs and a mild concussion. Could be much, much worse!
There’s a yellow hue outside!
It’s the sun!!! Okay all you people, lets get on and go out to ride. At least till tomorrow, when it’s supposed to rain agin, UGH! Yeah, yeah, I know it’s winter.
Bumpkin, what a cutie Elliot is! Looks like bays are in. Seems to be the color of choice, cept Tigger. He’s our token chestnut, boing boing boing.
I call it “skill building”. I don’t do much work over fences at home as far as courses and lines go. I do that in my lessons at my trainer’s. At home we do stuff that (hopefully) adds up to better courses: lots of ground pole exercises, trot in/canter out grids, halting in a straight line after a flying change… usually all with Beezer as a groundperson. Thank goodness I don’t have to pay her for every fence I knock down or cavaletti I bump and move!
“Charter Member of the Baby Greenie Support Group of North America”
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