JustMe22
Well-Known Member
Some of you might remember the little horse I bought from the racing auctions earlier this year. Well, he just turned 4 this week and has been quietly ticking along with me and it is safe to say that I am now completely and utterly in love with him. He has such a lovely attitude and I honestly could not have been more lucky considering I bought him from 2 seconds in an auction ring with no vetting, no inspections or anything
He has the cutest little personality and enough spunk to keep me interested...but thankfully not quite as much of it as my other ex-racer! As soon as you get over the testing phase, which happens without fail every day, he is perfect and really tries his best.
He had a good month or so off with African Horse Sickness vaccines, which require you to keep their heartrates low and don't let them sweat, especially when the horses are young. These vaccines last 6 weeks, with weeks 2 and 5 being the ones where they really do nothing - of course, it does result in the horses becoming a bit tricky so in some ways it was easier to just give him some time off than have to get on an excitable, fresh horse and not be able to calm him down through some good work or a long hack.
We're also still in the midst of a horrible drought, the worst for decades and decades (it's been going on for nearly 2 years now) so we've struggled a little bit to get weight on. Obviously there is no grazing because there's no rain, and even grass/hay is incredibly difficult to get hold of because the farmers can't irrigate etc - they've been hit incredibly hard with non-existent crop yields, cattle dying etc. As it is, we're now feeding oathay as there's no teff or eragrostis to be found. However, it's hard to get good quality of any type of grass, so for now I've accepted that he may stay a little skinny until the drought ends. We had the first rain we've had in ages the other day, and there was finally a puddle. After much trepidation and a lot of tentative investigation, Chester finally splashed about and rolled in it...resulting in this:
HOWEVER, on to brighter news! He's been carrying on as usual with schooling once a fortnight or so and the rest of the time just hacking. We took him to the local XC venue a week ago as it's within hacking distance and they had an open day. There was a group of 4 of us and to be honest he was better than I could ever have expected. We had a group gallop across the fields without any major explosions. He was amazing and jumped some little logs and tree stumps (his first time jumping ever), did his first tiny ditch without hesitation and even went for a stroll through the water with no hesitation. I feel fairly sure this was related to the puddle experience as he had been pretty reluctant about going into the water until then.
Unfortunately there's no photos of the XC outing as obviously everybody was riding. In lieu of that, here is his first attempt at free jumping, along with trotting poles:
Then today he had his first show. We went along to do the prelim, and although a small class of 12 or 13, there were a lot of well established pairs. Also a lot of higher level show jumpers (1.30ish) taking their horses along to do some dressage as a sort of wind down to the season, so I wasn't expecting too much. He was one of the only Thoroughbreds as I happen to stable him in horse central of South Africa, where imported Warmbloods are the order of the day!
He warmed up sweetly enough. A little bit tense and I decided to put him straight into canter as it seems to be the best way to loosen his back and settle him. The first few strides were mostly him leaping from spot to spot but he settled quite quickly and after a good ten minutes of canter work he was very sweaty but quite relaxed. It was already over 30 degrees at 8.30 this morning so by the time we went in he was pouring sweat, but luckily so we a lot of other horses!We struggle a little in that if he has any walk breaks he then tends to be very distracted upon picking up the reins so we did quite a bit of work out on our hacks on walk/trot/walk transitions while keeping him focused and soft, and it does seem to have helped somewhat.
Test was about as good as I could have hoped. I played it safe and didn't ride boldly enough meaning our free walks were a bit rubbish (a bit of a shame as he actually has an excellent free walk) and also had one minor error where I misheard my caller and ended up turning very late to circle when I realised, so lost marks for accuracy there. We also had one canter transition where I felt him ignore my first aid and instead of asking softly again and getting a gentle transition I chose to treat it more as a schooling exercise and gave him a tap with my whip which resulted in a slight launch into canter and a bit of head tossing.
Anyway, was shocked to find that we had placed with a score of 65.5% in both tests. The marking here is generally a bit stricter and the winning horse got 68 or so I seem to remember, but it was really an excellent test from a horse that could have very easily won a novice class against good competition. Super chuffed with him! The plan is now to possibly do a couple of the 4yo dressage classes next year and see how they go, and if all goes really well i would love to have him do his first elementary this time next year. We'll also start doing some baby jumping and maybe pop along to a local show or two to do some very small classes - I love jumping but will keep it to my "at home" discipline.
General comments were that he could be more consistent, and this is true - especially in trot. But, he is a very young horse and at his first show, so the consistency is something that will improve with time. He also needs to become a little more supple over the back, but that's all part of schooling so will probably always need improving no matter how good we get!
Here is a picture of him with his rosette:
And because there was nobody to take photos of the actual test, here are some of him schooling over the last few months. They're all to the left side but promise we can go right as well!
Excuse the forward leg position below, but we're in the process of finding a dressage saddle so am borrowing a jumping saddle for now:
Also sorry for picture overload and the stupidly large size of them!
He has the cutest little personality and enough spunk to keep me interested...but thankfully not quite as much of it as my other ex-racer! As soon as you get over the testing phase, which happens without fail every day, he is perfect and really tries his best.
He had a good month or so off with African Horse Sickness vaccines, which require you to keep their heartrates low and don't let them sweat, especially when the horses are young. These vaccines last 6 weeks, with weeks 2 and 5 being the ones where they really do nothing - of course, it does result in the horses becoming a bit tricky so in some ways it was easier to just give him some time off than have to get on an excitable, fresh horse and not be able to calm him down through some good work or a long hack.
We're also still in the midst of a horrible drought, the worst for decades and decades (it's been going on for nearly 2 years now) so we've struggled a little bit to get weight on. Obviously there is no grazing because there's no rain, and even grass/hay is incredibly difficult to get hold of because the farmers can't irrigate etc - they've been hit incredibly hard with non-existent crop yields, cattle dying etc. As it is, we're now feeding oathay as there's no teff or eragrostis to be found. However, it's hard to get good quality of any type of grass, so for now I've accepted that he may stay a little skinny until the drought ends. We had the first rain we've had in ages the other day, and there was finally a puddle. After much trepidation and a lot of tentative investigation, Chester finally splashed about and rolled in it...resulting in this:
HOWEVER, on to brighter news! He's been carrying on as usual with schooling once a fortnight or so and the rest of the time just hacking. We took him to the local XC venue a week ago as it's within hacking distance and they had an open day. There was a group of 4 of us and to be honest he was better than I could ever have expected. We had a group gallop across the fields without any major explosions. He was amazing and jumped some little logs and tree stumps (his first time jumping ever), did his first tiny ditch without hesitation and even went for a stroll through the water with no hesitation. I feel fairly sure this was related to the puddle experience as he had been pretty reluctant about going into the water until then.
Unfortunately there's no photos of the XC outing as obviously everybody was riding. In lieu of that, here is his first attempt at free jumping, along with trotting poles:
Then today he had his first show. We went along to do the prelim, and although a small class of 12 or 13, there were a lot of well established pairs. Also a lot of higher level show jumpers (1.30ish) taking their horses along to do some dressage as a sort of wind down to the season, so I wasn't expecting too much. He was one of the only Thoroughbreds as I happen to stable him in horse central of South Africa, where imported Warmbloods are the order of the day!
He warmed up sweetly enough. A little bit tense and I decided to put him straight into canter as it seems to be the best way to loosen his back and settle him. The first few strides were mostly him leaping from spot to spot but he settled quite quickly and after a good ten minutes of canter work he was very sweaty but quite relaxed. It was already over 30 degrees at 8.30 this morning so by the time we went in he was pouring sweat, but luckily so we a lot of other horses!We struggle a little in that if he has any walk breaks he then tends to be very distracted upon picking up the reins so we did quite a bit of work out on our hacks on walk/trot/walk transitions while keeping him focused and soft, and it does seem to have helped somewhat.
Test was about as good as I could have hoped. I played it safe and didn't ride boldly enough meaning our free walks were a bit rubbish (a bit of a shame as he actually has an excellent free walk) and also had one minor error where I misheard my caller and ended up turning very late to circle when I realised, so lost marks for accuracy there. We also had one canter transition where I felt him ignore my first aid and instead of asking softly again and getting a gentle transition I chose to treat it more as a schooling exercise and gave him a tap with my whip which resulted in a slight launch into canter and a bit of head tossing.
Anyway, was shocked to find that we had placed with a score of 65.5% in both tests. The marking here is generally a bit stricter and the winning horse got 68 or so I seem to remember, but it was really an excellent test from a horse that could have very easily won a novice class against good competition. Super chuffed with him! The plan is now to possibly do a couple of the 4yo dressage classes next year and see how they go, and if all goes really well i would love to have him do his first elementary this time next year. We'll also start doing some baby jumping and maybe pop along to a local show or two to do some very small classes - I love jumping but will keep it to my "at home" discipline.
General comments were that he could be more consistent, and this is true - especially in trot. But, he is a very young horse and at his first show, so the consistency is something that will improve with time. He also needs to become a little more supple over the back, but that's all part of schooling so will probably always need improving no matter how good we get!
Here is a picture of him with his rosette:
And because there was nobody to take photos of the actual test, here are some of him schooling over the last few months. They're all to the left side but promise we can go right as well!
Excuse the forward leg position below, but we're in the process of finding a dressage saddle so am borrowing a jumping saddle for now:
Also sorry for picture overload and the stupidly large size of them!
The pictures hide it quite well but his hip bones are more prominent than I would like and his ribs are also quite visible. Not in a 'there's a thin layer of muscle covering them' sort of way, but in a 'he needs a bit more weight' way. However, it is definitely improving. We put him on a feed which does contain some protein etc but is essentially more of a roughage replacement, then added some balancer and barley, so he has been steadily improving. 