Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

My wife's horse spent a little time on the track and I will tell you although he has had (and still gets) 3 years of dressage training, has been trained to do what is asked of him, if he smells race - that's what he does race.

You can take absolutely no chances with him because if he gets in a race mode and gets away from you for even a step or two it may be all over. She always rides him with a pelham and two reins - one on the snaffle which is used 99.9% of the time the other on the curb which is used for the time the brain flips into race mode.

Truman

Ed & Wendy Hauser wrote:

"It is possible to ride a horse at top speed in a
  

pack, and have the horse stop when asked.  It just takes training. True,
lots of it."
    

That depends on the horse.  Certain strains of horses have been selected for
an extremely long time to have an extreme desire to win.  I owned a speed
quarter horse who was the best trained horse I have ever owned.  He was the
horse I put 2 year olds on.  He was as steady as any police horse in
traffic.  He did rate easily during an endurance ride (defined in his mind
as a group of horses that were not passing him at a dead run) But if a horse
race started (defined in his mind as either being asked to run, or by being
passed by another horse at a dead run)  it was like he was a completely
different horse.  He had to win. Period.  End of discussion.  He would only
be beaten by a faster horse.  After he had won, defined in his mind as being
first by a couple of lengths, he would slow down.

You can talk all you want about training etc. but unless you have owned a
horse that had winning as his number one priority, you don't know what
single mindedness is.

Ed
Ed & Wendy Hauser
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875

ranch@xxxxxxxxxxx
406.642.6490
  

--

We imitate our masters only because we are not yet masters ourselves, and only

because in doing so we learn the truth about what cannot be imitated.