Summary II: ENHANCE

Getting the ENHANCE part of "Preserve and Enhance requires, owner/trainer/rider knowledge, and getting compliance from the animal.

The photo demonstrates "compliance" as problematical even for the .00000001% toughest humans on the planet as shown, female riders-and a little microcosm of typical compliance problems.

I've had horses easy to train, horses hard to train, and all in between. I retired a couple before they hit the race track for the only reason that they were so dangerous that good conscience prevented me from putting a rider on board, and one of those was by Broadbrush. I still reflect on those two capable horses and think "damm".

This is what we ask the riders to do to get our horse around the track following today's training instructions. From 9 feet high up it all begins with control, and keeping in mind-- we have good intelligent riders( a rare species), and also an abundant number of pea brained or pea hearted types or, heaven forbid, a combination. Those dealing daily with "riders" will have stories.

The rider's thought process motoring around the race track runs double track: control and carrying out the instructions. I'd say the former occupies about 80% of the brain, with 20% brain left over to consider what the horse is supposed to be doing. Because rider safety is such a huge concern, when that rider requests blinkers therefore, that we think unnecessary, that rider gets the blinkers or any other "equipment" without further Q. Because safety is such a huge factor, when our rider screws up something or everything, if we think the rider has possibilities we work with that rider on a daily basis correcting each perceived problem one by one.

Control on the race track requires "technique" and riding skill that some possess more than others. Its often necessary to match horses with skill level. Safety factors out of the way we can then go on to the numerous performance variables as the horse goes around the track. These involve warm up, monitoring warm up, evaluating warm up to get optimal performance, training the horse to the type of warm up we want to accomplish--and for complicated warm ups it's nice to get daily practice if ur rider will comply--getting the speed, restraining the horse to the speed, monitoring the speed, monitoring the stride, keeping the horse focused and the stride together and efficient, planning for and getting the leads (above all), avoiding rider stupid stuff, monitoring the breathing and taking correct action after good breathing falls apart, and finally pulling up the eager animal and conducting a proper warm down--see Bill Pressey comments couple of posts ago, although personally I might differ that destroying a few capillaries is irrelevant. Speculation!

Part of the above process will be maintaining the enthusiasm, eagerness and thus cooperation from our horse. There are reasons some horses quit trying out there. Likely these have been taken once too often beyond the brink, or have been victims of "stupid stuff" which even with their walnut brains they eventually figure out two and two, or, as has been the case in my stable a time or two, they start resent having to work too hard. This latter problem I was always aware with with my Rollin' Rodney, and, indeed, I got always enthusiastic response under tack from him, possibly by doing a little less than the exercise physiology ideal might dictate. Better, I am thinking to have an eager horse do less, than a recalcitrant animal that finally quits the workouts.

In truth there's so much going on out there that it's necessary for us as owner/trainers from the ground #1 to know what's going on with the rider so that we may make corrections, as well as the basics of exercise physiology. There are certain things each rider "must" do to preserve and enhance our horse. Absolute necessity. If you've got a rider violating this basic premise, you need correct, whatever it takes, while you still have a horse. On the brighter side, once we get that rider and horse together with our training schematic the "enhance" stuff presumably results over time in some nice purse money for our needy pockets.