Fair enough. The ones I’ve worked with have, by and large with a few exceptions, harbored a boatload of anxiety. What they were “ok” with had to be revisited to remove the anxiety surrounding the event.
I really think it’s the handling at the track that keeps the “cat(s) in the bag” so to say. Not much time is taken to introduce a horse to a stimuli slowly, as the timeframe for getting them going is so short.
My trainer used to say my TB’s brain was like a hive of bees.
When the bees flew away, there wasn’t much you could do until they flew back 
Horse was in his teens at the time.
But when all the bees were in residence, he was brilliant
Agree with “Ride the horse you get on”
There’s no slot for a quarter, they have “days” & you have to deal.
That’s totally fair! The symptoms have acted up only in the last month or so but otherwise have not been an issue since getting injections last April. I mean honestly, all summer we made incredible progress.
I think he’s going to be a horse who needs 2x/year injections, because he truly otherwise is an angel. (with a custom saddle and lots of stretchy work)
Sounds like my boy. I routinely ask how many braincells he decided to pack that day…
@coffeehag I feel your pain, I’ve been working through so much of this with my OTTB. No advice, just another adult ammy either loving or questioning their life choices depending on which brain my horse decided to have that day.
I disagree that TBs don’t lose their baby brain, there are far too many saintly TBs who happily cart around true amateurs and kids.
The fact that they are a hot-blooded breed, bred for being more alert and sometimes more reactive, isn’t a baby brain thing, it’s a breed thing, and even that doesn’t apply to all of them.
My TBs “grew up” around age 9, but things started getting exponentially better around age 6 or 7.
Yes, deal with the horse you have that day.
He’s only been on a “real horse” program for 9-ish months. He’s still reconfiguring his muscles from track life, to bendy turny gather myself up, mentally as well as physically. He’s going to have moments of reverting back to 3-4 years’ worth of habits
Can your current trainer put a solid ride on him once a week? She might be better at feeling when he’s about to Baby Brain things, and redirect him before he can practice that old behavior
If you’re doing poles/jumps on straight lines, start putting them on circles - it will help everything about his unwanted behaviors because he will have to think a little harder about not tripping over poles, raised or not
Get the book 101 Jumping Exercises for Horse and Rider, as there are a ton of prep work exercise that don’t actually involve a raised pole. The Klimke book Cavaletti is also a must-have as well, Both of those have a ton of exercises that force the horse to slow down and think, which is what these types of horses really need.
Yes, it does get better 
BS. There’s about a million TBs on grain, that NEED grain on top of high quality forage to maintain weight, that aren’t acting out or having a “baby brain” their entire lives. What works for one does not work for all.
OP, I commiserate and 2nd the idea that the 5-6yo years can be …testy… for a lot of horses (not all, but MOST in my personal experience). Even my dinky Quarter Pony, who was an angelic 4yo, tried to murder me in various ways for a good part of those two years. Winter was worse.
If you would rather send him to full training and let someone else ride through it, I fully support that. No shame at all.
I would take a listen to Dr. Audrey Declues podcast. Research is showing Injections in the neck and back over time stop working and actually can cause damage to the area. Something to consider. With Ks a lot of the improvement is from riding the horse properly over the back, building topline etc. KS horses should focus a lot on dressage training in their work imo
Oh this is amazing, and will strengthen his back!!! Thank you!
Huh?? What is your definition of “grain”? There are 100s of 1000s of TBs who require sufficient calories over even the best hay, to need some pounds of a commercial bagged feed, aka “grain”.
Some of them even require oats - an actual grain - do to their hard work.
Yes, many of them do better on lower NSC feeds, < 20%, but there are plenty who need 20-25% or so to support the work asked of them.
Edit - @Heinz_57 not sure why that’s coming out as a direct reply to you!
I’ll give it a listen! I’m thankfully located in an area with a top-notch vet (well, several), and am using injections (mesotherapy) with the goal of the being “patches” as he continues to use his body right. We’ve already seen lots of improvement as we incorporate some dressage movements
“Horses should focus…” Meaning, way too many horses aren’t getting the dressage work they need, which should be the solid foundation of every discipline . Yes, the Hunter should be able to do a respectable 2nd Level Dressage test. IMHO every sound horse should be able to do that. Too many horses are ridden upside down their entire lives 
I’m positive my mare Penny would have me dragged out to the field and trampled if I stopped giving her grain 
@coffeehag seconding the podcast. It’s called The Horse First: A Veterinary Sport Horse Podcast. She goes really in depth into all of the physical maladies horses can have and that are so commonly missed, being written off as “he’s just that way” or “he’s just spicy” or “oh she’s just being a bratty mare.” Horses don’t act out to be bad or to make us angry. They’re trying to tell us something is wrong, and people are notoriously bad at listening until it becomes explosive and then it’s a scramble to treat symptoms/behavioral problems without really getting to the root of the issue.
Something I wish I had known sooner in regards to KS is to investigate the feet. My horse has mild KS (2-3 points of impingement) in his t-spine. His symptoms were vague and didn’t really scream isolated KS, there was just discomfort and anxiety all over. Swapping behind, rushing to and from ground poles, bracing, being tense, etc. We’ve injected almost every joint he has, including the KS and also his neck. We tried OsPhos. We tried Pentosan, Legend, Polyglycan. This was also seasonal, he was a dream in warm weather and a bear in the cold. If people watched him go, they would just think he’s excitable, having fun, “spicy because it’s cold out.” That’s become so normalized that people don’t even think to look for a physical or emotional issue.
After all of that time chasing symptoms, chasing issues…we ended up putting 3D mesh frog support pads on him, and he became a new man in 24 hours. All symptoms were gone. Anxiety? Gone. Discomfort? Gone. I am not exaggerating when I say in one day, I had a completely different horse. And it took a $20 pair of pads with DIM. He was in caudal failure the entire time, and I was unaware and kept looking into the standard joint/KS/arthritic issues.
Your boy is new to non-racing life, and it sounds like you’re already working to investigate physical issues which is great. I’m sorry if I’m rambling on, this is just information I wish I had known years earlier because it would’ve saved me a fortune (and a lot of headaches/stress).
Whether the horse is an OTTB or not in my book doesn’t make a difference (other than to which of the individual weirdo behaviors they are going to exhibit).
Young horses are hard. Not when they are 2 or 3…or even 4. But when they are 6-8 they are just hard. You expect them to know better, and then they just don’t. We all expect progress to be linear, and it isn’t.
The last young horse I intentionally bought, I bought as a 5 year old (we won’t talk about the young horse recently given to me because someone else was struggling on this same journey). Every day for the last 5 years (until this year) I thought about selling this horse. We’d make so much progress and then we’d backslide. For about 3 months we struggled with just mounting not being a looney-tune. I’ve taught horses to stand, and this one just wouldn’t.
Now, at 10, he’s solid. Stands like a rock at the mounting block. Still alert and spooky, but knows where I am and will not spook into me or over me. Never pulls. Beautiful lateral work and we’d be coming along further with the rest of it if my body was functioning a bit better.
The point is, training horses is not just hard from an execution standpoint, it’s wicked hard from an emotional standpoint. I doubt there’s a trainer out there who doesn’t have the rollercoaster of emotions from “yay, I’m the best in the world” to “holy crap, maybe I should sell all the horses and take up knitting” on a routine basis. That goes doubly for amateurs with young horses.
So - empathy - I’ve got a ton of it. You’ll find what works best for him. It may be that he needs to be in a tighter program. Some of them benefit from that. For some that’s too much. Some of them need a feed change, or a supplement. You’ll eventually hit on the “right combo” for your horse. Don’t be afraid to try new things, just don’t burn bridges if you can avoid it.
You’ve got this!
Is this true? I wanted x-rays of my horse’s back to rule out KS and the vet explained they can only visualize the top part of the spiny processes, some fusions occur lower and can only be detected with ultrasound. She also said many fusions are asymptomatic, so you might see one and pin all your unwanted behaviors to that, only to learn it was a “false positive.” All told, I felt pretty overwhelmed with the assessment and what she quoted me for a full imaging work up, and ended up doing a bute trial instead.
FWIW, Carl Hester once said (at the beginning of the video) that when horses are 2 or 3 they’re “quite sweet” but 5 and 6 is when they start to get “personality” (i.e., opinions). So not always and only TBs.
Terrible 5s are a real thing. My youngest was an amazing easy 4yo and a nightmare at 5. He regained his brain at 6 and is awesome. Many a night during that year I was very close to calling it a day. So glad I didn’t. He is awesome. Hang in there. Six year old spring is coming.
It’s not just TBs. The year my QH gelding was 6, I probably would have sold him for $100 if anyone had offered. LOL! I still have him-he’s 19. Still has opinions but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.
I’m finally getting consistent rides on my ottb mare and she just turned 15 lol
He is 6.
Thats what 6 year olds do!
Get some brakes!
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