Love this article and it applies to all horses, regardless of level.
Kristin Carpenter is a terrific writer.
Really well written. And spot on.
I love TBs, I love the WB x TBs we breed, and I LOOVVEEE our 13.2 Haflinger mare who jumps 3’9" and nailed a prelim coffin her first time X-C schooling. Love, I think, is about not JUST the breed, but also your connection to the particular horse because I have also ridden TBs I couldn’t stand and WBs I couldn’t get rid of fast enough and draft horses who were a bore…we sold one heck of a scopey little Quarter Horse with a heart of gold a few years ago. I think you are MORE likely to get certain things out of certain breeds, but they are alllll different…
Well written, and should already be recognized by horseman universally…but sadly not…
The basic principles – that we must be honest with ourselves about our horses’ soundness and desire to do the job – are sound enough but I really don’t agree with this:
What makes an advanced horse is less its potential to jump those tracks, but instead its character, work ethic, and soundness. And those are things we cannot change with training, no matter how hard we might try.
Oh, yes we can. Poor training, or lack of a proper training system, can go a long way toward changing a horse’s willingness and attitude towards work. IMO, this is where it goes wrong for many talented horses.
An athletic, tough-minded horse who gets put wrong to jump after jump after jump – or who is never allowed to jump from a consistent rhythm and balance – is going to find a way to save himself. It may not be by going over the jump or even going to the jump, but the deciding factor in this equation will be the horse’s strong character, even though the outcome won’t be what the rider wants.
In other words, we have to be as painfully honest with ourselves as we are with our horses – our own shortcomings can’t be blamed on them.
JER, I took that quote very differently. I read it to say that despite the best training in the world, an unsuited character, lack of toughness and unsoundness will stop a horse’s upper level career in its tracks regardless of the potential to be amazing.
While your point is spot on for 99.99% of horses that are ridden by us normal people, the “greats” have plenty of horses that never get the 4 star level for the reasons she says. She seems to be intentionally leaving out the rider factor because that would completely change the way the article reads and that type of article (“you must ride better”) is done all the time.
I agree, flyracer. I think her point is mor along the lines of “all else being equal…”
Brilliant.
And this doesn’t apply only to the 4* horse; it applies to the horse that any of us might acquire with the intent to do lower levels. Some horses are better suited in other disciplines and are not happy or sound as event horses. So when we get a young horse, we take the risk that the horse will not be suitable, regardless of how talented that horse might seem.
This is one reason I shake my head when owners, sellers, etc. label an unproven horse as having certain upper level potential. You never really know until you get there. Many lovely horses are super until they get to prelim and then start breaking down, despite excellent conformation etc.
It is not a crap shoot. Surely the horse with parents who were successful upper level horses are statistically a better gamble. But you never know for sure.
[QUOTE=flyracing;7313185]
She seems to be intentionally leaving out the rider factor because that would completely change the way the article reads and that type of article (“you must ride better”) is done all the time.[/QUOTE]
I was talking about training and training systems, not about riding or ‘riding better’. These are not the same things, and I believe that skilled training is scarcer than skilled riding.
I took it to mean a horse’s innate character and work ethic. Some horses just don’t have it.
And if you get a horse who has had its character and work ethic damaged by a bad training system… It is very difficult to fix. So the problem still remains.
Jennifer
I thought it was spot on, and I’m certainly guilty of trying to make one into something he wasn’t.
[QUOTE=Toadie’s mom;7313373]
I thought it was spot on, and I’m certainly guilty of trying to make one into something he wasn’t.[/QUOTE]
You have company. :sigh:
There’s something else I’d like to bring up. It’s not a criticism of the author or the post but a point made in the content. I hope everyone here knows the difference.
I was talking to William Fox-Pitt after his clinic recently, and he was underscoring that with his young horses he runs them a lot (12 – 15 events a year), and he runs them in mud, and he runs them on hard ground, and he pushes them. Why? He wants to know if they are sound. And he means sound as a characteristic as well as a physical quality.
He wants to know that when they stud themselves on course they jog sound the next day, and when they bruise a foot on a rock they tough it out—that’s the character of being sound.
I can see how this works at the Eventing Industrial Complex of William Fox-Pitt. He has a manufacturing line of horses, good quality controls, no shortage of owners who have no shortage of money and enthusiasm, and WFP has very deep pockets himself.
You can run a horse 12-15 times per season if your young/novice horses are replaceable, as his are. Not unlike Senor Cambiaso and his 56-100 clones. You have spares to spare and even spare spares to spare. You can set the bar for ‘soundness’ and ‘mental toughness’ however you like.
But this is also true: many capable horses won’t succeed in that system, and many capable horses will get injured, perhaps catastrophically, through no fault of their own. Eventing has serious risks that have nothing whatsoever to do with the soundness of your horse.
I would need a very good reason to run any horse 12-15 times per year. I’m not sure what that would be, because I’ve never had a horse who needed to do a HT that often, and I see no reason to use that as a metric for physical or mental soundness. My horses – which, unlike WFP’s surplus, are a scarce resource – compete only as necessary, either to be confirmed at a level or qualify for the next level.
As for a horse ‘toughing out’ a bruise, we can only ask what’s fair of them.
So it works for WFP, but his system is built on a surplus of quality horses. There are very few BNRs who have a similar situation. The average pro and the average rider could do themselves and their horses a serious disservice by trying to emulate his system of testing ‘soundness’.
I doubt that WFP actually breaks his horses by running them often. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. If a horse turns up sore, ouchy etc on a regular basis, then it is time to send them on. I don’t see this as a serious disservice and not a product of having surplus horses.
As for running a horse at the lower levels 12-15 times per year. That is 1 time every 4 weeks. If taking 3 months off, this is still well less than 2 x per month. I have no problem with this at all.
Yeah, that part about WFP gave me pause. It reminded me too much of the D Wayne Lukas plan back in his heyday. Where he would start out with dozens of high dollar 2 YOs and race the heck out of them and hope one of them was sound enough to make it to the KY Derby. He left a lot of chaff behind.
I think that WFP has developed enough horses to the very highest level that one can safely assume he is a top class horseman who understands his horses as individuals and treats them as such. His horses last for years.
Yes, he may have several potential horses to try but he also isn’t going to waste time with a horse that will not go up the levels. He tries them and moves them on to another rider.
I see him ride almost weekly over the summer months and I have NEVER EVER seen any abuse of or over aggressive riding on any horse. His genius is balance, rhythm and seeing the best line. His horses really try for him.
I also doubt he does much schooling in between. Lots of ammies jump school their horses once a week or more. WFP likely gets a lot of those schools done in a competition setting for the horses’ experience. I have no problem with that if one can afford it. It isn’t different just because it is a show, especially at lower levels like he is describing. Or course, upper levels it is different, but a Novice horse trial is probably less strenuous than many ammies’ jump school days.
I think many of you are missing JER’s point. How I understood her point is that his system is NOT one that can be replicated by many.
Bruce D. had a similar program as does Phillip. It isn’t abusive…the horses are well taken care of. BUT most riders do NOT have strings of this many horses and are able to so easily replace their horses who wash out of their system.
It is about a riders resources. I agree with his point that a horse needs to be sound but his system and how quickly he may move a horse on probably is not suitable for the vast majority of riders…just as Bruce Davidson’s is not. We have more limited resources so need to protect our horses a bit more–by not taking the same risks.
Bruce would have a HERD of 3-4 year olds. He’d crank the fences a lot sooner with them and get them out there sooner. Many nice horses didn’t make it in his system but went off to good homes–and are good horses. But the ones that rose through it…went on to be 4* horses (and are certain type of hard knocking 4* horse). That is what he was looking for. But I’m sure some of the youngsters who didn’t make it may have become 4* horses in a different program but since he has such large resources…he doesn’t need to change his program to suit an individual horse.
Most riders need a good program…but need a more flexible one that is adjusted to the individual horses in their program.
In the end though…you have to know when to move on. And that can be hard.
Absolutely, BFNE. That is why I shake my head when I hear people say they are going to breed their next upper level horse. Because I wish them all the best, but good luck with that if you’ve got one mare. If you’ve got 20 nice ones, sure. If you’ve got one – I hope you’ve got a lot of pixie dust. You are going to need it.
The top riders have to be a bit ruthless when it comes to evaluating horses, and you know – that’s OK. The ones that don’t make it at the top can go on to be very good horses at a less strenuous level, if they are still sound enough.
I did find it odd to expect a horse to tough out a stone bruise. We are not talking about a human–that can ignore pain because he/she wants to compete-and can tak3 lots of advil.
I wonder how many non-professionals can afford putting 12-15 recognized events into a horse in the USA in one year. But we can always get a hardknocking racehorse off the track instead to prove that point.
Edited to add: great article and I do get one cannot “cuddle” the potential but most cant just go get a replacement if you break it down through poor horsemanship–a hard line to find for most of us.
I don’t think they expect the horse to tough it out as in ride them through lameness. I think what they mean is that some horses feel pain more than others, and the ones that don’t notice bruises make better eventers. For example, one of my horses acts like he is going to die if he hits a rail. He can be three-legged lame, give him half a bute and he’s fine. He is not very tough and thus would not have been a good upper level event prospect. I cannot imagine him jogging sound on SJ day. He is very much a princess and the pea horse, and those do not good eventers make. Now Grand Prix jumper prospect? Yes, because he HATES to hit rails.
One of my other horses can look like the Monty Python skit where the knight is nothing but stumps and still fighting. Nothing fazes him. He is an eventer type who will not break your heart at the jog. I’ve only seen that horse limp once in seven years, due to an abscess. He’s an iron horse. Not at all like the other one, who I joke must keep his smelling salts and lavender water close at hand.
