racing blinkers

[No_Angel]

ive just been searching through some pictures on google and saw one picture of a woman scholing her horse in racing blinkers to help it concentrate.
im wondering if it would work for maddie, as shes awful to school.

[Shadowlark]

Maybe.. and maybe it will make her worse! She may become spoky as stuff will "pop" into her field of vision rather then apearing gradually.

Don't know till you try ;)

[No_Angel]

i did put some sheepskin 'french' blinker type things on her, and she was a little better, but im thinking that full blinkers would really get her to concentrate.
i really need to see what tack she raced in

[KateWooten]

Racing blinkers derive from an industry which takes young horses through a very strict, very early, very people-oriented schedule. To make a lot of money, the horse has to show he's the best - competition is at its highest. Nobody, not even in the industry believes that it is in any horse's best interest physically, or mentally, to be run fast at two years old. The early casualty rate is enormous. It is just par for the course for many, even most, young race horses to break down in their 2nd and 3rd year.

Any methods, gadgets, training schedules developed in that environment need to be seen in context.

I don't imagine you have that tight a schedule for your horse ! Whilst blinkers might curb the problem in the very short-term, they do nothing to address the underlyig problem. In the medium-long term, that needs to be your focus. Why is she spooky ? What gaps are there in her early training that you need to go back and fill so that she does have the confidence in you, her leader, that she does not need to be the 'lookout horse' all the time ? She needs to feel thatwhen you are around, she can relax because you take on the role of herd leader - she doesn't have to.

How much, and what sort of groundwork have you done with this horse ? Through moving her feet from the ground, you should be able to command her attention and respect so that the spookiness all but disappears.

ah - just gone back and read that she is an OTTB ... hmmm... did you retrain her yourself ? My thinking about OTTBs is that even more than the average horse, their early years are so very artificial - they've likely not been allowed to just 'be a horse' at all. How long have you had her .... any pictures ? I keep thinking I would love to retrain one - they're cheap and easy to get hold of here, we're just south of Kentucky - but then the more I kow about the industry the less I can bear to put any money into it ...

Kate

[No_Angel]

we do lots of groundwork, and she isnt exactly spooky, but always has an eye out on the others as i have to ride her in the field and shes low in the pecking order.

[jUmPingIsLifE]

ah, you just solved your own 'problem'

more groundwork. your horse doesn't see you as the "alfa horse" it needs. she is looking for someone to lead her, you need to keep working and make her see YOU are the leader and YOU are hte dominate one...not the horse in the other field. get her attention on you as her leader and you will keep her attention much easily. i would not school with a blinker, you arn't solving any problems at all.

and if you ever brought her to a show... your problem would be 100x worse. no blinker, a lot of extra stuff going on (more then in your school). see where this is going?...

goodluck with her, i would keep up with the groundwork. and when you are riding work on A LOT of transitions and changes of direction. if you keep her listening to you and keep her on her toes about what is happening next she wont be able to let her mind wonder.
if i feel tahoe is paying attention to anything else that may make him spook i automatically canter off, halt canter off quick tight change of direction, i do one rein stops ect until he is so in tune with me and waiting for me to do something else he isn't expecting he forgets about whatever it was that had his attention. now he is kind of allways waiting for me to do something that he really pays attention to all my aids adn any shift in weight i may have. the second i move in that saddle he is on guard waiting haha

[No_Angel]

at a show she is fine, and i do lots of groundwork with her, as i said, and she listens to me and respects me, i have another horse who is very jelous nad charges at her, i almost got squashed today as amber charged at maddie and maddie hid behind me.
blinkers arent for permenant use, just for schooling, she is a very fizzy 15yr old horse, who im retraining bitless, and hasnt had any formal training for years, and she still thinks shes a 5yr old racehorse.

[KateWooten]

wow ! sounds like you're doing pretty well then ... the other horse is right there when you're schooling ??? Yikes, I'd be kind of worried. My two are inseperable so we have this deal going on at the moment where whichever one I'm working with, the other is freaking out in the stable. I tried leaving one out in the field, and that's a scary wreck about to happen ... And I've tried working one in the fireld with the other right there - which is fine if my boy gets to stand about and laugh at Rosie getting worked, but is not at all fine when my little mare gets to gallop about and charge at me and joe all hooves flying. Not fun. Hmmm. I still don't like the blinkers idea though !

Kate

[No_Angel]

its really odd between them as sometimes they are ok together, except if i go near maddie in the field amber will charge at her, sometimes she is ok when im riding or dealing with her, but othertimes, like lst week when i went to do some groundwork with maddie, id just got her headcollar on and amber charged, so i had to take maddies headcollar off and catch amber instead:rolleyes:
one way to keep the others occupied is to give them hay, so they stay away from her, but then all maddie can think about is the hay:rolleyes:

i have some blinkers that came off my ponies driving bridle as she hated them, so ill see if i can get them on maddie and see what she thinks.

[Jessey]

Be aware that if she has never worn blinkers it could really panic her, esp if she can hear but not see the other horses charging at her.
It sounds like Amber is quite gelous of you doing anything with Maddie? is there no where else you could work her so she wasn't expecting to be charged all the time? or maybe put/tie Amber out of the way so she doesn't bother you?

J x

[No_Angel]

she could be put in her stable but she can panic, she rears and bronks in her stable:rolleyes: considering she didnt really want to know me before i got maddie, shes all over me now.
i wont just sling the blinkers on, ill be putting them on her for a few days while shes eating her dinner, then leading her round in them so she gets used to them.

[KateWooten]

you know, any of those professional horse trainers that I love to read, or watch, or talk to, will tell you that 'horses never lie' or something like that in their own words. They almost never advise you to 'sneak up' on your horse, they almost never say 'if the horse hates being wormed, what you need to do is hide the wormer behind your back, pet him and give him carrots, and then when he's not expecting it, ram that wormer in his mouth, shove it in and run away...'. Instead they all seem to think that you should be open and honest with your horse, and that any lack of openness tends to show up in the horse-handler relationship as a lack of trust. Why do they all think that way ?

With one of my youngsters, he's ready and able to go out and be schooled with distractions all around. He's pretty laid back, and wants a good leader. The other is not. She's not at that stage yet. I want her to be, I want to be working with her, out there, in the real world with other horses, and other stuff distracting her, calling to her, tempting her away from the undeniably fascinating work I have in store for her. Alas, we are not there yet. I have tried, it is not a success, she gets distracted and we both become unhappy. As her leader, it is my responsibility to set her up for success, not battle along with failure. It is my jpb to find for her a safe place where we go to learn... and thereby a safe set of exercises that we do together which then, when we are ready, we will take outside the roundpen or arena with confidence.

If I were in your position, struggling against this miserable schooling situation, out of my depth, with a horse that spooks and shows no confidence in its leader, that's where my focus would be - in sorting the situation out and setting her up for success.

Training is the answer to your problem, not another gadget. When you are ready to hear that, then ask your question again, nobody on this board would laugh or say 'I told you so'. You were originally saying that you wondered if blinkering the poor horse in this situation in which she lacks confidence would help, because the poor horse is 'awful' to school. Perhaps it would have been more honest of you to have stated that you were going to use blinkers regardless, and would like some assurance that this is a great idea that will fix all 'your horse's problems'. It won't. The horse does not have a problem.

[No_Angel]

look, i stated this on the other thread.
my horse is happy with me, we are confident in each other, and my other horse is jelous.
would you rather i school in the middle of the road?:rolleyes: thats all i have, a field and a road.
i really think that if id like to put gadgets on my horse, thats my choice.
what about all these poor blinkered driving horses? are they being mistreated by their owners?
if i took my horse to a school, somewhere far away from her bully, then would be ok, as it is i cant afford it all the time and so dont have that luxury.

i said im very into natural horsemanship, but im starting to know how the people who arent feel when it pushed intheir faces, like the kind of people you shut the door on when they come around preeching about god.:rolleyes:

[fitz]

You'll only know if it works or not if you try it. And most natural horsemanship experts advocate experimenting with different things to see if they work. You know your horse and what is best for it, dont let anyone tell you otherwise.

[hApPiNeSs]

why dont you just try it and see?

if it doesnt work, then no matter, take them off. :)

[Anna**]

I agree try and see how she goes, if they work and you can get her concentration better then after a while you may be able to take them off and eventually school without them. You wont know till you try. If you decide to have a go then let us know how you get on and what she thinks of them :)

[KateWooten]

you're one up on me there - I know nothing about Natural Horsemanship ! Certainly nothing natural about what I do - I have never seen a horse standing in a field doing his lateral flexion over and over again.

That's not what I was getting at at all. I was in exactly the same position as regards the field right up until this autumn, when I got the round pen. Until then it was, like you say, the field or the road. But the problem I was having was that the two of mine wouldn't stop interracting when I was working with one of them in the field - they didn't know the difference between that, and 'free-time'. So, what I had to do, was work on their 'separation anxiety' that is, I had to focus on how I could progressively work on each of them, so they did have the confidence to have one of them in the stable while the other was free to concentrate.

It's like if someone asked 'my horse keeps biting me whenever I slap him with a fish, do you think I should start hitting him with a dead squirrel instead?' The answer would be 'no I think you should stop slapping him with the fish'. Same thing - if the problem is the horse has too many distractions to concentrate, then the distractions need to be reduced until she can, and then built up again from there, gradually.

Kate ( <-- trying to be nicer :) )

[No_Angel]

ive dug my blinkers out so im going to try them on her tonight:)

[fitz]

That actually does make sense Kate, moreso than your other suggestions. When you speak about lateral flexion and one rein stops, its like double dutch to me, and most riders on this side of the atlantic I suspect.

you're one up on me there - I know nothing about Natural Horsemanship ! Certainly nothing natural about what I do - I have never seen a horse standing in a field doing his lateral flexion over and over again.

That's not what I was getting at at all. I was in exactly the same position as regards the field right up until this autumn, when I got the round pen. Until then it was, like you say, the field or the road. But the problem I was having was that the two of mine wouldn't stop interracting when I was working with one of them in the field - they didn't know the difference between that, and 'free-time'. So, what I had to do, was work on their 'separation anxiety' that is, I had to focus on how I could progressively work on each of them, so they did have the confidence to have one of them in the stable while the other was free to concentrate.

It's like if someone asked 'my horse keeps biting me whenever I slap him with a fish, do you think I should start hitting him with a dead squirrel instead?' The answer would be 'no I think you should stop slapping him with the fish'. Same thing - if the problem is the horse has too many distractions to concentrate, then the distractions need to be reduced until she can, and then built up again from there, gradually.

Kate ( <-- trying to be nicer :) )

[monique]

I have not got an arena or school to work my horses in only the field they live in, but what i do is create a paddock out of electric fencing (not usually electrified when schooling unless the baby is really insistent on joining us) this way the other horses can't interfere with the lesson, but don't get stressed at being seperated, if your horse has one eye, ear coocked for trouble she wont be concentrating on you, if you can make your horse feel safe and show that the other horse cant get in she may concentrate abit more on you. Blinkers may help but if she gets caught by the other horse while wearing them it may create even more problems. Hope this makes sense and is of some help to you.

[No_Angel]

we have a fence made of electric tape, but they knock it down and brake the posts.

[KateWooten]

That actually does make sense Kate, moreso than your other suggestions. When you speak about lateral flexion and one rein stops, its like double dutch to me, and most riders on this side of the atlantic I suspect.

Well that makes sense, I suspect you're absolutely right - that would explain why so many of the threads from the UK are asking for help with horses who have learned to pull, bolt and brace themselves against their riders' hands. I have explained in some detail both lateral flexion, the one-rein-stop, and disengaging of the hindquarters from the ground that all lead up to the softness of the one-rein-stop under saddle - let me know if you cannot find which threads.

It's not something I learnt, or even thought about, when I was in UK, or even when I was in Europe - and that was working with youngsters too! Horrifying when I look back at what we used to 'get away with' thinking we were training the poor horse.

Having learnt about how to avoid the pulling battle, and the cycle of ever stronger bits, and the background in terms of how a horse learns ... I can't imagine how I ever got on without it. Badly, I suspect. I certainly remember being bolted with many times in previous years, but not once since 'rethinking' how to stop a horse.