Trt for competition horse

[smiggy]

Has anyone done this for a spooky competition horse and it has actually worked.
The little snippets on Facebook make perfect sense, my Welsh dressage diva is a spooky Twassock and it really affects our competition days. Some places he likes, others he takes exception to a banner or a sandbag or the colour of the arena and he is tense and not easily rideable. He can be so amazing when he isn’t that it’s really frustrating for both of us.
It’s not lack of exposure, he’s 18 and been all over the place. He is the same at home, can’t use one end of the school as he spooks and runs away from the mounting block that’s been there forever.
So, it makes sense, but does it work ? It’s not cheap
I think gist of my question is does the ground work genuinely carry forward to the ridden work.

 

[sbloom]

There've been a few posts on trt, worth a search. In my opinion if you've never done this sort of groundwork, connection work, it's likely to be beneficial, but I personally think there are better courses (for instance some exercises, and videos shown, do work with flooding etc). He certainly has a healthy marketing budget though!

Have a look at Amy Skinner Horsemanship for some good general stuff...and I could offer a few more postural programmes but they all HAVE to include connection work, the sort that helps horses self regulate their emotions, before really being able to tackle balance. So many horses aren't truly able to balance themselves, to move healthily, and, with being a prey animal, this makes them feel unsafe and therefore they're more reactive.

 

[Widgeon]

Has anyone done this for a spooky competition horse and it has actually worked.

I have not (you wouldn't catch me within a mile of a spooky competition horse) but a friend of mine has, for multiple anxious young sport horses, and it really helped them learn to self regulate their emotions - which obviously carried through into ridden work. I can't speak for other similar approaches, but I have definitely seen the general principles work very well. I was on her yard so I saw these horses every day and could watch the improvement.

 

[Four Seasons]

I've got the whole TRT access, and if you follow it from step 1, the real basics, it really does work. I'm training an extremely sensitive and spooky horse, and it's helped him calm down a lot at home.

 

[Shoei]

Me! Made a huge difference with my reactive Gelderlander who does BD.

I've been doing it with me youngster since he arrived as a 6 month old and he defiantly deals with things much better.