Surprised by the OP and so many responses.
This horse’s behavior isn’t about being 6, off the track, feed, or it’s brain.
This is a lame horse showing it’s pain the only way it knows how.
Kissing spine is a very painful condition for most horses. And you’re sitting right on top of it every time he gets ridden.
Nothing will ever improve. He will only get worse, especially if he’s ridden. And I don’t think it’s fair to ride him.
To the poster who thinks TBs can’t eat grain, um, yes they can.
Diet should be individualistic. All horse food is good for some horses. All horse food is bad for some horses.
You’re diagnosing that because of this?
Or is there some other history that I’ve missed. Because if so, screw vets and their expensive imagery…if the horse puts a foot wrong, it’s kissing spines!
That’s not a TB problem, that’s a problem of someone not having the understanding of what it takes to retrain a horse from one very specific, high energy, singular-focus job, to something entirely different, much less the education to be the one to do that.
That same person will get into trouble with the OTSTB, OTQH, and OTArabian. Don’t blame the entire TB breed for that
I have and have had horses who were “handled” to come into their stall for feeding, and “grained” once a day, who were not a fuse waiting to go off. One is my OTTB mare. Way more context is needed
See above. That’s an over-faced rider problem, not a breed problem.
I guarantee you there are people who bought Good Citizen big Warmbloods because they were pretty, realized they can’t ride the gaits that horse had, or direct their energy, or they “la-deee-daahhh SPOOK” personality (as opposed to the stereotypical TB who is constantly on alert) who also create problems and sell a horse with behavior issues they caused.
Your blaming an entire breed on what you see most commonly in your area. It’s not a TB problem, it’s a management problem
How in the world can you make those diagnoses from what the OP has offered, let alone without laying eyes on the horse, let alone watching him move at liberty, let alone watching him do one of these things, let alone not even having xrays? Yikes.
A 6yo not even a year OT IS still very much a “baby” in the context of a normal riding horse, especially if his track life never involved “normal” riding.
I guarantee you there are plenty of properly started, healthy 6yos who still give their professional riders a bit of run for their money with “hey, yeah, umm, I know we’ve been doing things a certain way for 2 years now, but could it be maybe we try THIS way today?”
I haven’t read through all the comments, but I’m sure you’ll get a ton of support!
I have a 10 year old who still tests everything I’ve ever learned and teaches me something new every day. He is your stereotypical Storm Cat. Has it been tough? Yeah. Have I cried? All the time. Cursed? More than any respectable woman ever should. Do I wish we were crusing around Intermediate like I think he can and will? Yeah.
I’ve been frustrated, but he is the horse that will make me the horseman I want to be and I hit milestones I am proud of with him all the time. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but that’s been an acquired taste.The smalls wins are more important than the big wins sometimes.
Hang in there!
When we first started working Sim, 7 days a week and boy did you know it he had a day off.
Now it doesn’t matter if he is only ridden now and then and whenever it stops raining.
Judging by your tack, apparel, turnout, position, and looks like you’re at a show in the one photo…… you’re not the type of rider I’m referring to. Around here we get the people who “want” to jump, or maybe hop over a cross rail once a year , or watch dressage on TV. Then decide they need a horse that can “take them somewhere”. So they get an OTTB. The horse gets handled maybe once or twice a week, but grained every day. “Work” consists of some trot but no canter because “he still gets really strong in the canter”. Few months later it’s a bargain priced TB with “behaviour issues” I feed my OTTBS equi-cal, cool command, and then a mineral supplement or mineral lick. Add to that a HIGH quality second cut hay with some alfalfa. Makes for incredible coats , weight gain, without the added energy of a grain based supplemental diet. Also seems to agree with ulcery types better . Maybe in your areas there’s more professional or dedicated riders , but here over-fed and under used TBs end up being a very real thing.
Now of course this does happen in many breeds but I see it becoming an actual issue most often with TBs.
I’m so glad to know I’m elite and professional, little middle of the .80m pack me 
So then how do you know “what kind of rider” OP is? Why are you telling her to never give her horse grain? What if she’s like me but her horse has some underlying issue causing his setbacks/struggles? She came here to ask for help, insight, support and instead you insinuate that she’s incapable of managing an OTTB on grain because people in your area can’t? What a crummy way to be.
OP yes this happens to a lot of people, you aren’t alone, it’s fine to give your horse grain, always investigate physical/emotional stressors (which you already are), and always listen to your horse. You will figure this out 
Totally agree. Have no idea what that comment was about.
Signed,
Another average rider who kept her TBs fit and healthy over decades. And even fed them grain.
This can apply to any horse breed? I have re-started TB’s who were as quiet and no nonsense and they were getting grain along with an all alfalfa diet by the owner. They were stalled no pasture. Limited daily turnout.
A horses personality is as individual as ours. You take each horse as it comes and work with it to find a balance that works.
Hang in there OP. He will mature. Eventually with time and work. You might even miss that spunk/ somewhat unpredictability one day, if you keep him a long. long time.
Don’t forget the very important strengthening of his lower muscle chain. The lower muscles are what lifts the back.
Jec Aristotle Ballou (author of 101 Dressage Exercises) also wrote 55 Corrective Exercises For Horses. She has a YouTube channel and I’ve been watching her videos (LOVE the fact that she gets to the point and gives the key information in under 5min on many videos demonstrating those exercises) and doing some exercises with my neurological horse who lost most of his fitness last year. The exercises target specific muscles in both upper and lower muscle chains with low key, low impact movement. In a couple of weeks I can see improvement in my horse with mostly ground work.
I ordered 55 Corrective Exercises last night!
But you said “average rider” and what you describe is not the “average rider”, it’s an uneducated yahoo. @skipollo, while I am sure a lovely rider, does appear to be an AVERAGE rider. An “average rider” to most of us, can hack their own horse, if they jump, they normally jump somewhere between 2’3-3’6 on a decent horse. My guess, based purely on the pictures posted, would be that Skipollo shows 2’6-3’, and that is solidly average.
Sounds like you are in an equestrian waste-land, but if you are on COTH, you should be able to figure out that in many other areas, most “average” riders can certainly ride an OTTB. Where I am in the Mid-Atlantic area of the US, I would say that OTTBS are quite common and frequently are ridden by more novice riders. In my barn, we have a lot of ponies, but of the horses (there are 10 I can think of), I believe 5 are OTTBS (one I am not sure of).
My point is, “average” is a relative term, and whats average to most of us on the board doesn’t sound like what you consider “average”, so your statement hit some nerves. Most of us love OTTBs and find them pretty easy to ride/live with. For sure my OTTB was the easiest of my horses, much much easier than my 2 current WBs .
This.
Also, my Dutch mare is 10. Her 5-7 yo years were awful. Not dangerous, but NOT FUN. And we still have days like yesterday where I wonder why we do this. And its not like she’s untrained. We’re reliably schooling most of the things from 4th level and touching the PSG.
It gets better. But they’re still horses and will always have days that make you question your life choices.
Tell me about it. My 14yo Appy gelding lives up to the endearing term “appa-screw-loosa” on occasion still. His pasture mate is a 12yo OTTB mare who has KS and is retired from any riding. My goofball hides behind her when there is scary stuff happening. He’s all…“OMG! We’re going to die!!” and she’s like, “Dude…seriously? Chill out.”
What can ya do? Horses are gonna horse.
It almost always gets better, I promise. My gelding (Dutch Harness/Morgan) is rising 7 and is starting to become really fun. He’s always been workmanlike but man, the 5 year old year was HARD. The boundary testing, the general teenage dirtbagness, and the biting–omg the biting. I came off him Nov '21 and called my best friend crying that I was ready to sell. And she had to talk me down and remind me it’s all baby brain. He’s knocked all of that off now and is a very good citizen.
All of that to say, there IS light at the end of the jackassery tunnel!
The biting oh my gosh! I stupidly thought at 5 that the biting phase would be over. So wrong.
I see glimpses of maturity sometimes.
Every once in a while I catch the thought forming in his brain of ATTENTION NIP but it’s rare now. Whew, that was no fun!!
I was literally telling somebody how I thought he was finally starting to get a little bit more mature lately and then bam! A nip! 
The nipping ends? I’ve got two Saddlebreds…one who is 10 and one who is 8 and we struggle to keep our mouths to ourselves! My quarter horses and thoroughbreds were relatively easy to break of this habit, but man…these Saddlebreds…
I haven’t read through all of the comments, but I’m coming out the other side of being in exactly the same boat, so: it does get better.
My horse is coming seven (his actual birthday is in May). I’ve owned him since a week before he (truly) turned three, so it’ll be four years in April. I started riding him the first summer I owned him, largely just fifteen minutes of walk work a few times a week, and he hadn’t really started being asked to be a grownup until the last few months. He had some SI stuff going on that we injected in September this year after he bucked so hard during a lesson after the world’s tiniest cross-rail that I was told by my trainer there was not a chance in hell that I could’ve saved that one (the vet thinks it was an acute issue rather than a chronic one based on how he’s been at his last few chiro adjustments, so tbd if he’ll need to be injected again anytime soon, but we’ll see).
It’s been a real up and down with him, partly driven by the fact that we weren’t truly in a program until literally the last two weeks (I moved him to my trainer’s barn when she finally had a rare stall opening), partly by the fact that he’s large and gangly, and partly by my own psychological situation prompted by my bad experiences in a prior training situation (which predates him, I never would have been able to buy him had I still been there). The amount of improvement we’ve had in the span of a week (read: two lessons) is almost unbelievable.
He’s a saint, most of the time. He puts up with my ammy nonsense and the days when I’m not riding well. He’s incredibly smart (I swear he picks things up faster than I do most of the time), sometimes to the point where it’s to his detriment. He’s also got a real buck on him (even when it’s not SI-driven, it’s just how he likes to play, he did it to me the first time we picked up the canter last night after weather prevented turnout and thus his antics with his 3 and 4yo pasture-mates during the day) and once every six months or so he chooses to remind everyone that three of his four great-grandsires had reputations for being fire-breathing dragons. He’s got a fourteen-foot stride on him without trying and some days it’s all I can do to get him to stop.
Last night we were working on bend and transitions via a pole exercise and it was the first time that I’ve been able to package him up to that eleven-and-a-half foot stride that my trainer says he needs to be on without losing the canter. We went from him ripping through my half-halts in canter-trot transitions to sitting back on his butt and trotting quietly when asked instead of taking half the arena to get there. We suddenly have the ability to consistently get on the bit and I’m not looking like a complete fool when I ride. At least four times during my lesson when he was being absolutely wonderful because I was actually riding properly, my trainer just looked at me and went “He’s going to be okay.”
We’re taking a whole range of films in February when the performance vet is out next (for context: I bought him for $1500 sight unseen with basic flexions done and nothing else), just to get a baseline on everything and to give my trainer a better idea of what exercises we should be doing to help get his body in the best condition and give it as much support as possible where needed, but he just… feels better. He has his moments (like the testing phase we’ve had for the last three weeks where he’s suddenly forgotten how to stand at the mounting block 
), but the patience we’ve had with him is paying off. There was more than one occasion at my last barn where I rode him around the indoor at night on my own after lessons were over and cried because I felt like we weren’t getting anywhere and I wasn’t good enough for him, but neither of those things were true. He just needed to grow up a bit, both physically and mentally, for all the work to really start to show.
I know it’s hard to hear give it time (especially when time might be two to three years), but… give it time, lol. I’ve had so many days where I’ve thought I’ve ruined my horse, but he’s also packed me around through so many situations that I wouldn’t trust other horses with even as a 4 and 5yo, and, as I said to my trainer last night when he immediately picked up on what we were doing, he knows what’s up, his rider is just incompetent sometimes so he doesn’t always get the support he needs. If you feel like your horse is a good fit aside from the baby brain, you’ll get there, and it’s okay if you need to cry about it or take a day or week here and there to just have fun with your horse instead of trying to accomplish things in the meantime.
My ASB likes for me to play with his tongue and massage his gums. Only 5 though. He’s mouthy.
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