{"id":20263,"date":"2015-01-15T09:21:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T22:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=20263"},"modified":"2015-01-22T07:07:03","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T20:07:03","slug":"re-educating-the-racehorse-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2015\/01\/re-educating-the-racehorse-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Educating the Racehorse – Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HeaderRupe3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Story \u2013 Chris Hector & Photos \u2013 Roz Neave<\/h3>\n

\"VandaOn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rupert the racehorse has gone through a few changes over the months, we\u2019ve had Rupert the hairy hat-rack for a while, but now we look like we are getting Rupert in nice condition, good coat, and ready to move up a step in his re-training schedule.<\/p>\n

We thought we\u2019d ask Shane Rose for advice about that all important first ride. Shane has made a speciality of finding good eventers off the track and he is also a very intelligent trainer and a great communicator.<\/p>\n

The horse has come home from the trainer\u2019s, he has had a couple of months in the paddock, and he has been lunged for about three weeks, he looks quite civilised, it is time for the first ride, what are the things we should think about as we put our foot in the stirrup for the first time?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rose,<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat the horse probably has had no formal training. It probably knows very little about stopping, steering, your leg \u2013 pretty much anything apart from someone sitting on its back, kicking it and steering it between two guide rails.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing you should think about is just getting it to go forward, and don\u2019t be too concerned about getting it into a frame because a lot of the racehorses you get off the track, the only way they know to go is with their head stuck straight out, quite often cocked to the side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"InArena\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFirstly get them forward, walk, trot, canter, probably not for too long. Just to make sure they do know how to walk \/ trot \/ canter and they are not going to buck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom there, my first step is to see how they do accept the contact on their mouth, as in starting to ask them to go into a slight frame. At first just concentrate on one very simple thing, which for me, is inside bend, a little bit of inside flexion in both directions, probably at walk and trot. Don\u2019t worry too much about the canter for the first week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you ask for bend, then they are going to try and come in on the circle, so you need to start to teach them about moving away from the leg, and quite often, this makes them confused because any leg they may have had is just to get them to go faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"turning\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter they accept the fact that they are bending to the inside in both directions, and starting to move away from the leg \u2013 and this may take anywhere from ten minutes to two weeks \u2013 I would then start to introduce the outside rein, asking them to go in a rounder frame. So at this stage, you are getting direct contact on their mouth as opposed to indirect from an inside bend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of race horses won\u2019t want to go forward into that direct contact so be gentle to start with, that\u2019s the most important thing. You don\u2019t want them to stop and rear and do crazy things \u2013 so keep your directions as gentle and as simple as you can make them, and ask the horse to go into a rounder frame, and then ask for some inside bend to the left and right. Again I\u2019d do this in walk and trot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce that is established in walk and trot, it\u2019s time to canter, and you can pretty well assume that if they understood it in walk and trot, they\u2019ll be the same in canter. Some of them find it very difficult to canter slowly, so the first time I try to encourage the horse to go on the bit in canter, I\u2019d just encourage the horse to go round, and not worry too much about the speed you are going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously you don\u2019t want them flat out or too slow, but let them travel at a comfortable pace, and once you do have them round and starting to understand left and right canter leads, then I would start to work on collecting that canter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain it depends on that individual horse, but this might happen the first time you sit on them, and with others, it might take them a month to get to this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere you do this work will depend on your circumstances. Definitely you want a surface that won\u2019t slip, not the grassy paddock, because if they do slip they are going to panic more and it is more likely that one of you will get hurt. If you\u2019ve got a round yard to start, that would be great \u2013 if not, an arena with a fence on it would be more than suitable. After the first day or two in the round yard (if you have one) and you know they are not going to buck then I\u2019d move straight into an arena with a surface of some sort, that is not slippery, and that is enclosed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve only got a grassy paddock, make sure you don\u2019t ride them when it is wet and slippery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI try not to use anything but snaffles, especially in training a horse. Once they accept the snaffle bit and if you then find them strong, you can then put them into a bit that is more appropriate. A correctly fitting martingale would be great. If you pull the rings of a correctly fitted martingale up, they should almost make the wither. If they are shorter than that, they are not going to give you the correct feel on the horse\u2019s mouth and the horse is more likely to take offence at a rein that is being pulled down. It is much more comfortable if there is a straight line from the horse\u2019s mouth to your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI ride my horses every day. Probably for the first couple of weeks, I wouldn\u2019t give them a day off. Every time they have a day off, they get fresh again and it takes them longer to get back to where they were. Until you have them going, I\u2019d work them most days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I can get most things to happen in an arena, but if you have somewhere you can go for a nice quiet trail ride, that would be great for the horse but the majority don\u2019t have those facilities and it is not necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get some nasty surprises on that first couple of rides. I\u2019m in the situation right now where I have quite a lot of racehorses, and there are quite a few that have issues. Because they have been poorly broken, or badly handled, or badly treated while they were racing, their first reaction can be to run or buck or come out spinning, because they have been beaten up in the past. Their reaction is to come out and defend themselves, they don\u2019t know that you are not going to hurt them. I would always be cautious unless you know a lot about the horse\u2019s background. If you are not experienced at riding these horses, perhaps it would be a good idea to take it to a professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for us, Vanda Morgan has had considerable experience riding off-the-trackers, and the idea of getting on Rupert didn\u2019t worry her \u2013 and when she did, she was pleasantly surprised!<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first got on him, he was a typical racehorse, with his head stuck up in the air. But what was nice was I did have steering and I had brakes, that\u2019s always nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a bit humpy in the canter, but nothing major. He had a nice attitude, but tight, and you expect that with a racehorse. I just take that into consideration and I guess I \u2018baby\u2019 them. I probably take them slower than some people, but he had a nice attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just rode him on the arena at home. I lunged him to start with. Hopped on, had a little walk and a trot around, and it felt safe enough. I actually didn\u2019t canter the first time! I cantered on the second ride and he was humpy but nothing much. What I liked was his nice willing attitude\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Canter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next month, Rupert and Vanda have a lesson with our national eventing coach, Wayne Roycroft\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Working with Windsuckers<\/h1>\n

Windsucking is one of those things people don\u2019t like to talk about, and many pretend that it doesn\u2019t exist in their stables \u2013 but once you\u2019ve heard the familiar sound, it is surprising the places you will hear it again. There are those who will tell you that windsuckers have to learn from other horses that windsuck. That certainly wasn\u2019t the case with Rupert. His was the first unmistakable \u2018burp\u2019 uttered on our Pakenham Upper property, he must have taught himself.<\/p>\n

As I later learnt, he was a prime candidate to become a windsucker because as a weanling, he kept colicking, like every day at 4 pm. I\u2019d bring the weanlings in to feed them, come back and find Rupert lying on the floor of his box, sweaty and colicky. There must have been a dozen episodes before, our vet, Gordon Duncan said \u2018try half a cup of Panacur cattle wormer, with a cup of water, and mix that in his feed for a few days. We did and the result was instant. No more colic, the suggestion is that he was developing ulcers and something in the cattle drench provided a lining on his stomach. He never colicked with us again \u2013 but six months later, he did start wind-sucking.<\/p>\n

As wind-suckers go, he was a moderate. I did try putting a collar on him, but he looked so miserable I took it off again. He always held his condition, and it didn\u2019t stop him winning just on $150,000 on the track. Nowadays, he seems to confine his habit to feed times. One mouthful of feed, one suck on the feeder post. That sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Paul McGreevy is internationally recognized as an expert in equine behaviour. A qualified vet, he spent five years in general practice in England and Australia, before becoming a Veterinary Research Fellow at Bristol University where he completed his doctoral thesis on animal behaviour. Paul is currently a Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at the University of Sydney\u2019s Veterinary Faculty.<\/p>\n

I rang him to find out more about wind-sucking and how it would affect Rupert\u2019s career as a riding horse\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were a bit more informed about the way we wean, and subsequently nourish Thoroughbred foals, we would have fewer of these chronic problems to deal with in adult horses. In just the same way, if we were a bit more sophisticated in our breaking techniques of our youngsters, we would probably find them easier to plug in to leisure riding jobs after their racing careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe social effects of weaning on oral stereotypes are less than the effect of what they are fed when they are weaned. The social context of weaning has a bearing on weaving but not on oral stereotypic behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what causes them to become wind-suckers?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWind-sucking and crib-biting have now been related to the concentrated diets that are presented to youngsters, most importantly at the time of weaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is that ulcer related?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is evidence that there is a link between the emergence of crib-biting and ulceration \u2013 of course, ulceration is also related to concentrated diets.\u201d<\/p>\n

How much of a problem is wind-sucking going to be in transforming our racehorse to a riding horse?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not going to affect the horses behaviour under saddle. There are very few horses who try to grab a hold of fences while they are being ridden, although there are some. There are some horses that windsuck and crib-bite a lot after the bridle comes off, so you might notice it more as you are taking the gear off the horse, more than when you are putting it on. There is concern in the veterinary community that these horses are predisposed to flatulent colic, and of course if they are very committed wind-suckers they will carry on doing it so heartily that they will replace feeding and resting in their time budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we should do all we can to reduce the frequency of wind-sucking, and there is one promising paper that has suggested that antacids in the diet may help even an adult, established wind-sucker or crib-biter.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do owners get access to these antacids \u2013 from the vet?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is one paper that describes the use of a very old potion, including chalk and willow bark, the researcher who did this work subsequently used Rennies \u2013 human antacid tablets \u2013 but it would cost you a fortune to do that. His response when I asked him that same question, was, anything that reduces the acidity of the diet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are collars a good idea?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCollars are certainly losing favour now because the evidence is that the horse actually does more crib biting when the collars are off, and that horses increase their motivation to crib bite when the collars are on. That means that they often have to have the collars tighter and tighter, and it is not uncommon to find evidence of skin trauma because of tight collars.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what should the owner of a wind-sucker do?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIncrease the amount of forage that the horse gets, give it far more fibre than concentrate, when you give it fibre make sure it has to work fairly hard to get it, so maybe put one hay net inside the other, so the horse has to work harder, and therefore longer, to consume its forage ration. Also consider including chaff in the concentrated ration. When the recipes for antacid supplements become available, I will be the first to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is the wind-sucker going to teach every other horse on the property to wind-suck?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI have just been reviewing a paper on this. It is the fifth attempt that researchers have made to show that horses can learn a novel behaviour from another horse, and yet again, this group has failed to show that they do. Because there is no evidence that horses can learn new behaviours from each other without their own trials and errors, a more straight forward explanation for what we see as evidence of copying in the field is that the management of the second horse is as flawed as the management of the first horse, and that is why we get the illusion of copying. We prefer to think that the horses have taught each other rather than looking at our own house, to see whether or not it is in order. All the old horse boys say \u2018horses learn it from each other\u2019, but they usually haven\u2019t considered that their management was at fault with both horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

And is heritability a factor in wind-sucking?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, there is an Italian study which shows that the certain family groups of Thoroughbreds are more likely to have the disorder than others. One caveat with that paper though is that a certain line of Thoroughbred may be favoured by a certain trainer and so the management <\/em> of horses from that line can be similar. Fundamentally, we have to be careful about these sorts of confounding factors, when assessing the importance of heritability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part two in our re-educating the racehorse series, and we look at the problem of windsucking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[832,1040,1041],"class_list":["post-20263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horse-care-and-health","tag-horse-training","tag-re-educating-the-racehorse","tag-vanda-morgan"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20821,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20263\/revisions\/20821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}