"The Charlatan"
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Do horses gain or lose confidence? Many say yes, many say no. Both opinions are expressed by knowledgeable horse people, so which one is it?
Some say the horse does not understand the purpose of racing, others claim the horse knows exactly where the wire is. If horses know what racing is all about, why don't horses with seconditis figure out that the one horse they fail to beat always gets the attention while they just go back to a dusty stall, herd instinct notwithstanding?
Interval training is bad, interval training is good. I saw a thing once with Vladimir Cerin, who apparently has a degree in equine physiology although I'm not positive on that, where he states that interval training for horses is absolute flimflam. Tom Ivers swore by it and he too had some doctorate degrees.
3x3 to Raise a Native and you are a monster or a breeding genius. If everyone knows toe grabs are bad why are they used? To fire or not fire a splint? One would think medical science would give a definite answer on at least that.
19 July 2008
A queue of querulous questions and quintessential quandaries, quite quaint and quasi-quiescent regarding quadripeds...or a quacksalver's quaff.
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The Bid
Greatest horse ever to look through a bridle
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3 comments:
I think you are asking these rhetorically, so I will restrain myself from answering from a non-racing point of view. Except to say that horses absolutely lose confidence, but not in their own ability - they easily lose their willingness to trust their rider.
While I love the fact that you give me enough credit to think I have the savvy to ask these questions rhetorically, I was in fact hoping for answers.
Your answer is exactly the kind of insight I am looking for. Thank you.
Ok, here comes the treatise, from a non-racing point of view.
As far as understanding racing, I think it's more just understanding their job in general. Horses are so social and eager to please, that they want to do what's asked of them, but not all of them "get it" exactly. So some horses might "get" that they are supposed to finish in front at the wire, and others might just "get" that they are supposed to run fast. The horse finishing second might think he's done his job perfectly - he ran fast until he was asked to stop.
As far as splints go, many horses pop splints for various reasons. My horse popped a splint because he's toed-in on his right front, which puts a lot of stress on the outside of his canon bone. Once they heal, they are considered a blemish only and shouldn't cause a problem, because the splint "bone" isn't really a bone. It's what remains of the bones that used to lead to the other two toes, now shrunk to a useless calcium structure. I would only pinfire it if it was constantly getting re-aggravated, or if he was in a situation where his front legs were getting enough pounding that it was likely to get re-aggravated, or that he would generate more.
Toe grabs. If everyone knows speeding is illegal and dangerous, why does everyone go 5-10 miles over the speed limit? It gets you there faster.
Don't know if that helped at all. I don't know much about interval training, and my knowledge of bloodlines is mostly just who each horse is, who is typically a good sire, etc. More complicated than that and I'm lost!
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