Laafet
Well-Known Member
A few of you may remember me posting about my new project horse - the lovely Rosie and her mouth problem. Well we've come a long way since then, she's now turning into a very confident young lady and a total joy to train! So thank you to those that kindly commented and gave suggestions. I did watch some of the Michael Peace's videos and worked away at getting her confident with me handling her nose. The irony of all of that is that she was very easy to bit. She finally had the dentist with the help of some Domosedan and we found that she did need a fair bit of work done and ongoing as her teeth at the back are not aligned so if I let them go more than 6 months or so she will start to have problems eating. On that front and completely unsurprisingly since she's had her teeth done, she's turned into an equine dustbin and is finally putting on weight in all the right places (unlike her human mother).
In an ideal world I would have been posting that she was going away for backing now but I had now considered just how under developed she was from basically being feral since she was weaned. I sent her to my trainer for some inhand work while I was away volunteering. She raised that Rosie was very weak and while completely sound, found work physically quite hard so we agreed that she just needed more time, working on strengthening her up. I think having lost horses fairly young has totally changed my outlook on starting horses. In my previous job starting TBs and racing Arabs, we would prefer to get on them when they were weak so they didn't put up a fight. But now seeing all the wastage of young horses, not just racehorses, I firmly think that giving Rosie more time will do her only good.
To be fair, the longest lived horse I owned was Tarquin, who although I sold him back to his breeder as he wasn't for me, went on until he was 21. I broke him in as an untouched 5 year old and it took 18 months because he was 'special' to to be fully ridden. This slow start clearly suited him as he was hunting until he was 19. Whereas poor Stormy, my last horse, was raced at 26 months old and retired by the Autumn of her 3rd year, she was put down to so many complications from health problems before her 7th birthday. This still haunts me.
Anyway I'm back making my YouTube videos and am making a honest warts and all series on her journey if you'd like to see it -
In an ideal world I would have been posting that she was going away for backing now but I had now considered just how under developed she was from basically being feral since she was weaned. I sent her to my trainer for some inhand work while I was away volunteering. She raised that Rosie was very weak and while completely sound, found work physically quite hard so we agreed that she just needed more time, working on strengthening her up. I think having lost horses fairly young has totally changed my outlook on starting horses. In my previous job starting TBs and racing Arabs, we would prefer to get on them when they were weak so they didn't put up a fight. But now seeing all the wastage of young horses, not just racehorses, I firmly think that giving Rosie more time will do her only good.
To be fair, the longest lived horse I owned was Tarquin, who although I sold him back to his breeder as he wasn't for me, went on until he was 21. I broke him in as an untouched 5 year old and it took 18 months because he was 'special' to to be fully ridden. This slow start clearly suited him as he was hunting until he was 19. Whereas poor Stormy, my last horse, was raced at 26 months old and retired by the Autumn of her 3rd year, she was put down to so many complications from health problems before her 7th birthday. This still haunts me.
Anyway I'm back making my YouTube videos and am making a honest warts and all series on her journey if you'd like to see it -
