It's a Maybe: The Retired Racehorse Book

Sometimes I think that my greatest talent is coming up with awesome ideas and then sticking them on the back-burner until I have "time." (As if "time" were something I was ever going to possess, to clench in my fist, to cackle a villainous laugh over. I've got you at last, Time! Probably not.)

Stuck on my backburner I have various art projects (what to do with that charming little Sam Savitt paperback before it decays entirely? Something amazing. I'll look it up later), an entire manuscript imaginatively named The Eventing Novel (I'll completely rewrite that eventually), and, most annoyingly of all, the Retired Racehorse book.

I've been planning the Retired Racehorse book since the day I started Retired Racehorse Blog. You might know it, a little WordPress project that made me moderately Internet Famous amongst a small proportion of Thoroughbred enthusiasts and got me a lot of Facebook friends. (Hi Facebook friends! xo) I meant to just keep training Off-Track Thoroughbreds and blog about their training as I went, and eventually put it all into a lovely retraining manual, since it can be difficult to consult a blog before you go out to ride.

YOU PROMISED ME A BOOK

But it spun all out of proportion and somehow I ended up a writer in New York City. I attribute this development directly to Retired Racehorse Blog, and I still want to write the book, out of appreciation, at the very least! The blog deserves its book!

The problem, of course, is that I'm not training horses anymore, and I can't just make up fixes for problems. I don't have a set curriculum for a horse. I'm not Natalie Keller Reinert Horsemanship MasterClass, Inc. My blog posts were mentally composed as I was riding, thinking through the problems that the horse was presenting me as I tried to trace them to their roots in his early training as a racehorse.

And then yesterday I was in the basement of the Strand Bookstore, which is one of my favorite places to be (certainly it's my favorite basement) and I found a gorgeous little vintage hardcover of Ahlerich: The Making of a Dressage World Champion, by Reiner Klimke. It's basically a detailed—incredibly detailed—training diary of one of the most wonderful dressage teams we've ever seen. Just wonderful.

I didn't buy it, because it was $40 and my price limit for books is closer to $1.

But it did remind me that I had a perfectly good diary of training a retired racehorse from racetrack to amateur eventer in five months, and I really ought to pull the Retired Racehorse Book off that back-burner.

Except I still really don't have time.

And then today I saw a WordPress plug-in called Anthologize, which is supposed to make your blog into a book automagically, and I thought, this is the sign! I'll do it today! 

But then I read the instructions, and it doesn't work on WordPress.com hosted blogs. (i.e. dot wordpress dot com blogs, aka free blogs.)

So I pulled out my hair for a few minutes (it's really long and I can spare a few strands) and then took a deep breath. I'll still do the Retired Racehorse Book. Just not at this exact moment. When I have time.

Guest Blogger--Natalie Keller Reinert

I'm happy to welcome Natalie Keller Reinert to Equestrian Ink today as a guest blogger. Natalie has two horse-related blogs, which are listed at the bottom of this post. Here's a bio I "lifted" from one of Natalie's blogs:

It's always been about Thoroughbreds. I've ridden Warmbloods, Arabs, and Quarter Horses, but I always come back to TBs. At 13 I got my first OTTB, at 19 I got my first gallop job, and now I have a farm of my own raising babies, training young horses, and writing about it all. This is my passion. Thank you for sharing it with me here. - Natalie Keller Reinert
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Dominating Thoroughbreds

Who's having fun here, exactly?

I spend my days with Thoroughbreds. I breed, I train, I reschool OTTBs. In prepping my posts at Retired Racehorse Blog, I do a lot of research, lurk on a few message boards, and try to find out what people are doing with their Thoroughbreds. There are so many issues out there, so many OTTBs that are slipping through the cracks after their "forever homes" turn out to be very temporary indeed, that I knew there must be some sort of communication gap between the racetrack and the boarding stable.

What I find is that there is a significant population of riders and trainers which thinks that anything outside of perfectly contained, on-the-bit, submissive obedience, is nothing short of dangerous.

Horses are motion. They are prey, constantly on the move, scenting the wind, listening to the sighs of the natural world around them, waiting for the shoe to drop. When you are prey, you are always waiting for the end, and you know it will be messy.

Extreme submission calls for the horse to put away his instincts and follow blindly. Some might call this a beautiful expression of partnership. But submission/domination is quite the opposite. You might be having fun, but what is your horse thinking? Nothing. He's waiting for you to think for him. It really doesn't sound like fun for either party. You're working too hard - your horse is just going through the motions.

I went through a very windy spell as a teenager. My Thoroughbred, Amarillo, had taken me through some frightening rides, I'd taken some very bad falls, and although we had found a physical reason for the behavior and corrected it, the incident left scars. I'd grown up on his back, but now, after six years together, I was terrified to take him to shows.
I eventually got up the nerve and took him to a horse trials. Convinced that he was going to start leaping about and showing his heels to everyone (and I'd seen his heels, from underneath of him, and wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance), I took him for a walk around the grounds. He went like a giraffe, all neck and his head so high I couldn't have reached his nose, despite being just fifteen three. His reach was incredible; even at the walk, I could barely keep up with him. He pulled at the halter and broke the chin strap. I felt dread at the thought of getting on that beast.
But eventually, the time came to tack up and I swung into the saddle, sick with anxiety. I got the same reaction walking him under saddle that I had in a halter and rope. Amarillo's brain was clearly going at a hundred miles an hour, and I had nothing to do with it. We went towards the warm-up area to prep for dressage, and I felt like I was looking at the world framed by two pricked ears.

Then someone's voice called out to me across the ring. "Look at that horse, he's having such fun!"

And it clicked. Amarillo was happy.

He was happy to be here, amongst all the other horses and excitement. He was a racehorse. He was in his element.

I loosened my tense fingers, asked for a trot, and he ducked his head into the bit, not to buck, not to grab it and bolt, but to round up, trot with pleasure, do his job as he wanted to do it. There was no question of submission, there was simply the two of us, jogging across a field somewhere in Florida, surrounded by joyous, leaping horses. And if we didn't perform a Grand Prix dressage test, well, we got a few sevens and eights in a Training Level test, and we did it on each other's terms, not on my own iron-clad ones.

Thoroughbreds thrive on one-on-one communication. They know their jobs, as racehorses, and the very good ones know how to work with their jockeys to get to the front of the pack and stick their nose in front. Trying to dominate a racehorse is simply nonsensical. Asking for total submission, a denial of the heart and intelligence that makes them great.
 
Natalie Keller Reinert
http://retiredracehorseblog.wordpress.com/
http://equineprogressive.wordpress.com/