Horses of any age are subject to overuse injuries. The science and data show that there is a window in the growth period of a young horse where they benefit the most from a progressive training program, and are able to build a skeleton and supporting tissue that benefits them for the rest of their lives. It’s a matter of best practices. You can go for second best or third best or whatever because of whatever generations did when they did not have the knowledge we do now.
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@Palm Beach
Oh, please don’t think I’m arguing against the science. I’m arguing for the incompleteness of the science with respect to its practical applications. And that the science and the gaps within it are complicated by our own folklores. Even you, diametrically opposed to anything that isn’t grounded in the Nunamaker Study, are participating in that lore.
Everything is folklore. Everything is culture. Can’t escape it, but you can try to understand it. May I suggest you start with the consequences of your own scientism?
Like healthy horses that stay sound?
Like how you elevate a single scientific study, regardless of its validity or relevance, to the realm of religious fanaticism.
Really?
The question if and when to start horses has been there over the ages.
Each one has determined what made more sense for them and their animals.
There are enough studies today showing that age is immaterial, how it is done is what matters.
Plus common sense thankfully guides most trainers.
Many reining prospects are started.
Not many are suitable for reining at today’s competitive levels.
Others are not mature enough and those are not pushed for the early futurities.
If talented they are let to mature more.
Some may be still taken to futurities if ready as just one more place to train, since you already paid the fees, but held back, not asked to perform to be competitive, practicing for the derbies next year.
The ones that trained well all along and were peaking at the futurities, competitive then, those are the ones that shine there.
Each horse is different, trainers work with the horse they have and know there is another show tomorrow, is how you train.
I get the impression that some that don’t understand training horses, here reining, think that the futurities are the only goal of reiners?
That once that is over, they, what, fade into obscurity, their lives are over?
Now here the FEI comes in and will give those horses a longer life?
Well, no, reining horses have long lives and perform as trained at every age all thru those, just as any other performance horse out there.
They have done that long before the FEI was interested in the to them new discipline with an explosive growth they wanted to be involved with.
Reining was amenable to being part of the FEI, giving reining a new exposure.
The question here is how to divide duties, how to compromise to have a good relationship between organizations with similar but not identical rules and regulations.
I think that is where the discussion is, the age of horses just one of those points being debated.
No one is a “fanatic” here just by stating their opinion and why they hold it?
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OK, but I am fanatical about happy hour.
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Are there any big competitions for the mature horses? I think that is some of the disconnect, as far as “reiners only aim for the futurities”. Most people outside of reining only hear about the futurities as being the biggest competition in reining. Is there a bigger, more prestigious event that mature horses are worked towards as a goal, besides weg? Like the reining equivalent of an eventing 5*, or showing GP at one of the huge venues. Whatever there is doesn’t seem to be big enough that you hear everyone citing it as a goal, like you do with eventers dreaming of Kentucky for example.
I’m not a reiner, though, so maybe there is and I just haven’t heard about it. I’ve only dipped my toes in a few times through friends that did it.
The Olympics? WEG? I’m not a Reiner either, plus I’m on the East Coast, so way out of the loop.
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@Bluey The studies can be perfectly valid. The science can be perfectly fine. I have never disputed that that is probably the case. None of that stops people from taking what has been published and putting it on a pedestal generally reserved for fanatical belief.
Have you never met a militant atheist? They do the same thing.
At no point have I criticized your discipline. Go back and read everything I posted before you put words into my mouth. You’re being too sensitive.
Science isn’t static. Nor is it neutral. Science is colored by biases, just like every other line of study, sometimes troubled by the question of reproducibility, and now and then stretched too thin or misapplied. If you had actually taken the time to understand what I was suggesting about out science intertwines with our own belief systems, instead of assuming things about my own opinions, you might have found a fun new avenue for personal discovery.
Instead, the equine world will continue to be just as myopic as it ever was.
Better not assume, reining is not “my discipline”, jumping was, was the word here.
Not that it matters, really.
I have been involved in several disciplines over many years, reining one of those and not that much and more by accident.
I am not talking from any one of them, but in general, here reining the topic, that’s all.
There are others that know more than I do, especially about reining, many, many others.
Now, when it comes to starting colts, then that is an universal to all disciplines.
That I have done for decades and have followed enough of those horses all their lives.
I know which I am talking about when I say, is not when you start a colt that determines how it’s life will proceed as much as that you do so right for that colt and the goals for it’s life as a riding horse.
I just happen to disagree that the age number as a rule as the FEI determines when it comes to starting horses under saddle makes much sense.
Others will have other opinions, is the way topics are discussed.
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Then may your crowning achievement be working with veterinarians and physiologists to get the conclusions you have reached from your experience past a peer review. Lord knows this world needs more science that isn’t solely studying two year old thoroughbreds in race training.
Yes, thank goodness we have such an incredible amount of data from the past decade on horses of all racing ages. It’s shame no other discipline attempts to do this.
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I agree. The equine world is far too siloed and dogmatic. Wasn’t there a study in Germany 15 or so years ago that attempted to look at breakdowns of dressage horses but had to rely on insurance claims for data? It’s a pity that so much knowledge that is probably more accurate than not is predicated on being passed down essentially from master to apprentice, with all the risks of being lost forever if that chain gets interrupted. Or that what is out there risks being misappropriated for situations that are very different than what the authors of the study were actually looking at.
I would not be so quick to assume that all kinds of associations and registries don’t have plenty of all manners of data and information and have conducted studies.
We may not know about them without being members and getting releases from them and some of that may be considered proprietary information and not released to the public.
Looking from the outside and assuming what is there or not and being critical of how they are conducting business can be far off the mark.
If you’re correct then that’s just as big of a problem as the data not being there in the first place. Information should be free. And not free as in gratis, but free as in libre. But hey, I’m just a hippy dippy libertarian about these things whose been b****s deep in the FSF movement since childhood.
I assume you are not in business and, don’t kid yourself, the horse industry is a business.
“Information should be free”?
When you have management deciding what information they need, how to conduct it and pay for it and how to use the results, sorry, that information belongs to who acquired it.
So you think everyone should have songs free for their use, books and magazines just for the asking?
Don’t stop there, horse training free just because you bought a horse that needs training too!
Well, you know where that goes and no, societies don’t work like that in real life.
What is “the FSF movement”?
Free as in libre, not free as in gratis. Gratis meaning without cost, and libre meaning with little or no restriction. I understand that English does not differentiate between the two uses of free particularly well, which is why I specified originally. Read this, and then reevaluate the whataboutism that you invoke. Which was duly noted, but certainly not appreciated, and I am not going to waste my time engaging your logical fallacies.
If you don’t want to read it, let me summarize the key points, and then you should think about how these concerns about software can be easily applied to all sorts of data:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I absolutely do believe that IP law as it’s currently structured is hampering innovation. You don’t need to see it that way, especially since it seems that you have a vested interest in the state protecting your intellectual assets, but you should reflect on how IP can cause more harm than good.
The futurity is the biggest moneymaker. However, in the horses 4 and 5 year old year they go to the derby. After that, they go on the breeding or become non pro mounts. As a way to highlight the older horses, many reining groups offer 7 and up derbies for the older horses. It is a way to show that contrary to popular belief, most reiners are not washed up after they are 4. There is decent prize money offered. Also, the Run for a Million is new but can showcase the older proven horses. Those that say they are injured and or crippled at young ages just show they have not been around the reining industry much.
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Just to clarify…in addition to 3 year old futurities, we now also have 4 year old, red shirt classes for 4 year olds not shown as 3 year olds.
Derbies are 4,5 AND 6 and now many shows are including 7 year olds in their derbies. Casey Deary was just commenting that he’s only showing two 3 year olds here in OKC because the owners have been really great at understanding that their 3 year olds could be bad ass 4 year olds and also do derbies til 7 so they aren’t even showing at the big futurity.
After they age out of Derbies, their are 7 up or Maturity events. And all these classes are in addition to all the category 1 ancillary classes and affiliate classes offered and 99.9% of shows which are classified according to horse earnings or rider earnings.
Your typical reining is not a 3 year old event (although that’s our highlighted event) it’s a bunch of middle age non pros with their older horses having fun and enjoying themselves. The average NRHA member is a 45 year old non pro female who makes about 90,000. It’s not millionaires with 250,000 futurity horses.
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