[QUOTE=Bacchus;6979296]
danceronice, you really disagree with this? Do you not give OTTBs time off? Do you not start with groundwork? Do you not start them with a basic snaffle until you know them better?[/QUOTE]
I don’t “do” groundwork other than walking on the lead line. Had one clinic the BO talked me into, the groundwork portion was a total waste of time. AFTER I’d had him over a year, I’ve done SOME longing in side reins to work on his ‘bad’ directrion and head, but very little as that’s a lot of stress on the joints. Lucky had time off (because I was the only one making decisions) in the sense he got groomed, and handwalked, and massage, and tack-fitting and walking in tack, old OTTB was doing 2’6" courses after six weeks (H/J trainer who sold him to me.) I tried a snaffle, then switched to a Pelham pretty fast, then a mullen-mouth snaffle, still monkeying with that as he doesn’t like ANYTHING and I begin to see why they ran him in a tongue tie and ring bit.
As FineAlready says, most racehorses know what a chain’s for. I don’t even have to put pressure on it, he knows what it’s there for. TBs are not green, dumb, unridden, or unhandled. Treating them like babies who’s never been taught anything is counterproductive. I’ve never needed anything other than a leather halter and a shank to do anything (other than a dressage whip to tap him on the butt until he was more annoyed by that than reluctant to load. However, he is a passive resister, not an active resister.) I very deliberately opted to act with him as if he would do what I expected (especially on the ground) if I didn’t make a huge production number of it, and funnily enough, that worked better than fussing and “groundworking” and constantly messing with making him move his feet. BO, with little prior TB experience, treated him like a horse who was seven years old and handled since birth, same response-he cooperated just fine. Can’t say if that would work for the OP’s mare, because I’m not there, any more than I can say a jointed snaffle is the right bit because “all” TBs should go in one (I can’t even say where mine IS right now, I haven’t used it in so long.)
They are not babies. They have been handled all their lives, far more than most horses used for show and pleasure, who are babied along far too long IMO. Why would you start them as if they’d never seen a halter before? I fussed a bit before getting on Lucky (as I didn’t want to “rush” him) before I realized he had been ridden for six years at that point–just getting on him was not going to surprise him. And as I now know how racehorses are mounted, ridden, the difference in how they use the bit and how they’re exercised, I wasn’t surprised by how he responded to things.
