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.
The post The Blueberry Bulletin: A Young OTTB Learns His First Lessons In Retirement, And Teaches A Few appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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