TRANSITIONING FROM THE TRACK

This young thoroughbred tells a an important story...

Carlos is rising 4 and has been recently acquired by the best of homes. They understand and are prepared to re-boot him from scratch to "untrained" the racehorse and replace it with a solid foundation. The plan is that he will become a show jumper.

Yesterday he had his first round penning session and he revealed he is one very special horse. He is athletic, highly trainable, easy to engage and has the ability to regulate stress exceptionally well. What I mean by this is that he can put in an athletic performance and then relax quickly. He doesn't stay up. He works things out quickly and gets confident fast. He gave evidence he is one of the prized 15% of those horses with high performing herd dynamics.

Building this horse from the ground up is going to be exciting. He has a good riding type conformation, shows beautiful balance in his paces and strong psychology in his herd dynamics.

But...

His new owners did have a ride on him to see what he was like.

Well...he was anxious under saddle!

He had a poor response to the leg and was tense. Definitely not a horse you would label as having exceptional trainability and psychology. Just a typical anxious off the track thoroughbred!

But this is no surprise as he is still a racehorse! You have to strip that off to see who they actually are!

Carlos revealed himself to be a diamond and the round yard did that. Starting his training where he needed to be allows the actual horse you are dealing with to be unveiled.

The saddle and baggage from his last job clouded his true self. But how many off the track thoroughbreds are judged and labelled by their performance under saddle?!

I re-boot off the track thoroughbreds from the ground up. I start in the round yard, then groundwork and then build their riding foundation from scratch. I treat them like they are unstarted. It works beautifully.

But my frustration is...and the point the Carlos' story is....

How many diamonds are missed because people judge that under saddle behaviour alone and have no clue how they need to be transitioned from the track?