Your racehorse has completed it's racing career or you decide you don't want to race it at all. What are your options? Well, one option is to train the throughbred for a second profession, such as a dressage, hunter jumping, or just trail riding. In this article, I will cover what we did to retrain our retired thoroughbred gelding for pleasure riding.
Now for most racehorses, they endured a life consisting of 1 hour of training and exercise on a daily basis and 23 hours in a confining stall. Many did not have the opportunity to learn life's lessons of being in a large paddock or field. They were also fed a unique diet of high quality hay and high performance grain. They also were groomed 6 or 7 days a week for 30 minutes a day and then left alone. In training, their only contact with other horses would have been while exercising or running on the racetrack. More than likely, they also had various exercise riders and jockeys ride them instead of the same person. As the reader may surmise, most racehorses were deprived of learning trust and social skills between themselves and riders and between themselves and other horses. For these reasons, a few individuals believe that retired racehorses are safe for the casual rider and that they should either be re-educated for dressage or hunter-jumping or to be retired to the field (or as my wife states, moving lawn ornaments). Not knowing what to do, we temporarily retired our horse to the field.
At the Equestrian Games, we learned that thoroughbreds - even the difficlt to control horses - can be retrained for trail riding. The key is to find a knowledgable and skilled horse trainer with a proven track record. My wife and I discovered that these individuals exist but are sometimes hard to find. The first one we found happened to be Monte Roberts when he appeared for free lectures and at exhibitors booths at the Lexington Center in Lexington, Kentucky while the Alltech Equestrian Games were going on in 2010. Monte demonstrated just how easy it was to retrain difficult horses to obey his commands in as little as 15 minutes: he took a dangerous horse which struggled with its handler and which reared up on Monte, and using special training aids, had the horse docile and following his commands within 15 minutes. Unfortnuately, the distance to Monte's farm and the relative cost for the training our retired racehorses by Monte put a damper on us selecting Monte retrain our horses.
Lady Luck shined her light on us shortly thereafter when we took a weekend vacation to the Smoky Mountains in October 2010 and went horseback riding. After exeriencing negative past experiences with horseback riding stables in Pigeon Forge, TN. and in Gatlinburg, TN. where we had trouble with badly trained horses and guides with little experience, we decided to try riding the horses at the Spirit Mountain Riding Stables located in the mountains of Sevierville, TN.
Early on, we discovered Spirit Mountain Riding Stables took the safety of their horses and riders serously. After undergoing a short lesson on safety and how to ride their horses, my wife and I were presented with two horses to ride: I found myself riding a responsive, well manered, and well trained Mustang while my wife - who has had no significant horseback riding experience except on horses which only "walk" and "follow-the-leader" - found herself riding a responsive, well mannered, and well trained Tennessee Walking horse. On the trail, it didn't take us long to realize what we had missed over the years. My initial observation was that the tack was in excellent condition and the horses were well groomed. For the first time in years, we experienced the fun of horseback riding in the Smokey Mountains again. As an added bonus, mid-way on the trail, we stopped to rest the horses and watched our guide perform tricks in the saddle. Wow. After returning to the stable and dismounting, my wife and I discussed with the staff the possible retraining of our two remaining thoroughbreds which we had retired from racing because of low purses and because we did not want to risk injuring our horses on the bad artificial track surfaces. We needed to know more about how these horses were trained so well.
The staff introduced us to Shawn Roffol - a CHA Certified Riding Instructor - who also owned Spirit Mountain Riding Stables and who had trained the horses. Shawn - who we found to be very friendly - spoke with us for some time about his training methods and how he had trained his horses, including a retired thoroughbred. My wife and I were convinced: we informed him we would return in the spring wtih a horse for him to train.
This spring, we followed up on our promise and transported our thoroughbred gelding to Mr. Roffol for training. Within hours of unloading our horse, Mr. Roffol reviewed our expectations with us and put our horse through a few short training exercises. We were pleasantly surprised at how fast our horse responded to Mr. Roffol. He also showed us the blue ribbons his horses had won in horse competitions (there were a lot) and assisted us with overnight accomodations at a nearby log cabin.
The next day, Mr. Roffol explained to us the importance of our being trained to both work with our horse and how to ride the horse in a manner consistent with his training. He then provided us with lessons on how to handle the horse. Having been taught by our former thoroughbred racehorse trainers on handling the horses, I initially did not believe I would learn much. I was wrong. Using his horse, he showed us the importance of groundwork, how to get the trust of the horse, and how to teach the horse to stay out of our personal space for safety. Within minutes, we learned how to easily have the horse walk beside us with no struggle and how to gently correct the horse if necessary. Afterwards, using a trained retired thoroughbred racehorse, Shawn showed us how to keep that trust between the horse and rider when he gave us horseback riding lessons consistent with the horse's training. The riding lessons lasted for several hours.
Perhaps my biggest reward occured when I looked at my wife riding a thoroughbred and saw the big smile of joy on her face.
