Retraining a sulky horse, all advice welcome.

[Lynne27]

I've decided to break in my companion horse this summer. I originally took her on as a rescue, knowing if I didn't she would be going to the local mart, being slaughtered for meat was a very real possibility.
I've recently found out some of her history. She did the rounds with a group so travelling people who raced her in a sulky (Mostly on back county roads at nights &#128584 They punted her on when she became too aggressive, sadly not before trying to beat the aggression out of her.
Subsequently she has a bucked load of issues.

On the aggressive front, she is now 99% okay with me, she actually actively tries to please me now. Her aggressive side only comes out when she is scared and/or confused.

Has anyone ever successfully retrained a sulky horse? She paces trots and canters whilst turned out.

 

[paddi22]

will be interesting to see replies. im in the same boat! She's due a surprise foal this summer so her training is on hold.
She was nervy too but has the sweetest attitude now - she has a super little work attitude and got the knack of lunging and voice commands immediately. Was tricky to get her to canter on lunge but she got it after a while. Backed her and just started to walk her up a quiet lane and back. Then i had to turn her away for maternity leave.

Would love to hear others experiences as never had a sulkie to retrain before. Absolutely adore her though, she has the sweetest attitude

 

[Lanky Loll]

Do you mean standardbred (pacers) or a trotter - which could be a proper square gaited bred for the job trotter i.e. French Trotter or a x breed involving something hairy which has been bashed up the roads?

There are quite a few threads on here about retraining pacers it can be done, they're tough horses and done correctly can go on to do a variety of jobs.
Couple of useful FB groups for you:
Standardbreds and Stuff UK https://www.facebook.com/groups/1455223021368982/
Underestimated standardbreds https://www.facebook.com/UnderestimatedStandardbreds/?fref=ts

 

[paddi22]

my mare is a coloured trotter with fine legs. vet called her a standardbred when i was passporting her, but i always had a different image of what standardbreds were? I would have classed her as a cob x tb cross heinz 57.. is that standardbred? she quite fine, shes heavily preggers and hairy in this, so looks chunkier than she is

swmkxbby7.jpg.html]

 

[Lanky Loll]

Standies are more like a TB - she's probably Standie X - they usually are if used for road racing.
Like TBs there are very few coloured SBs and they *tend* to be slower.
SBs are registered via STAGBI (harness racing's version of Wetherbys for wont of comparison) as foals and are required to submit a hair sample for parentage testing.
Crosshill Pacers on here is your expert She's still involved in the sport and worked for STAGBI for a while.
If she's been road raced then she may have had a hard life - like any horse it depends on the owner, some are fab, some are not, but at the end of the day racing on tarmac is never going to be great for the legs.
Patience is usually the key with them, but they can do all the normal things any other horse can do - they just have an extra gear

 

[Lynne27]

Paddi22 she looks lovely.
Lanky Loll I'll have a look at those pages, thanks.
Breeding is a bit confusing. According to her paperwork her dam was a registered connie, but she is unregistered, as is her sire. If she takes to riding well enough to get to a few shows I'll go down the Dna route to confirm her paperwork is correct. To be honest I know very little about gaited horses, it's something I'd never encountered before. She isn't square gaited, she will do a stepping pace, moving her right front and hind together, then her left front and hind, with her hinds landing a second before her front. She will also do a proper pace.
When I get home I'll try and figure out how to upload a picture!

 

[Lanky Loll]

If she's a connie x then she's probably connie x SB so not eligible to have raced "under rules". That should give you a nice riding horse if you take your time with her

 

[Lynne27]

She is put together very well, so I hope she will be a nice riding horses. She's bang on 14.2 so a nice compact size too. But if her legs are shot from racing on the tarmac and the weight of a rider is too much she can go back to being a companion again.
Yes, that sounds about right - I'm not sure their was anything legal about the way she was raced...
I'm not in any rush, a good horse was never made quickly, in my opinion anyway! It's good to know their are other people retraining these horses too - and that there is somwhere to go for advice

 

[ironhorse]

No personal experience but did some work for a magazine article with a girl that had a pacer - she won some training with a top endurance rider in the magazine's competition.
She explained that the horse would never canter in an arena and she was a bit concerned about the prospect of trotting the entire distance of an EGB pleasure ride! However the endurance rider suggested that they go at his speed and let him do whatever he wanted. After about 6 miles he got fed up of trotting fast on the better going to keep up with the endurance rider and her horse's steady canter and broke into a canter of his own accord! Apparently after that he never looked back and they had lots of fun doing endurance.

 

[Lanky Loll]

We used to use work our pacers alongside the pointers when they were coming back into work to guage how the pointers were doing in their fitness work. If the pointers could keep up with the pacers going flat out then we knew they were getting there All pacers can canter they're just not usually encouraged to do so whilst in training.
I'm surprised the endurance bod didn't tell her to just let the horse pace - they can go at a "jog" for miles and it's really comfortable to sit too Pacers make good endurance horses for this reason amongst others.

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

my mare is a coloured trotter with fine legs. vet called her a standardbred when i was passporting her, but i always had a different image of what standardbreds were? I would have classed her as a cob x tb cross heinz 57.. is that standardbred? she quite fine, shes heavily preggers and hairy in this, so looks chunkier than she is

swmkxbby7.jpg.html]

Not a standardbred

 

[Crosshill Pacers]

I wish H&H tagged you in the same way as Facebook does sometimes - Loll I made it here eventually of my own accord (much like the horse mentioned above who began to canter!).

Couple of points for everyone - there's another page on Facebook which can be quite useful IF you read through all the fluff and crap which makes me want to leave the group on an almost daily basis - look up 'Standardbreds in the UK'. It features owners with horses in Australia, Canada and America as well as the UK and Ireland. Some people on there have done a fantastic job retraining OTT Standardbreds for eventing, endurance, jumping etc. I've retrained a few and got them going on the right track before selling them on as riders because I'm primarily interested in racing them (under rules), so I tend to let the 'experts' take the lead when it comes to further education but for what it's worth, pacers and trotters (and part breds thereof) CAN and WILL canter, each horse is different in how he or she gets there but there are plenty of tips and advice available, the main one being BE PATIENT.

Paddi - could be a partbred, looks rather on the short side but seeing as fullbreds come in literally all shapes and sizes there's no reason by partbreds can't. I would be disinclined to say she was a fullbred nonetheless.

Loll - I wish your statement about there only being a handful of coloured Standardbreds like TBs were true...coloured Standardbred registrations make up about 20% of all registrations each year. What's worse is the quality of their breeding; often the coloured stallions are 3yo unraced colts of poor conformation. The 'world's fastest coloured Standardbred' has recently been imported from Australia to Ireland, but as his 'record' is some 11 seconds SLOWER than the non-coloured record I'm reluctant to really see what makes him so special. I'm currently working on a stallion grading system for STAGBI registered stallions whereby the poor end of the scale will be graded as such which should illustrate that as a breed society we are still trying to promote better breeding in the face of widescale 'colour-chasing'. If only I could get through to people that 'nice markings' are not hereditary in piebalds and skewbalds...and much less important than 4 tidy legs.

 

[Lanky Loll]

Loll - I wish your statement about there only being a handful of coloured Standardbreds like TBs were true...coloured Standardbred registrations make up about 20% of all registrations each year. What's worse is the quality of their breeding; often the coloured stallions are 3yo unraced colts of poor conformation. The 'world's fastest coloured Standardbred' has recently been imported from Australia to Ireland, but as his 'record' is some 11 seconds SLOWER than the non-coloured record I'm reluctant to really see what makes him so special. I'm currently working on a stallion grading system for STAGBI registered stallions whereby the poor end of the scale will be graded as such which should illustrate that as a breed society we are still trying to promote better breeding in the face of widescale 'colour-chasing'. If only I could get through to people that 'nice markings' are not hereditary in piebalds and skewbalds...and much less important than 4 tidy legs.

there were 2 that I knew of racing when we finished up - closed my eyes to what else there might be and they were seriously slow then I've seen a few "coloured / grey / insert rarity here" races advertised - I suppose it would then make it true that there's a race out there for every horse to win if you choose the right race

 

[Crosshill Pacers]

I suppose it would then make it true that there's a race out there for every horse to win if you choose the right race

I kid you not - the SHRC nearly allowed a race last year at Corbiewood where the sponsor stipulated that all horses must be Scottish owned, trained and driven (her son, two grandsons and granddaughter wanted to win the race)...that's ok I here you say...except there were 9 entries for an 8-horse race and her son's horse was balloted out by a draw from a hat. He demanded that his horse be the ONLY horse NOT to be included in the ballot in a re-draw (so 7 horses balloted to join his in the race) and when the committee refused this, he took back the trophy, rosettes and prize money, loaded his horse and left the track. An hour before the first race.

I am going to try to sponsor a race at Corbiewood this year for horses which were bred in Wales but now live in Scotland AND are owned by a Welsh person. Star is the only eligible entrant so far...

 

[paddi22]

Not a standardbred

yeah i completely agree with you. i was surprised when she said. having seen the sulkie racing fraternity battering up the motorway I wouldn't particularly trust their bloodlines and breeding! I'd peg her a cob with a bit of blood somewhere down the line!

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

I kid you not - the SHRC nearly allowed a race last year at Corbiewood where the sponsor stipulated that all horses must be Scottish owned, trained and driven (her son, two grandsons and granddaughter wanted to win the race)...that's ok I here you say...except there were 9 entries for an 8-horse race and her son's horse was balloted out by a draw from a hat. He demanded that his horse be the ONLY horse NOT to be included in the ballot in a re-draw (so 7 horses balloted to join his in the race) and when the committee refused this, he took back the trophy, rosettes and prize money, loaded his horse and left the track. An hour before the first race.

I am going to try to sponsor a race at Corbiewood this year for horses which were bred in Wales but now live in Scotland AND are owned by a Welsh person. Star is the only eligible entrant so far...

I will donate the "cup" , I have a very nice silver [plated] sugar jug and bowl, with space for engraving [at your expense]

 

[Lanky Loll]

I kid you not - the SHRC nearly allowed a race last year at Corbiewood where the sponsor stipulated that all horses must be Scottish owned, trained and driven (her son, two grandsons and granddaughter wanted to win the race)...that's ok I here you say...except there were 9 entries for an 8-horse race and her son's horse was balloted out by a draw from a hat. He demanded that his horse be the ONLY horse NOT to be included in the ballot in a re-draw (so 7 horses balloted to join his in the race) and when the committee refused this, he took back the trophy, rosettes and prize money, loaded his horse and left the track. An hour before the first race.

I am going to try to sponsor a race at Corbiewood this year for horses which were bred in Wales but now live in Scotland AND are owned by a Welsh person. Star is the only eligible entrant so far...

What were we saying about the politics in your post?!? Does the sport no blimmin favours and sadly I'm not surprised.
Definitely should go with your race plan though the Welsh got upset with us after one of the finals when we went to draw the 1st place money and asked for the homebred bonus - tried to say we hadn't bred the horse even though we had the dam and 3 siblings still at home 😉 oddly it was also the only untelevised race that night despite being the "big one" of the day - anti English bias I say