Right now I am competing with a horse who has a race brain. I have
owned him for since 1999 and have really learned a lot when it comes
to management skills. I have owned race brain horses before but the
difference between this horse and the others I have ridden is that the others
eventually came around and got with the program. They actually lost their
race brain with time, conditioning, repetition, etc.
The horse I am riding now has not lost his race brain and I have accepted
the fact that he may never change. He may just be hard wired this
way. The real thing to consider when you have a horse like this is can you
live with this trait and do all his other strengths make up for this
weakness. In my opinion, horses like this are just not a lot of fun to
ride so the horse better have a lot of other positives and be pretty talented if
you are going to invest the time into them. Horses like this can be a
great challenge to work with and can bring a lot of satisfaction. But be
prepared that regardless of what you do and try they may never change.
If you have a horse that is really "hard wired" this way many of the usual
suggestions for changing the race brain may not work. What you have
to do is find ways to manage this horse in competition. It really isn't a
whole lot different from managing other weaknesses whether physical or
metabolic. It is just that most of us (including myself) had never thought
of race brain in the same sense. Race brain may be
something that has to be dealt with and managed for an entire competition
career.
A couple of suggestions I have are these: 1. Make sure that your horse is
fit enough (or fitter) for the distance/speed you are going if you plan on
completing. Horses like this tend to waste a lot of energy, especially at
the beginning of a ride. 2. Do not let the horse ever dictate the
pace or the ride plan. The last few 100s I have ridden on
this horse, I have had to start on the ground because he wanted to go
faster at the start then I wanted to go. 3. Do not believe the myth that
putting them in a 100 or a multi-day will teach the horse to pace. Didn't
work for the horse I have now....it only made him stronger :) 4. It is
important when dealing with a horse like this to make sure you set up ride
situations that are safe for yourself, other riders, and the horse itself.
Sometimes that may mean picking and choosing rides where your management
strategies can be used and avoiding certain rides. 5. Just because
they are well behaved at one ride or one start does not mean they have
"changed". It can take a very long time (if ever) to completely
erase learned behavior or a race brain. Sometimes it can take just a
small incident, like a horse passing, to set the horse off and have them revert
to their default behaviors. This is just part of the process....
I think the main thing when dealing with a horse like this is to make sure
that you are getting some sort of satisfaction from the process. That
satisfaction can be taking on the challenge of working with a horse like this or
perhaps the horse has so many other positive traits that it is worth the effort
to manage him in competition. Just like some horses are not suited to
endurance because of metabolic and physical weaknesses, there are some horses
that aren't suited to the sport because of their mind.
