Tag: 2021 thoroughbred makeover

The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: For Young OTTBs, The Only Constant Is Change

This is the second installment in our monthly column from editor-in-chief Natalie Voss following her journey with her 2021 Thoroughbred Makeover hopeful Underscore, fondly known as Blueberry. Read the first in this series here and learn Blueberry's origin story and the author's long-running bond with this gelding and his family here. You can find Blueberry's Facebook page here.

I spent a lot of time this winter staring at my new OTTB grazing in the field with a furrowed brow, trying to decide how I felt about his appearance. (Fortunately, Blueberry is the type of horse who easily tunes out distractions and grew used to me squinting at him with my head tilted to one side.) I can never decide if he's just a hair lighter than I want him to be or if the only real problem is that I'm too used to looking at my draft cross mare.

He has been easier to keep weight on than I would have guessed when I got him in late November, and he kept his slick coat and topline until just about January. In February, we got several rounds of ice, snow, and frigid temperatures and whatever muscle he had at the track evaporated as he was outside 24/7 and not yet under saddle. He was never thin exactly; just, as I kept telling my husband, “ratty.” He grew a scraggly, thin winter coat which also added to his somewhat bedraggled aura. We'd pulled his shoes in an effort to toughen his soles, and every time he'd take a short step over the driveway after a trim, I'd flinch even though he'd walk, trot and gallop around his paddock soundly.

Still, he was happy enough, bright-eyed, ate and drank plenty, and plodded along for our walks up and down the hilly paddock lanes. I knew, logically, he was healthy and doing well for a horse who had gone from the track to turnout at the start of a Kentucky winter. What I discovered during this period though, was that I was uncomfortable with the “ugly duckling” phase.

Blueberry encounters a crossrail on his first day at the new farm, early April

I am fortunate to have an OTTB expert in our trainer, Stephanie Calendrillo. She trains and resells off-track horses and will be headed to her third Thoroughbred Makeover this year with eventing star Dispatcher. Most of her clients' horses are also OTTBs, so she's used to managing the transition from track to arena. Don't worry about this, she told me. It's normal for a horse's body to change when he goes from track to pasture, but it'll change again when he begins under-saddle work, and it'll happen so quickly it will surprise you.

A lot of my writing on the Paulick Report is in our Horse Care section, where we try to educate readers about veterinary and management topics. Often, time is a key component to healing an injury, managing a chronic condition, or improving a horse's fitness. The unspoken aspect of this of course is that a horse isn't going to look perfect every day of their lives. As long as you're making progress toward your goal and are using good, expert guidance, an ugly duckling phase is unavoidable. Until I had Blueberry, I hadn't thought about that before. My draft mare was quite a challenge in her early days, but her issues were more behavioral than they ever were aesthetic because she has feet like hickory, is impervious to foolish outside influences like pathogens, and gets fat on air. I spend more time trying to get weight off her than on, and while she's always been round, no one has ever worried about whether she was being looked after. All I could think, looking at Blueberry's somewhat hollowed-out neck in March was, 'If I saw that horse, I'd wonder a little bit about what was going on there.'

After we moved him to Stephanie's main facility in April and began more intensive ground and under-saddle work, we were surprised at how quickly he became stronger, how fast he built up fitness at the trot and later, the canter. We added protein and rice bran oil to his diet to help him keep up with his new workload and improve his coat and skin. When he didn't shed his winter coat (even in late April) I finally had him clipped about two weeks into his new workout plan and lo, there was a slight topline there. We added front shoes, and when he'd still have the odd tender day, we added pads and his feet are growing quick and strong.

Blueberry in late May, under saddle during a schooling session at the Kentucky Horse Park

Then the spring rains came, and with them, some rain rot. I tried a little of this and that, over-the-counter lotions and soaps mainly. Then there were the hives, tiny little ones that didn't seem to itch or hurt, but which blanketed his neck and shoulders, then his back, then his rump and legs. We tried corticosteroids and antihistamines and the hives gave way to little crusty bumps like rain rot from hell. I tried new over-the-counter lotions, and it didn't seem to yield. He looked a mess, but at least a reasonably athletic mess. At last, we found the solution – baby oil to soften the scabs, which are now nearly gone, and a diluted alcohol solution on healed areas where water from baths and thunderstorms will drip, encouraging bacteria to fester (down the legs, down the rump and sides). A slick summer coat is growing in, a shiny, brilliant reddish brown – a tribute to his mother.

Even though he's improving now, I know this is a step on the journey. Stephanie tells me that OTTBs often spend a full year sometimes adjusting to new diets, routines, pasture compositions, weather, working different muscles from what they did on the track. It's not that they aren't healthy or functional during that time, just that they're going to change. He's starting to fill out into the horse I hoped I'd have one day, but I know these journeys aren't always linear. He may encounter some new need or struggle at some stage, and I now feel I can treat it as a learning process – and remember to be patient with us both.

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Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: Riding Lessons About Nothing

I had my most valuable but optically boring riding lessons ever at the Super G Sporthorses farm my wife and I run in Parker, Colo., this month. I loved them, but I recognize that it was in the same way that George Costanza in Seinfeld loved pitching TV executives to create a show about “nothing” in the episode “The Pitch.”

To the outside observer, or at least those unfamiliar in the nuances of dressage, the lessons I did on my OTTBs Grand Moony (barn name Moo, show name Sorority Girl) and The Gray Man (barn name Uno, show name Rocketman) would have looked like they were “about nothing.” All we did was walk and trot on the flat at a time in our evolution that I've been jumping bigger on each horse.

I can almost hear you saying, like the TV executive character Russell Dalrymple did on Seinfeld, “Nothing? What does that mean?”

George responds, “Nothing happens on the show. It's just like life. You eat. You go shopping. You read. You eat.”

George eventually walks out. “This is the show, and we're not going to change it,” he insists, although the TV executives don't actually care.

However, the joke is actually on the TV executives. In real life, the whole brilliant series of Seinfeld, one of the most influential in television history, is critically regarded as an entire sitcom about “nothing.”

It was April 14, and I started that Wednesday in a somewhat foul mood with a lot of work and distractions. At midday, I needed a break and decided to ride my horses.

Since the start of the year, I've embraced the importance of emphasizing a strong riding foundation by focusing on dressage and not just trying to up the jumps or the excitement. I've also learned to appreciate the moments whose significance I don't understand at the time and that “Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are OTTBs.”

With that in mind, my wife and trainer Ashley guided me through walking and trotting on Moo and Uno. Optically, those gaits seem like the “nothing” part of riding. You don't even see them in two of the three phases in eventing, as riders canter, gallop, and jump on cross country and in stadium jumping, rarely ever breaking to the trot or walk.

Because the walk and trot also happen to be the hardest to master, Ashley was really using this opportunity to introduce a whole new theory to implement into my riding during these lessons.

Up until this point in my five-and-a-half-year journey going from broadcasting horses to riding them, I had evolved from “hold on” to “backseat driver.” By the former, I mean that I would sit on a lesson horse and get a feel for what it's like to ride a horse at the different gaits and then over my first jumps. By the latter, I mean that I would try to influence what the horse did.

However, in neither of these situations was I actually the one in control. It takes years just to develop balance on and adaptation to the variety of movements that a 1,000-pound animal with a mind of its own is capable of, especially a Thoroughbred.

Moo and the author in the midst of an exhilarating cross country round at Spring Gulch

Now that I've started to get the feel for riding horses and the ability to follow their movements, Ashley felt I was in position to begin to raise my game to being the “leader.”

“You want to be like a friendly dictator,” she said. “You influence and support every movement. Is the horse doing what you want in that moment? If they are, you don't just give it away but continue to tell them to maintain it.”

The first steps toward leading that Ashley insisted I maintain were establishing contact with the outside rein, then bringing the horse up to the contact through my legs and hips, then maintaining a frame and not letting them fall onto the contact.

It was a lot to manage, and that's why we worked the entire time at the walk and trot. It's kind of like how much genius went into the one of the greatest TV shows of all time that ultimately critics agree was about “nothing.”

The upshot of all this focus on the two gaits that I don't even use on cross country and in show jumping was that those phases got better.

Four days after these lessons, I went cross country schooling at the Spring Gulch Equestrian Area. At the end of last year, Moo and I moved up to the novice height of 2-feet-11, and she and I have appreciated the bigger jumps and faster pace. That Sunday at Spring Gulch, I started staring at some of the training level jumps that have a maximum height of 3-feet-3.

“You're going to do them,” Ashley said, sensing how intently I was studying them.

And we did. There's still room to improve my rhythm and form for me to be proficient at the higher level, but what I'm most proud of is that my focus on the basics is what actually made this opportunity to grow possible.

Then, one week later on April 24, Moo and I had an exhilarating cross country round during our first show of the year at the Spring Gulch Combined Test.

 

We were competing at novice, and we blazed around the course with no issues. We even had to slow down fairly significantly at the end of the course to avoid incurring speed faults. There are still aspects of my form that I can improve, and those will come by going back to basics.

I also reaped the benefits from the focus on foundation when schooling Uno on cross country at Spring Gulch on April 26. He won't even be four years old until May 3, but he took a number of beginner novice jumps, the first United States Eventing Association recognized level at 2-feet-7, with eagerness. He felt proud of himself afterward. Before this, the times I jumped Uno were often marred by micromanagement on my part. This time, I was there to support and nurture his talent, and it showed through in spades. I did “nothing,” and that made all the difference.

 

Those moments are amazing and are why the hard work and heartaches that come with riding horses is worth it. But afterward, it's important to get back to real life. “You eat. You read. You go shopping.” No TV show did it better, and no approach to riding is better than the one that emphasizes how significant what seems like “nothing” can be.

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Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: What To Do About ‘Trainer Fatigue’

Writers usually write about topics on which they are an expert. That's not the case here. I'm attempting to write about something I'm experiencing but don't quite know how to diagnose or solve…yet. Hopefully, this space, which has come with all the support you have given me over the past year of sharing my riding adventures through “Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries,” will help me take the first steps.

I started “Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries” because the plan was to compete at the Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover, an event I had announced for the previous five years, in 2020 with my 2016 bay OTTB mare Cubbie Girl North. The idealistic side of me thought this would be a space to showcase a fairytale George-Plimpton-esque journey of an announcer-turned-rider that would help an important cause to me in Thoroughbred aftercare.

The journey hasn't been a fairytale; it's been very real, filled with the most extreme highs and lows I've ever experienced, like when I got seven stitches and completed my first recognized event with Cubbie in the span of a week.

We didn't reach our destination because the 2020 Thoroughbred Makeover was postponed, as many sporting events of the past year were, because of COVID-19. Also, the extremes moments can be a blessing and a curse when working with retired racehorses straight off the track, especially if you're an amateur rider. Those extremes became more than I cared to experience as someone who's been riding for less than six years.

When the 2020 Thoroughbred Makeover was postponed, I decided to give Cubbie a break. I began working again with my first horse, the 2013 chestnut OTTB mare Grand Moony, whom I started showing under the name Sorority Girl in 2018. She had successfully competed in the Thoroughbred Makeover in 2017 with Ashley before becoming my first horse. The challenges of retraining a retired racehorse straight off the track that I experienced with Cubbie helped my journey with “Moo,” and we had our best results at events, even successfully moving up to the Novice level of 2-feet-11 at the end of 2020.

I decided that I wanted to continue progressing with Moo in 2021 and put my Makeover goals on hold. This year will be a “Mega Makeover” that includes the classes of 2020 and 2021, and announcing is my first priority. So, Cubbie is now on a free lease for the year with a caring, kind, up-and-coming trainer, Nicole Dayberry, and I hope I get to announce them at shows in Colorado and the surrounding area this year.

As I was arranging for Cubbie to go to Nicole, I told Ashley that I wanted to take a break from working with green OTTBs. So, naturally, as my wife and trainer who truly knows what's best for me, she found a retired racehorse that I should buy.

Kim Wendel, an upper-level eventer based in Colorado and a fellow board member with the organization that runs the Spring Gulch Horse Trials, was selling her 2017 grey OTTB gelding The Gray Man. “He'd be perfect for you,” was the sentiment of both Ashley and Kim.

“Well, s***, he's too nice to pass up,” I thought.

Long story short, a friend that rides at our barn, Rageena Price, and I decided to buy The Gray Man together. With his cool backstory and personality, a barn name of “Uno” because he only has one eye, and an eagerness to learn, this OTTB is full of potential for good times ahead. At the same time, he's a young horse full of playfulness and can be a lot to handle as a 16.3 hh big baby.

It's safe to say that Uno has a lot of personality, whether it be with his rider or with the Super G barn cat Archie. Photo by Ashley Horowitz

It's that balance that's exciting and terrifying. I imagine a scale where I weigh the pros and cons of OTTBs. On one side is the talent, the journey, and the reward for helping a racehorse successfully transition to a new life after retiring from racing. The Thoroughbred provides opportunities unlike any other horse breed. Weighing that down from the other side of the scale are the difficult learning moments for horse and rider, the miscommunication as they figure each other out, and, especially for a young OTTB, an exuberance that can be difficult to handle.

Unfortunately, I've fallen into the trap of looking at this scale before, during, and after every ride and then deciding whether it's all “worth it.” That's exhausting, and it leads to what I'm experiencing as “trainer fatigue.” It became worse as the big goal of competing in the Thoroughbred Makeover loomed.

So, what's the solution? After reflecting on everything I've written about, which is the most personally beneficial part of “Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries,” I've arrived at “change.” Change is difficult to implement, difficult to observe, and difficult to appreciate—at least for me.

Uno has shown an aptitude for jumping, but, as a young, energetic horse, he can also be a lot of handle. It's figuring out that balance that's a key to working with OTTBs. Photo by Ashley Horowitz

Not all OTTBs are alike. Now I'm working with a gelding instead of a mare. Cubbie would hold massive grudges. Uno does not. But, I have to appreciate that change and not fall into the trap that the journey with Uno will be the same as it was with Cubbie. I've changed my goals. It's not “Makeover or bust.” It's “What will make for a positive step forward, big or small, today?” And, hopefully, I will embrace that a backward step does not mean the end of progress or the journey.

Uno is excited about life and has a lot of energy. I would initially see that as a bad thing because his overeagerness is difficult to handle. However, that eagerness, once it's channeled, will be beneficial to taking big jumps on a cross country course. That's going to take time, so in the meantime, I lunge him before each ride. If he's hasn't been ridden in awhile, I'll close the doors to our indoor arena and let him run around. It used to freak me out, thinking, “I'm supposed to ride that,” but now it's cute.

 

I once told a corny joke while warming up on Uno and started laughing. At the sound of my laugh, he leapt in the air with all four feet off the ground, and I flew up with my four limbs above the saddle. I managed to stay on and one-rein stop. It was terrifying, but I changed my perspective that the best way to deal with it is to go with the flow. Uno wasn't being mean-spirited in the moment, and neither should I.

I still struggle when Uno wants to go forward, thinking he'll run off with me. I'm trying to find the balance between accepting where he's at with his progress and asking for a little more, the difference, for example, between just getting the trot and getting him to work at the trot. And, I need guidance on knowing when to end the lesson and not push the issue.

So, I'm not saying that I've figured out the answers to my challenges, but hopefully I embrace the idea that “Rome wasn't built in a day,” and neither are OTTBs. That's why Ashley won't just give me the blueprints but instead empowers me to go through the struggles, with her playing the role as trainer, foreperson, therapist, and inspiration, to create my own journey, wherever it may lead.

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The Blueberry Bulletin: A Young OTTB Learns His First Lessons In Retirement, And Teaches A Few

This is the first installment in a series following the early training of OTTB Underscore, fondly known as Blueberry. Blueberry was the subject of a popular column in the Paulick Report soon after editor-in-chief Natalie Voss adopted him via the Godolphin Lifetime Care Program in late 2020. You can read about his origin story here. 

If you like a good OTTB training series, check out our Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries series, which tracks Jonathan Horowitz on his road to the 2021 Retired Racehorse Thoroughbred Makeover here.

Although I have spent many years writing about off-track Thoroughbreds (OTTBs), working professionally with on- and off-track Thoroughbreds, and cheering on friends with their OTTBs at horse shows, Blueberry is the first Thoroughbred who has been all mine.

When I took an internship and later a part-time job at the Secretariat Center some 13 years ago, the whole notion of working with off-track racehorses was somewhat different. Many people with OTTBs believed they needed to “restart” them, taking them back to the very beginning of training and almost rebreaking them to saddle, as if the experience would be entirely new and overwhelming for the horse otherwise. Now, from what I understand, the philosophy has shifted – it's best to capitalize on what the Thoroughbred already knows. They have been ridden before, they've trailered frequently, and they've been groomed, bathed, clipped and handwalked extensively through their lives. This isn't the same as starting a green horse, and the training trajectory shouldn't be the same.

Until now, my education as a horse owner comes from a Percheron/Thoroughbred cross mare named Jitterbug who I started under saddle when she was five years old and eventually brought through the lowest levels of eventing, dressage, and jumpers. She was a case who had to be taken from the ground up. Jitterbug was a formerly feral horse who spent her first three years with little to no human contact, and that has drastically impacted the way she has progressed in her training. Accepting a saddle and rider was no problem for her; taking instructions like 'Trot' and 'Turn' was a personal affront. She reminded me loudly and often that she was bigger, smarter, and faster than I am, and that working with me was always her choice and not her obligation. Some of this is down to being a mare, but a lot of it is down to having grown up independent of human kindness or authority. It took years and lots of help of my esteemed trainer Stephanie Calendrillo of Graystone Stable to even begin trotting crossrails, let alone polish her into the productive citizen she is today.

I already knew that Blueberry would have a different concept of the horse/human relationship and as we have begun our early ground work, he indeed tries very hard to do what he is asked. We've learned to lunge, ground drive, long line, walk forwards and backwards over poles, and have conquered minor skepticism of tarps, plastic, puddles, tires, umbrellas, and pool noodles – all with great ease. I think part of his success, besides his very hands-on beginning, was that I entered into each new task with some idea of what aspects could be new or unsettling for him, but behaved as though I expected him to be familiar with the new task.

Most racehorses haven't been crosstied in a grooming stall before, but this is common practice in riding stables. Almost all of them have become used to standing quietly while tied to the back wall in their stalls in the mornings, though. The main difference, I reasoned, would be pressure on two sides of the halter instead of one, but the principle would be the same – Blueberry should know that this was time to stand quietly, and that if he hit the slack on one tie, he could move himself easily to relieve that tension. On our first afternoon, I clipped him in, ensured the quick release hardware worked, and pulled the barn door closed just in case he became upset and broke out. Then I went to work grooming him as though this was perfectly ordinary. The first time he stepped to one side and felt the tension increase, I gently tapped his shoulder to direct him to move sideways to create slack. From there, I let him figure it out—and he did. We'd spend short periods in the grooming stall at first, and gradually increased our time there, sometimes taking a break from grooming for me to put equipment away so he would see that this is a time for relaxation.

Blueberry on his first day of long line work

We've progressed this way with each new obstacle or task, and through a combination of a great brain and past experience, he has met every expectation with minimal confusion and almost no anxiety.

That doesn't mean my years of study have left me without fault, of course. I had some idea of what to expect from a retired Thoroughbred based on my past experience, I thought, but I believed I came into the process relatively free of faulty preconceptions about what the experience would be like.

Well. Horses have a way of teaching you things about yourself that you didn't realize you needed to know, and mine has already taught me that I came in with a lot of management stereotypes in the back of my brain. Here are a few of the ones Blueberry pointed out by proving them wrong:

  • Thoroughbreds will struggle to gain weight. Blueberry arrived in late November with some race fitness to him still, about four weeks after his last breeze. For my purposes, I wanted him to gain a little weight but he didn't need much. He was going onto 24-hour turnout, and I assumed that with winter looming it would be an uphill battle to improve his condition even a little bit. In roughly a month, he looked fantastic with two modest grain meals a day. Granted, he lost some ground again during the extreme cold and precipitation in February, but made it up again similarly easily.
  • Thoroughbreds may struggle in extreme cold if they enter turnout mid-winter with a slick coat. I got a light sheet for Blueberry in December but found my draft mare's clothes were way too big for him so I had didn't have a ton of different blanket choices to work with at first. I worried about this — would he shiver and shake without a puffy medium weight and neck cover? No, as it turned out. In fact, he runs warm and even before his winter coat grew in, I had to be more cautious about letting him get overheated with a blanket than too cold without one.
  • Barefoot Thoroughbreds will immediately and constantly abscess and chip their feet, especially in a wet winter. Blueberry arrived barefoot and my plan is to keep him that way as long as I can to let his soles toughen up before he begins under saddle work in another couple of weeks. So far we've had one bruise in four months and while I anticipate he'll need shoes when he starts real work, that's a much better record than I thought we'd have.
  • Horses, including Thoroughbreds, are bonkers for treats. Did not imagine this was a misconception, but Blueberry tells me with great authority that only red and white mints are treats. Carrots, apples, horse cookies, green and white mints, and even candy canes (yes, that's right – a mint in a different shape) are not edible and must be thrown out of a grain pan immediately.

I believe that no matter what type of work you're doing, horse training is a two-way street: if the horse isn't also teaching you something, you're probably doing it wrong. So far, Blueberry is a patient, kind teacher and I hope to be the same for him as we progress in our journey together.

For more of Underscore's OTTB journey, follow his Facebook page.

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