Welcome to the 2015 Retired Racehorse Project Gelding

This week I made a trip with two friends to South Dakota to pick up a new off-the-track Thoroughbred.  When we left my place the weather was turning, so as we drove east we were outrunning the spring storm.

It was lovely company, we laughed a lot over the course of our entertaining conversations, and we also listened to the first half of The Hunger Games book on CD.

When we arrived in South Dakota we got to meet Heather and her daughter, as well as the farm dogs and the other horses at her place.  The gelding had been living there since November when he came off the track.  He had most of his "let down" from racing at Heather's place, including treatment for ulcers and getting used to normal horse life in a pasture.

I love the photo with the back of both of our shirts.  A meeting of the minds between Bit of Honey Training and the Retired Racehorse Project logos!

I put a leather halter on the horse for the big trip home.  I prefer to haul horses in leather halters because if, heaven forbid, the horse gets his head stuck on something in the course of travel the leather will break instead of some part of his body breaking.  He was very friendly and followed me right into the trailer.  I usually find that track horses are good for loading in the trailer and hauling, because they do so much traveling from track to track for various race meets.  This gelding is no exception, he just hopped right in and traveled like a champ. 

 

We were pleased to see that Heather had rambunctious dogs at her place, too, so at least the commotion of dogs will be familiar to him!

This gelding was born in Ohio, is ten years old, and he raced 51 times.  He won 5 times with total earnings of $28,374 over the course of his racing career, which lasted 6 years.  He was started for racing very late as far as race horses go.  He was not handled by anyone until he was three years old.  At that time he was halter broke and then started galloping in a western saddle until he was trained enough to race.

I was given these photos from his racing days, which were taken at a meet by Joe Nevills from Michigan who works for the Daily Racing Form. 

Part of the reason I was able to get this horse is because his temperament is sort of looking at quirky in the rear-view mirror.  He has several behaviors that were challenging to accommodate both at the track and at Heather's place.  I'm eager to see how these resolve once he settles in at Bit of Honey.  Most of his issues are a horse's attempt at self-soothing behavior that were exhibited when separated from his best friend.  Some of his issues are exhaustive running in the stall, swallowing air, walking the fence line obsessively, panic and anxiety when faced with new things or negatively associated stimuli such as semi trucks and geese.  While I haven't yet had a good look inside this horse's head, I've dealt with all these behaviors before and even all of them in one horse.  I have a variety of ways to address them, and part of the training with this gelding will be determining which methods work best to calm him and give him confidence, hopefully extinguishing the unwanted behaviors.

We arrived home in Colorado late last night, driving through some impressively large snow flakes and rain during the last hour or two of the trip.  The horse did well in the trailer for the most part, which was wonderful considering how long the drive ended up being.  We put him in the barn last night when we arrived.  I had been warned about his cribbing especially when he is in a new environment, but he has been fine so far.  He has just been eating hay from the all-day-buffet, munching on his mash which I fed this morning, and visiting with his new friends. 

He is in a small paddock with access to a stall in the barn.  He is sharing his curved fence line with Dewey, Highboy, and Garmin, and he can see almost all of the other 15 horses on the property from where he is stabled.  Highboy has made it his own personal mission to welcome the new guy and teach him lip-wrestling.  Mostly the new horse is ignoring Highboy, which makes sense because the new guy is ten years old and Highboy is almost six but mentally going on three.  

The new guy hasn't yet expressed what he wants to be called around the barn.  I was told that he was known as "Arnie" at the track, "Mac" at Heather's place, and his Jockey Club registered name is "I Shall Return".  Looking forward to figuring out this kid and getting him comfortable.  If all goes well, I will take him to Kentucky in October for the Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover.  He is already entered in this competition, and as his new trainer I'm able to compete him there at the Kentucky Horse Park.