Lameness

[luvmyhackney]

That was an interesting read!

Horse is 4. Not quite sure what your trainer was thinking buying 70K horse without a full PPE and even then a 4 year old for a teen as a first horse.

A just turned 4 year old is like having a first grader starting sports that is showing promise. Keep it short, sweet, and fun for the horse.

Horses don’t mature till 6-7 years old.

If I was in your situation, I would turn him out for a year, get the feet fixed and let him grow up. Then I’d find an older horse to lease that’s doing the exact job you want and sound.

I’d be looking for a new trainer, but I don’t like to get taken for a 70K ride either.

[FD]

Most people here are assuming that is our trainer’s fault, that we work him very hard. None of those is true and I apologize for not giving enough information.

[K_VanOlst]

@FD

Celeste Lazaris

Mmmm yikes. You’ve gotten some good advice so far. I would take it. And also stay far away from this charlatan.

[ATXmom]

Where did the blocks isolate to?

[BrownDerby]

No kidding. Run far away. This could be the source of your lameness.

[luvmyhackney]

I’m just going off your list above. That’s a lot for a 4 y/o. I’m guessing behavior issues are starting to show.

Chances are he’s growing, unbalanced, and not used to lunging. Plus 4-6 y/o can be challenging. They can go through a bratty teenage stage.

[Bristol_Bay]

Not a helmet in sight on her website. Yikes.

About Balance Through Movement Method & Celeste Lazaris

I’m going to make popcorn.

[Bristol_Bay]

But seriously, @FD, kudos to you for reaching out to the wisdom of COTH. That took guts. You know in your heart that you’re not getting help from the people advising you.

Young horses are routinely trained and shown. There are specific classes for 4 and 5 year olds with appropriate difficulty level. But their training has to be carefully managed. This horse may end up closer to 18 hands. It will be challenging and expensive to provide well-fitting saddles for him as he grows. You need the right trainer to guide you through this, and your daughter will need patience. She’ll learn a ton, though.

[Scribbler]

@Bristol_Bay

Not a helmet in sight on her website. Yikes.

https://www.balancethroughmovementmethod.com/about

I’m going to make popcorn.

Check out the traveling horse witch thread. True Cray cray

[Bristol_Bay]

I have always been afraid of that thread.

Sorry to hear it’s the same person.

[Manni01]

Ok my idea…and sorry if I am tough, but you will find out that the horse world is tough…

I believe you are a very nice family and your daughter is a lovely rider! But this is not enough to survive in the horse world .

The main goal of everybody in the horse world is to make money of you as soon as they sense that you are willing to spend it. Your best chance is that you find somebody you have a win win situation with. The person makes money but you still get what you want…. But this is rare… and you need to know exactly what you want. and I have my doubts about whether you really know what you want.

So my recommendation would be to first make a plan what your goals are in the future. ask your daughter as well.
You need to figure out how much money you want to spend,
Does your daughter want to ride the young rider tours
do you simply want to have a horse because you love horses
Is the horse supposed to be a family member or in Investment?

Then try to look around. Talk to other families with riding children. how did they do it? Were they successful did they run into issues? You really need to gather as much information as you can. And ask families who appear to have the same goals. Ask them about their experiences with trainers. And don’t go for the first solution, you need different opinions for comparison.

During this time don’t even look at your horse. Leave him alone, turn him out everyday, groom him be nice to him and let him be ( I would still turn him out for a couple of months until you got all the information)

Ok now after you got as much information as possible ( you are not done and you still need to gather more information everyday you meet somebody who can give you information. And you need to store all this information in your head…). You make an exact plan for your daughter and the horse.
It will take some time to find a trainer suitable for your purpose, honestly you might even need to move to come close to the trainer. and don’t forget your horse, the barn needs to be perfect for him as well… (nice huge stalls, and a lot of turnout)

After you did all this and it will take you some time look at your horse again, maybe ask the new trainer whether he likes him and restart him very very slowly… Really I personally would not even use a vet at this point. that will only cost money and you have all the information you need already.
So you restart him very very slowly. The more time you give him now the longer you can enjoy him later in his life .
And then you go from there. Take it easy adjust your plans according to his progress and simply enjoy your horse….

Welcome to the horse world and best of luck to you and some more advice, you don’t really need to spend 70.000 on a 4 year old….Money doesn’t mean he is a higher quality horse….

[Fiesta01]

@luvmyhackney

Not quite sure what your trainer was thinking buying 70K horse without a full PPE and even then a 4 year old for a teen as a first horse.

Their commission?

[FD]

Thank you. He wasn’t worked a lot. Very mild riding, groundwork ( walking on the hills, backing, ground poll exercises. leading, desensitization to sound.

Lungeing was done once or twice weekly for 5 - 10 minutes, but there was a period when we had to check the bunny hopping.

[fivestrideline]

@Fiesta01

@luvmyhackney

Not quite sure what your trainer was thinking buying 70K horse without a full PPE and even then a 4 year old for a teen as a first horse.

Their commission?

And the training board. And the opportunity to show a nice YH themselves “until he’s ready for OP’s child”. On OP’s dime of course (or maybe they’ll cut a deal and only charge OP the expenses!!). And maybe the commission and training board for the schoolmaster kiddo needs to lease while her youngster grows up. If youngster breaks or can’t handle the pressure and develops behavior issues, oh well! OP can fire sale him and just buy another. The trainers that can pull this off tend to be very nice and very good at manipulating people without them realizing it’s happening. But the red flags are FLYING.

@FD

Very mild riding, groundwork ( walking on the hills, backing, ground poll exercises. leading, desensitization to sound.

Lungeing was done once or twice weekly for 5 - 10 minutes, but there was a period when we had to check the bunny hopping.

Okay this is reasonable. Your first post made it seem a bit more intense, so I did latch on to that. I’ll also mention if you’re using a bunch of different methods it can be confusing for the horse and handler

@FD

Tristan Tucker
Jec Ballou
Yvet Blokesch
JJ Tate
Charles de Kunffy
Celeste Lazaris.

Good groundwork is good groundwork but at a certain point you gotta pick a cohesive method. Seriously though RUN from Lazaris.

Anyway, OP, I’m sorry you’ve gotten tied up in this situation. It isn’t uncommon, but it is frustrating and expensive. The question is what are YOUR goals (and your daughter’s), and how much time and money are you willing to spend to make those things happen?

[FD]

Tristan and Jec are our favorites. Their work is fantastic! We have been doing their exercises. I just discovered Celeste and don’t know anything about her. At the same I am very open to see what she brings about horses.

[Mersidoats]

Stick with Tristan and Jec and run far away from Celeste. Far, far away.

[FD]

Thank you everyone for your advice.

Due to my incomplete posting, all of you thought that my daughter’s trainer was involved. My family did everything by ourselves as we fully trusted the seller. She was recommended as being very reliable seller who sells very good horses. My daughter loved a horse who was 7, but sold very fast and her second love was FD. Looking back, I feel that we rushed as we wanted to go and see the horse in Europe, but were told that there is another seller who wants to buy FD. As a family we decided to buy sight unsee and fully trust the PPE from the seller side.

We hired a vet here who checked the X-rays. I sent the report to the seller right the way, but we were already in the contract. I also thought that every medical form, blood work, PPE paper will come with the horse, but we never got those papers. We asked for them, and the cost to receive them from the seller is $500.

I would like to clarify about how much my daughter works him. She does very mild riding and groundwork - walking on the hills, backing, ground poll exercises. leading, desensitization to sound, grazing, hand walking.

Lungeing was done once or twice weekly for 5 - 10 minutes a bit more sometimes, but there was a period when we had to check the bunny hopping.

My daughter loves her horse and connected with him deeply. Our whole family loves him. Our concern is the kissing spine and his lameness that didn’t happen in the states. We all think here, my family, the vets, that he started to early under the saddle, he is a big horse. As one of my vet said: “His bones will not finish developing until he is 6 years old. That he has been trained to sell as a fit riding horse by the time he is 3.5 years of age is criminal actually, yet it is so common as to be normal in the horse world.”

[fivestrideline]

@FD

My family did everything by ourselves as we fully trusted the seller.

Ah, that changes everything. I would hope your trainer has a good track record of producing young horses that go on to be good citizens, and are ridden happily by amateur and junior riders. That will be a good person to start with!

@FD

Our concern is the kissing spine and his lameness that didn’t happen in the states.

Kindly, does it matter, at this point, if his lameness happened pre or post import? Are you wanting to pursue legal action, or would you sell him on and try again if it was “proven” that the lameness is pre-existing? Again, I’m not being snarky, these are real questions. To me, I would suggest dealing with the horse in front of you and not worrying about when the inciting incident happened. I expect you’re dealing with baby horse growthiness + not insignificant hoof issues (white line and thrush, no matter how mild, are no joke).

@FD

What exercises do you recommend for kissing spine?

Core exercises (Jec Ballou is the gold standard, EquiBand system is nice too), lots and lots of walking on hills and over cavaletti, as much turnout as possible, extremely precise farrier work (not necessarily shoes, but a good trim is necessary), and TIME. Time to grow up and grow out of any minor issues - he may in fact grow out of the KS. Baby horses grow and have weirdness that pops up, and it tends to be shifting. You get the vet when it’s more than mild (bunny hopping, for example), or when it sticks around.

@FD

he started to early under the saddle

Perhaps. But some studies also show that early, correct work helps build strong bones and soft tissues to tolerate that kind of work later. This isn’t to say slap draw reins on and go jump 1.30m, but gentle hacking out and getting him working lightly on multiple types of surfaces isn’t a bad idea. Also, installing some amount of “work ethic” and manners on these guys can be helpful in the long run - late started horses (especially big ones) are a unique challenge vs ones that know they are going to have to cooperate with humans every day and expend some energy doing so .

TLDR: if your vet has cleared him to work under saddle, I’d recommend taking it slow and doing lots of turnout, working on manners and core strength. We used to subscribe to “one day a week of real work per year of horse age” aka 4yos work 4 days a week, but they all got handled and turned out daily. If your trainer is good with the youngsters and happy to help you take him the slow way around, that’s a great place to start! A conversation about goals with trainer (and vet if possible) might be helpful.

[luvmyhackney]

@FD

Due to my incomplete posting, all of you thought that my daughter’s trainer was involved. My family did everything by ourselves as we fully trusted the seller. She was recommended as being very reliable seller who sells very good horses. My daughter loved a horse who was 7, but sold very fast and her second love was FD. Looking back, I feel that we rushed as we wanted to go and see the horse in Europe, but were told that there is another seller who wants to buy FD. As a family we decided to buy sight unsee and fully trust the PPE from the seller side.

We hired a vet here who checked the X-rays. I sent the report to the seller right the way, but we were already in the contract. I also thought that every medical form, blood work, PPE paper will come with the horse, but we never got those papers. We asked for them, and the cost to receive them from the seller is $500. Here is what I sent to the seller:

That changes everything.

I hope your trainer is good with young horses and making them up for kids/ amateurs plus not rubbed the wrong way that ya’ll went out and purchased something without her blessing that she has to help fix.

I’d send to a good vet hospital and get their advice on lameness issue. Don’t be surprised if at horses age they suggest a year of doctor green.

[VodkaRedbullx2]

Your horse is growing. He is a baby.
When his butt is higher than his shoulders he will bunny hop or buck in tge canter because his shoulders are down and it’s awkward.
When his butt is higher than his shoulders and his legs move with great activity he will pull shoes and trip.

This is normal young horse stuff. The journey will be slower than you would like but literally this sounds like baby warmblood growing stuff. My 5 year old bucked every time her butt was higher than her withers in the canter last year.

Should have bought an ottb if you wanted young horse + ride now because they develop much much faster. Cantering a 4 year old ottb and a 4 year old warmblood are complete opposites.