Pony show turns into Rodeo!!

[Christmas Crumpet]

There was a local show yesterday for kids and I thought it would be a good opportunity to take the fat exracehorse for a look round for experience. Admittedly he was being ridden for the first time in 4 days due to his back being done and having a couple of days off for a bashed leg BUT... he has been so well behaved and chilled out since I've had him that I thought it would be fine.

He heard the loudspeaker from 4 fields away and immediately his back was up. We got to the field and he was ok for first 5 mins and then went loopy bucking and spinning round and getting so worked up. I can only imagine that the last time he saw so many horses (or ponies in this case) was at the racecourse. I walked him around a bit and then decided to take him for a ride and then take him back when he was tired. Not a huge amount of difference second time round. Foolishly I'd forgotten my neck strap!!

Am rather concerned because we are going on hound exercise on Friday afternoon and I really hope he isn't going to behave like that again because its slightly nervewracking and the pony club are going too and I don't want to wipe out any small children.

How have other people's ex racehorses coped in situations like that?

 

[Penniless]

Maybe it was down to the fact of not having been ridden for a few days beforehand - had you lunged him beforehand? Most of our horses are a bit lively when they've had backs done - especially if they've been in a bit of pain for a while and may have been expressing how nice it was now to be pain free!

Also, had he ever seen ponies before? I'm not joking - but we took one of our ex-racers to a show and he freaked out totally at ponies - especially with the little coloured ones. He was perfect in the ring and outside the ring when seeing horses, but when it came to the ponies (something he'd never seen before - well, they were purely monsters). Maybe this was another reason.

 

[RachelFerd]

Tia is still slightly wild at parties, nothing too traumatic though, and she is getting better. I too would like to hunt this season, but am definitely going to have to pick some quiet days first

First show we went to was very wild
Second show was still quite wild
Third show was moderately better but still a bit wild
Fourth show is better still, but still marginally wild...

spot a trend! She's improving, but just making the outings short and sweet seem to be working. She is fine when 'doing' something, it's just standing still and waiting around that she can't cope with. And loose horses are currently an 'interesting' prospect