Its time.....I guess for a horse

[Anonymous Poster]

My wife Barrel races and we have two barrel horses outback right now. The are great horses but they aren't really well suited for laid back pleasure riding. Sure there are exceptions but these horse are bred,selected and trained for their ability to do one thing well, run hard, turn sharp and stop on a dime.

Now one horse is retired and he has mellowed but even so we have to be careful. He gets around other horses and riders and he starts having flashbacks /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif thinks it is time to go! At home by himself he is fine but he associates a trailer ride and being around other horses as time to go to work. Can't blame him thst is what he did for the vast majority of his life.

I have also seen many Barrel horses who have issues that normally an owner would not want in a horse but the owners don't care as long as they perform for 15 seconds every weekend. Nobody cares about a flakey horse who makes them $$$ but that same horse may not be a good first horse for a child.

 

[cowboydoc]

Well said Lawman. Unless you are looking for a performance it's best to stay away from them. Reining, roping, barrel, cutting etc. are usually very good at what they do. The problem for the most part is that is all they've done. I've been around 100k cutting horses that if a piece of paper blew in front of them they'd blow up. They've never been expsoed to it. Very few people do "cross training" these days. The futurities, derbys, etc. are so demanding that alot of these perf. horses are used up. If you can find somebody that starts their horses slow, does cross training with them, and treats them like any other horse then you've got something. Problem is that rarely happens. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Well said Lawman. Unless you are looking for a performance it's best to stay away from them. Reining, roping, barrel, cutting etc. are usually very good at what they do. The problem for the most part is that is all they've done. I've been around 100k cutting horses that if a piece of paper blew in front of them they'd blow up. They've never been expsoed to it. Very few people do "cross training" these days. The futurities, derbys, etc. are so demanding that alot of these perf. horses are used up. If you can find somebody that starts their horses slow, does cross training with them, and treats them like any other horse then you've got something. Problem is that rarely happens.

Yep, seems many people just care about how they perform. They are afraid to address other areas for fear of messing with their potential paycheck. So they end up ignoring other areas of their behavior.

Not to say our guys aren't good, especially around children but you are right they are full of energy and can blow up for some pretty strange reasons!

On the other hand we have a 6 year old off-the track TB gelding and he is the wildest, craziest, fightin' other horses, bucking, rearing, leader of the pack, yet you get on him and he's like some old hack horse. Just puts his head down and gently walks along. Took us a while to even attempt to ride him and boy did we look foolish when he was mellow as can be. Can't judge a book by it's cover I guess.

 

[Boone]

This is going to sound bad but it isn't really like it sounds. I put stuff out in my pasture so they get use to things that might rattle and spook them out on a trail.

I'm talking about a safe things like a few empty 20 oz. plastic soda bottles and a couple of 12 oz soda cans. I take shovel of dirt and drop it into a plastic grocery bag and drop that off out there for a while and let it rustle in the wind. I'll drop off a log out there once in a while, put it on one of there little walk paths. Little things for them to get used to before they meet it out on the trail.