Kentucky Derby 2022

[Maythehorsebewithme]

Most people have no idea how well horses can bite. Someone here (@skydy?) said that for herbivores, they bite very well.

At a former barn the owner bought an OTTB. Lovely ground manners, well-behaved under saddle. One flaw: every now and then, when one entered his stall, he went for you. Rarely happened, but only happened when one opened the door and entered. I think he must have had an awful experience on the track.

And he went for you with jaw agape. One barn worker was careless. He grabbed her by the upper arm, lifted her in the air, shook her like a terrier shakes a rat, and dropped her to the ground. Her arm was purple to the fingertips, and permanently damaged.

Barn owner had him put down. A pity, but what else could he do? He did not dare even give the horse away, as 95% of the time the horse was fine. But a ticking time bomb.

I am not suggesting that Rich Strike is anything like this, just making the point about the power in those jaws when not used for good.

[findeight]

Any horse can suddenly be aggressive in its stall, it does not require a bad or abusive experience with a human. That kind of thinking gets people complacent and gets them hurt. There is a correct and safe way to handle horses from the ground, its done that way because it assumes something could go wrong.

Get real tired of bad manners and inconsistent/ sloppy ground handling resulting in accidents that get blamed on past abuse instead of current handling and carelessness.

I can speak to this having suffered a broken wrist hand grazing my own horse, got knocked down and run over when it suddenly exploded. I was careless, not standing in the safety zone and not watching horse. More likely caused by a frisbee followed by a dog at a dead run then distant memories of past abuse but my resulting injury was caused by my bad handling either way.

Learned long ago never enter a stall or pen without the horse facing you and never turn your back unless its secured, PITA when mucking but you never, ever know.

[skydy]

Agreed. Neither of the horses that bit me were abused. There is of course, a difference between being knocked down because of a spook, and having a horse intentionally attack a person with their teeth.

I think we are talking about TB racehorses and in some instances a biting horse can be managed by a very skilled stallion handler, and have changes in their management that can help (Bolt d’Oro.) In other cases they are deemed too dangerous to people, and are put down (Corslew.)

As shown by @Maythehorsebewithme’s experience, many boarding barns do not have the highly skilled workers that have experience with this sort of behavior, like racing and breeding barns have, and the risk a biter poses to people in a boarding barn can’t be justified.

[Sticky_Situation]

@findeight

Any horse can suddenly be aggressive in its stall, it does not require a bad or abusive experience with a human. That kind of thinking gets people complacent and gets them hurt. There is a correct and safe way to handle horses from the ground, its done that way because it assumes something could go wrong.

Get real tired of bad manners and inconsistent/ sloppy ground handling resulting in accidents that get blamed on past abuse instead of current handling and carelessness.

I agree. There is a common tendency among those relatively new to horses or who have only really dealt with older, broke-to-death types to assume that any horse that is ill-mannered or overly reactive has been abused, when in reality those horses (if they aren’t fit 3yo stud colts) tend to 99% of the time be ones that have been either turned into spoiled pets by passive owners trying to bribe friendship out of them, or horses that have just had inconsistent (not abusive) handling and just never learned how they’re supposed to act around humans.

It goes hand-in-hand with the recent trend of assigning human mental illnesses to horse behaviors. A horse that is scared of trailering after a bad experience does not have PTSD … it is exhibiting a learned fear response, and reasonably so. PTSD is a maladaptive response to trauma and has specific diagnostic criteria … it is not simply a reasonable fear of certain things or situations.

[M]

Halla, thanks for the link.
Hope many will take the time to read the article. What a really good man and an understanding, insightful rider. ( lucky Rich Strike.)

"Located on the Gulf of Mexico, Veracruz is a hotbed for cartel violence and also has a significant portion of its population living in poverty. In 2020, according to datamexico.org , 35.7 percent of the population was in a situation of moderate poverty and 5.25 percent was in extreme poverty.

Lagunes’ family was among the poorest. He had to step away from our interview to collect himself when he recalled that he and his brothers never received any toys on the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year, the Jan. 6 Día de Los Reyes celebration.

“Here, in the United States, it’s Santa Claus,” Lagunes explained. “In Mexico, it’s Santo Reyes. I would go to school, and everybody would have new toys, but my brothers and I had nothing.”

**Lagunes goes above and beyond every year to ensure that no other children in Veracruz ever have to feel that way again. Every year, he sends toys for over 200 children and hosts a Three Kings Day celebration including piñatas, bags of sweets, inflatables, a bounce house, and ice cream.
this past winter, with so many jockeys staying at Turfway Park for the winter, Lagunes took a salary exercise rider position in Reed’s barn just to stay afloat.
Still, Lagunes used his own money to finance the January celebration this year so that no child went without.
=========

“He taught the horse a whole lot, how to relax out there, but how to also gallop without getting so nervous,” Reed explained. “Richie likes to gallop fast, and most of the riders would try to slow him down and fight him, but Gabe realized that if you let him just have his head he won’t ever go too fast. He’s comfortable that way. That’s when Richie really started getting good, once he could go out there and gallop the way the horse wanted, not the way the rider wanted.”

Lagunes added that Rich Strike can be a difficult horse to exercise in the mornings.

“The horse is not easy,” Lagunes said. “Before, he would play too much in the mouth, and so I knew I needed to let him loose. He didn’t like anybody behind or too close to him, but now I know the horse.”

[Lauruffian]

Hell, my former 21+yro paint mare–who was a sweetie, but very aware she was a mare–KNEW when there wasn’t a stud chain over her nose it meant she could bulldoze her way through to wherever it was she would prefer to go. She was a former showmanship horse, where chains reportedly were required with the halter, and it seems she learned not to take any human seriously without the chain. With the chain, she was a saint and never tested anything when I’d lead her around…without, she’s going over HERE and SO WHAT puny human.