�������������������������������� If it wasn’t for horseracing, the Thoroughbred breed would not even exist! Regardless all of the controversies about racing, racehorses are still horses, they have served humanity to create civilization, while being a product of it at the same time. Even the wild horses are domestic horses; they come from horses escaped from living in a state of domestication, and reestablished as wild animals. The exception is the Przewalsky horse, which differs from the domestic horse species by its number of chromosomes. As human beings, we should feel responsible for them, but reality is that horses are valued for what they do for us. Thinking about horseracing, when referring to a certain horse, all people can remember about that horse is its name, sex and sometime how much money was earned by its performance. While the racing career of horses generally ends at five years of age, in reality horses live much longer, and a racehorse’s life after racing falls in the hands of those who truly value, but most of all, love horses. Everyone knows the value of a horse, and its great potential in terms of performance in the all equestrian disciplines, but it is very rare to find someone like Jon K., who decided to rescue a racehorse by the name of Today not Tommorow, and wanted to turn her in a therapy horse. Jon K. renamed his mare Misty, and I had the pleasure to be working with them for almost two years. He contacted me after watching a YouTube video I published years ago (Racehorse rescue from the ground up), featuring Downtown Rosalie, and the story of how I retrained her. At first, Jon watched the video because he admired Julie Krone, who was a guest at the event held when the video was taken, but then he saw the different approach I take to the subject, which is part of the Human Horse Sensing horsemanship method. �������������������������������������������� New life for a racehorse. Jon K. and Misty. Read their heart warming story on the next page. When a racehorse has the possibility of being adopted, there are always reservations about its mind and personality. 56 www.EliteEquestrian.us Some trainers attempt to make ex-racehorses forget their experience at the track by letting them rest in a pasture for some time, others try to teach them a new performance, but even after the retraining period is over, very few riders can successfully adopt them. The emphasis is always put on the performance rather than on the way that the horse feels about horsemanship, and on the communication between rider and horse. The root of the problem is the racehorse’s ability to move at fast speeds, which comes from the equine instinctual response to movement, that is the racehorse’s main feature. This trait is genetically created, and enhanced by the training process of horseracing. The racehorse, as any other horse, moves away from pressure, but in racing it happens mainly in a straight line, and faster than in any other equestrian sport. It can be very difficult for a rider to control the physics of such performance, which conflicts with the horse’s use in the other disciplines in many aspects. The main reasons are the direction of movement that horses are trained to perform, and the kind of contact surface that riders have with the horse. Jockeys are suspended on short stirrups in mid air, at times hang on the horse’s mouth barely touching the horse, while in the other disciplines riders sit on the horse and exercise control on the horse through the seat. Both positions allow for a different balance between horse and rider, and build a different response to the rider’s aids from the horse. In addition to this, jockeys use the whip to hit horses, to make them go even faster, and produce pain in the horse that results in fear. This emotion is not something a horse can overcome & TO GO SLOW. HOW TO TEACH A Racehorse ... The principle that traditionally dominates the equestrian disciplines is that the horse must execute what is required, but this is not what always happens. Continued... ����������������������������������������������������������������������������
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