Mandella's Cat

Watching "On the Muscle" I fell off my chair to see my cat walking across Mandella's shedrow. I have a special kinship with Mandella because we have identically marked cats. If you saw the rest of the cat, she looks exactly like the one in the DVD.

But, we digress. The subject at hand is training, and specifically Mandella training or conventional west coast training as it's practiced now.

It occured to me that different people might have different views of the meaning of the word "training". A good example is a portion of Dr. Rick Arthur's Blood Horse Transcript from just yesterday 12/19/06. Arthur was Richard Mandella's Vet, but now holds the position Equine Medical Direct of the CA Horse Racing Board. That whole transcript describes the profession so well in my view. As to training Arthur had this to say: "My impression is horses are not as hardy as they were 30 years ago. Having said that, I also believe training patterns have changed...there is less emphasis on horsemanship today, and more on medication, veterinary care, and trainer salesmanship." (see Burch)

While I would hesitate to plaster every present trainer with Arthur's above assertion, obviously training then and now mean different things to different people. As does training at this very time in history mean different things to different folks.

This post is to communicate precisely what RR will mean by the term training as I go forward with posts about Mandella conventional West Coast training.

The obvious: race horses perform an athletic event. Training for the event involves variables designed to improve performance. For human athletes the training-coaching variables boil down to drilling, conditioning, and mental work. For equine athlete's it's exactly the same with a couple of additions.

First, for horses training must take into account the fragility and injury prone nature of the horse running at speed. This becomes important both for the preservation of the athlete as well as the safety of the human rider.

Secondly, we have such peripheral issues which nevertheless affect performance, as animal husbandry, animal training as in teaching a dog to roll over, and numerous other side issues which may have some effect on race day performance.

So, "training" horses refers to:
1. Event performance variables involving drilling and conditioning of the athlete.
2. Health, safety and injury prevention.
3. Animal (may i use the term) issues.

Combine the above and I believe you have the horsemanship that Rick Arthur was referring to.

I must say that i'm hardly enamored to the term horsemanship. That this or that person is a good horseman or woman has always bothered me. Use of the term sort of implies that everyone else is not, that there some sort of closed mysterious fraternity or sorority that has an intutive knowledge of horses that is unobtainable by the rest of us. The common usage of the term too often refers to some rural raised with horses who knows to dump feed and throw hay, or rope a steer, and so supposedly, they can train race horses.

Maybe I dislike the term because I have personally seen too many so called horsemen and women injure every single horse that comes into their shedrow most within a short period of time. Since I believe the term misused in our sport, I will reject Rick Arthur's term horsemanship as what I will refer to, and simply use the term "training" as it is defined. This is other than to say that there are and have been superb horsemen and women who deserve the accolade.

With that being off the RR chest, the next few posts will then deal with the training of Richard Mandella.

12/18/06 4 x 6f slow gallop, astride.
12/19/06 6 x1f riderless fast work at near max speed.
12/20/06 Rest day today. we're without heat or swelling from yesterday's work, it's the sort of rainstorm outside blowing in from Denver to halt things for a while. Good timing on the rain!