How quickly can you ruin a horse?

[shiloh]

I used to ride at a barn where we had a great dressage trainer (I wish I could remember her name but it’s been years and years) who told all of us that we could ride her Grand Prix level trained horses any time. When we all demurred and said we were fearful of wrecking the horses she told us this and it really stuck with me: “What kind of trainer would I be if I could not fix anything you did to my horse in 5 minutes?”

I think a horse could be set back by a wreck or a really truly horrific ride but permanently ruined - no.

[Sticky_Situation]

I really doubt that an upper level horse would be ruined for life because an amateur with poor timing once incorrectly asked for a lead change. The horse may need a bit of reschooling, but it’s pure DQ drama to contend that it would be ruined for life.

A horse that had a true traumatic experience - a bad crash, etc, is a different situation. If the rider became abusive and inflicted severe pain during Tempi changes, that might qualify. But being a bit confused by subpar riding isn’t really so traumatic as to ruin a horse for life.

[snowrider]

I’ve ridden a heck of a lot of GP horses and believe me they are not THAT finely tuned. Relaxed trainers don’t produce horses who melt down because you moved your hip wrong. They have good and bad days and personalities like everyone else. We had one who brought along 4 or 5 ammies in his older years and he could still do everything absolutely perfectly when ridden correctly. If not he’d be an absolute pill. He was famous for it.

Now there aren’t animals who can’t even cope with anything. I have a dog like that, a very “soft” dog who will give up too easily and can’t handle correction. But few animals like that make it in competition.

[KBC]

[QUOTE=Sticky Situation;9042848]
I really doubt that an upper level horse would be ruined for life because an amateur with poor timing once incorrectly asked for a lead change. The horse may need a bit of reschooling, but it’s pure DQ drama to contend that it would be ruined for life.

A horse that had a true traumatic experience - a bad crash, etc, is a different situation. If the rider became abusive and inflicted severe pain during Tempi changes, that might qualify. But being a bit confused by subpar riding isn’t really so traumatic as to ruin a horse for life.[/QUOTE]

This is kind of what I thought, obviously some sort of trauma, or physical abuse is one thing, but a well meaning but less skilled rider, ruining for life just seemed so far fetched. Yes I could see a set back, but not ruined. What would happen if one of those lovely unexpected things happened, as it must in even high level barns, a car back fires, a loose horse runs by, the wind blows a trash can over. ‘life’ incidents happen everywhere and to every one, and you have to get over them.

[Joanne]

“I saw today someone arguing that a world class dressage horse could be ruined for life, by one bad ride, even one bad transition.”

I was a terrible rider when I was starting my dressage lessons. We had a grand prix rider (you would 100% know her name) in our barn and always took every opportunity to watch her ride. She was very nice and answered any questions I had. One day she let me get on her grand prix horse so I could feel what it was like to have a horse on the bit. I asked her “I don’t want to ruin your horse.” Her reply was “if you ruined my horse, it would say a lot about my training.” Anyway, I got on that horse. She would never remember me, it was a long time ago.

[Manni01]

I am sure, all of you are very right, but some of the problem threads here, are good examples what will happen if a rider ruins a horse.
I know most of the time people assume medical problems or saddle fit issues, because they just don’t want to image what riders can do wrong, but my very personal opinion is that many of these problems are not medical issues but rider issues…

[Highflyer]

IME horses are pretty forgiving.

[JenEM]

[QUOTE=Sticky Situation;9042848]
I really doubt that an upper level horse would be ruined for life because an amateur with poor timing once incorrectly asked for a lead change. The horse may need a bit of reschooling, but it’s pure DQ drama to contend that it would be ruined for life.

A horse that had a true traumatic experience - a bad crash, etc, is a different situation. If the rider became abusive and inflicted severe pain during Tempi changes, that might qualify. But being a bit confused by subpar riding isn’t really so traumatic as to ruin a horse for life.[/QUOTE]

I agree with this. IME, most horses, even highly trained horses, will revert to whatever they find easiest to do if not ridden totally correctly. Be that not bothering to collect themselves or trot along rather than pick up the canter, or whathaveyou. If poor riding ruined horses, there would be no saintly school horses to teach anyone on. And I would venture a guess that a lot of them have a lot more buttons than their beginner riders ever realize.

Something truly abusive (like being spurred bloody) or traumatic (like a crash) might ruin a horse, but I think horses on the whole are pretty forgiving and most of them can overcome that, too, with the right training.

Now whether or not you WANT to allow lesser riders on your advanced horse is another question entirely.

[cutter99]

If you can ruin a supposedly great horse in one ride, I would say the horse did not have good basics to begin with. I have seen people make some pretty horrendous mistakes, but if the horse has a good foundation things can be fixed.

A few years ago I had a neighbor’s horse show up in my driveway totally naked- no halter, no bridle, absolutely nothing on it. After I caught him and started walking him down the road to his home, I came across a road crew working on the road who told me the horse has come barreling down the road pulling a cart flipped on its side and the horse was fully harnessed. The horse drug the cart until the harness broke and he worked his way out of the cart and harness. The neighbor had gotten out of the cart and crawled under it to adjust something without tying the horse. The horse spooked, pulled the cart over the driver, and took off down the road.

The horse was a little rattled to be driven again, but did not take much to get him going steadily again. He was a horse who had a good foundation to begin with and was brought back correctly after the scare he experienced.

[Big_Tag]

I think something bad enough can ruin any horse, but some have a much bigger margin of error. But the notion that a poor transition ruins a horse is pish-posh.

This thread reminds me to be thankful for my little TB, who over the summer I missed BADLY with, and rails (and me) flew everywhere. I climbed back on and he came right back around and just jumped it higher. God bless those ammy-friendly guys

[KBC]

[QUOTE=JenEM;9042917]

Now whether or not you WANT to allow lesser riders on your advanced horse is another question entirely.[/QUOTE]

:o I would imagine not…my mare is just moving up to first, and I don’t want anyone to ride her…

[Engage]

Any horse that makes it to GP level will not have the kind of personality that will be ruined by one little mistake. A horse that will be ruined by one mistake will be too reactive and highly-strung to cope with upper level.
In my experience, a properly trained upper level horse will generally have one of two responses to incorrect riding: the calmer ones will ignore you point blank; the hotter ones will tell you very explicitly that you are doing it wrong.

A full horrible or abusive ride could definitely set back training a sizable chunk yes, but if the original rider/trainer (not the one who rode badly) and the horse had a good trust relationship before, they will be able to fix it.

Even several horrible rides can be fixed. With time and patience.

[onelanerode]

Barring an epic crash/other disaster, I think it is the very rare horse who would be completely ruined by one poor transition or muddled aid. I could much more easily believe a horse being ruined in one ride by an abusive, unfair rider, or a horse being forced to work while in pain. (I’ve seen the latter happen more than a few times, unfortunately.)

[mvp]

[QUOTE=snowrider;9042671]
That is nonsense. If the horse is trained correctly and knows its job it will not be perturbed by some simple mistakes. Obviously or no one would be able to ride at that level at all because we all make mistakes.

That sounds like something a high school kid with no experience would say tbh.[/QUOTE]

It depends on how adamant the new rider is about Changing the Rules. It also depends on how malleable and trainable the horse was taught to be.

Two situations make this clear:

1. The schoolmaster who has a kid put on it for a bit of a pony ride. Yeah, the kid asks for some stuff the wrong way, but the horse doesn’t get his clock cleaned if he doesn’t respond correctly. He knows “signal from noise” and the kid’s imperfect aids he merely puts in the “ignorable noise” category because there are no real consequences for ignoring them.

2. The horse who has been taught to listen intently to his rider and to respond somehow to the slightest signal… and even to complex combinations of them. This horse is the one who has a large set of buttons for a rider to inadvertently and mistakenly push. But more significant, he has been taught that he must answer any combination of buttons that get pushed… even if they make no sense to him. So for this horse to hear “noise” is emotionally hard on him.

IMO, the second horse is akin to the UL dressage horse (who has been trained a particular way or is very, very emotionally sensitive. He can’t tolerate being confused.) The first horse is what I’d call the finished schoolmaster: He knows a lot, knows to listen for signals he can understand, but doesn’t come unglued if he’s confused.

Also, the tough thing about letting riders who know some stuff ride your horse is that they have the capacity and sense to be hard on a horse who doesn’t respond to their particular set of aids. This is the person who actively “changes the rules” the horse has been taught.

It’s why lots of us who do teach horses also need to develop a very neutral, tactful way of riding a horse who is young or whom we are catch riding. We really do risk confusing him if we insist on a response and that’s not appropriate for the one-off ride.

[Mia_Sorella]

[QUOTE=Manni01;9042891]
I am sure, all of you are very right, but some of the problem threads here, are good examples what will happen if a rider ruins a horse.
I know most of the time people assume medical problems or saddle fit issues, because they just don’t want to image what riders can do wrong, but my very personal opinion is that many of these problems are not medical issues but rider issues…[/QUOTE]

But most of those examples didn’t happen in one ride. Usually the “ruined horse threads” detail a real cluster **** of poor riding, inadequate turnout, inadequate nutrition, poor fitting tack, poor farrier work, lack of veterinary care and/or obvious physical issues, wacky training/management philosophies, etc.

[mychestnutvalentine]

Whenever I hear a question like this my mind immediately goes to a young teen girl that boarded at my barn when I was a teen. Her parents bought her a very fancy Irish Sport Horse, imported and had all the bells and whistles. She didn’t have a lot of common sense and jumped him out of lessons repeatedly, would lunge on gravel, poor choices made , etc. Horse ended up with very severe torn tendon plus bowed on the same tendon from her poor wrap jobs. She loved him greatly but man… what a nice horse to end up unusable.

[whitney159]

I’m with the majority here who say that short of abuse or injury, that simply bad riding, such as poor cues isn’t doing anything that a good rider can’t tune right up. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a really well trained horse but my experience from both of them has been that my mistakes didn’t hurt their feelings one bit. One was a hunter who was going to jump the way he was trained and maintain the canter he knew no matter what I might do, I believe he let me steer just a bit. He was completely terrifying to jump the first time, as he showed ZERO signs that he even saw the three foot vertical in front of us, we were just suddenly safely on the other side. I was used to event horses who tend to lock on radar when they see a fence and you FEEL it. The other was my old trainer’s ex-prelim horse. She let me jump him cross country to show me what truly jumping out of stride (at a prelim speed) felt like. He wasn’t really interested in letting me have any vote in what we did (not even steering), his whole attitude was “sit down and shut up and TRY not to fall off”. I learned quite a bit from him. He actually was the one who got me out of the terrible habit of tipping forward a bit when asking for a canter-he just refused to pick up a canter unless I sat up correctly and asked “just so”. He even threw me backwards in the saddle and did the transition violently a couple of times as if he was trying to scream at me “stop tipping forward!!!”. My trainer was out of town at the time and when I called her on the phone that night and told her what a revelation I had, she laughed, since she’d been yelling the same thing for ages. He was a fantastic schoolmaster and she knew it, if someone didn’t ask correctly he simply ignored it and acted like “come back and ask when you learn how”. Of course, I didn’t get mad and beat him when he told me no, I assumed I was the one making the mistake and tried harder to do things correctly. Once he’d fixed my bad habits we got along great and he was fantastic to ride.

[candyappy]

[QUOTE=KBC;9042672]
I can understand one bad ride meaning many good rides re instating the buttons, I’m just wondering if you can truly ruin a horse for life in one ride?[/QUOTE]

Depends on what happens in that one ride and what you are calling a bad ride.

If you put an abusive type rider on a sensitive, unforgiving type of horse, you may very well have some pretty severe issues to work through the next time you get on and have it continue on for a long time.

It all depends on the personality of the animal in question, but I don’t think 1 time will equal a lifetime.

[Brownie]

Well my two school master horses were subject to some highly inaccurate rides on my part but seemed to immediately return to perfect when my trainer was aboard! If you asked correctly they did it correctly. That is not to say that they didn’t lose a bit of condition when I was the main rider and they periodically went back for tuning up.

[Dressagelvr]

. What kind of trainer would I be if I could not fix anything you did to my horse in 5 minutes?"

And that’s the point. Nobody said a dressage horse would be “ruined for life”. Just that it would take some doing to get the horse back to where it was. Lots of schoolmasters are regularly “tuned up” by trainers.