Hold On To Hope ~ Amy Stroup ~ Lion | Rio ~ Ace Cross Country ~ 16/07/24 скачать в хорошем качестве

Hold On To Hope ~ Amy Stroup ~ Lion | Rio ~ Ace Cross Country ~ 16/07/24

I ust wanted to address the importance of proper training and taking the time with horses. For me, producing exracers is my favourite part of the job. I love backing as well, and for me, there is very little difference between backing a horse and retraining an exracer. People buy exracers for a lot of the same reasons they buy youngsters, they are cheap and you can put your own stamp on them. But we are never short of backing liveries, because people know that it takes experience to introduce a baby to ridden work, but so many people think they can introduce an exracer to an entirely different walk of life by themselves. For me, it’s no different. If I’m backing a baby, I will spend at least six weeks building muscle in straight lines out hacking, showing the horse how to work in self-carriage (which is different to on the bridle and can’t be taught with a lunging device or any other gadget), use their core, work leg to hand and listen to all aids. They will have their first canters out hacking and will only go in an arena when they’re balanced and off the forehand. To train an exracer, we would do exactly the same thing. More often than not, we see people taking off the track (or even worse, horses who have had some down time) thoroughbreds straight out to competitions and training outings, usually looking more like a racehorse than a riding horse, heads in the air, no topline. Their brains are blown, they’re being rushed into jumps that are far too big and are refusing left, right and centre, because they have absolutely no idea what is being asked of them and none of the skills they need to succeed. Their job up until this moment has been to run fast over flat ground. They have never used the muscles required to elevate or jump up instead of across. Some of the time, people get away with it. ‘Trainers’ get away with it because the buyer hasn’t witnessed the uncomfortable round, and instead, only sees the picture of the one jump the horse cleared and is wowed by the fact the horse is jumping 80cm. Although obviously the hope is that the trainers do it right always, very often the buyer influences this, because they wouldn’t see the value in a video of the horse confidently clearing courses of 60cms. This is why the trainer has attempted a height that the horse isn’t yet comfortable with. Then the horse is sold and it’s the amateur’s problem. Amateurs get away with it because they have all the time in the world to fling the horse at show jumps until something sticks. However, when people don’t get away with it, rarely do they look at their training methods and question them. No, then the horses are ‘typical exracers’. A good amateur needs to be aware that this can happen in the retraining, and is one of the reasons building topline and self—carriage before doing anything else is so important. Horse training is questioning everything. Horse training is knowing that the horse is never to blame, because they are the 500kg prey animal and it is your job to take responsibility for them. It’s a tricky balance of when to push and when to hold back, but if you push too soon, that’s on you, not the horse. People often think that we take too long producing our horses, and that’s because you can’t take it back when you ask too much of them. You can’t click your heals together and fix their sore muscles if you ask them to do something their body isn’t ready for, or fix their confidence issues if you ask them to do something their brain isn’t ready for. That takes time to fix. So we would rather take the time in the first place. What we end up with is a horse who is thoroughly produced instead of quickly produced. This little man, The Lion Strikes (in orange) has taken a lot of time, he was a very weak five year old and he took a lot to build up and balance. He thoroughly enjoyed his first outing, jumping everything asked of him and loving every second. However, he hasn’t been out since then because we decided that we wanted him even stronger, which is why we spent the winter packing on muscle and working hard on his flat work. He didn’t leave the ground again until December. The other little man in the video is a notoriously misunderstood super cob, who earned himself the title of dangerous in some circles because he had never been trained correctly. Rio and little Meg started coming to us for lessons in 2023 and it has been amazing to watch the partnership blossom. Rio used to bolt and buck his mini jockey off pretty much evertime out, and so much of that came down to strength. He too had no topline to support his jumping. Flatwork really is the basis for jumping, and Little Meg has put in hours and hours of work with her coaches to develop that flatwork, including letting us get on her horse to show him how to work correctly, which is incredibly hard for a child to do! So proud of the result of persistence and hard work.