Horses From Courses: Re-training thoroughbred ex-racehorses by Scott Brodie

Author:Scott Brodie [Brodie, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Horse Training
ISBN: 9781925271454
Publisher: Australian eBook Publisher
Published: 2015-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

I once taught a police horse named Bumper to Spanish walk. It looks very flash, but is in fact very simple. Part of his lesson was to place his foot on a wooden platform attached to a fence approximately forty centimetres off the ground. I spent days in the sand roll where I had attached the platform to the wall, teaching this simple target work and rewarding with sugar cubes. Bumper learnt very well. The problem from then on was that whenever Bumper was given time in the sand roll, all he would do was stand calmly for hours on end with his feet up on the platform—the target had become more important to him than a nice, satisfying roll.

Make your target higher, lower, smaller, more specific… ask your horse to stand on things, walk over things, reverse over things—there is no limit. Teach him to load onto the float this way. Imagine your target is in the front of your float, with gentle persistence you will get him to self-load. He will decide that the float is the most relaxing place in the world. Even extreme, problem floaters can be cured in this way. One horse that was donated to the thoroughbred retaining program was retired because no one could get her into the starting barriers. Many good horse trainers had tried and failed. The owner was very frustrated because the horse was running great times and showed real promise. For twelve months they tried to get her into the barriers, by the end not only would she not go in, she would not even approach. I taught the mare to unquestioningly put her nose on a riding helmet as a target regardless of where the helmet was. I put the helmet in all sorts of places and in all sorts of circumstances. Eventually I took the mare to the barriers, placed the helmet on the end of the barriers, the mare walked straight up to it, next I put the helmet in the barriers and she walked straight in, this was on a race day. It took four minutes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.