February 2008 • VOLUME 30 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

True Adventures Re-Training the Ex-Racehorse. A series on retraining the ex-racehorse would not be complete without recounting, not what would happen in the perfect world of re-training, but the true life adventures of a beginner jumping on the back of a horse powered by dynamite with no whoa and trying to go for a nice trail ride. So today we recount one true life and amusing adventure of choosing a thoroughbred from the track. She was a beautiful chestnut mare off the race track. She could go zero to ninety, from a halt to an instant full-out gallop, and that first stride was a killer. Rocket blast. I got left behind so many times. But I was young and a little foolish and it was fun to race across the fields for miles. But scary how little control I actually had.

And she knew how to run. And run. And run. Not much else. But she did know that. Now I haven't done a lot of pure all get up and go running in a long, long time. We used to race for miles and miles. Me usually, trying to slow her down. Maybe make that always. Might I add with little to no success.

And it occurred to me that this in no way felt like a horse on the forehand. The gallop, not referring to the hand gallop, is an amazing gait if you think about it. All of the horse's weight, all of ours, balanced at any one point in time, on one tiny, tiny hoof. The horse switching this balance point from a front leg, to a hind leg and back again. And during all of those changes, there you perch completely settled, the ride so smooth, you could balance a full glass of champagne with no problems. The balance is incredible.

This mare and I went through a lot of changes together and of course one of my goals was to have control. Any control would have been good.

Inadvertently (because in actuality I didn't know what I was doing), we got to the point where I could get her to canter on the spot. And unless my memory is failing me, that canter on the spot had the same incredible feeling of balance, a feeling of being centered.

And so I am left asking myself, how much on the forehand can the horse be in the full gallop and still be in such incredible balance, the same balance of the canter on the spot?

That balance, that centering, reminds me of studies done on how few horses achieve an actual 50/50 balance from forehand to hindquarters, even advanced Olympic level horses. And both the gallop and that canter on the spot to me, with the centering clearly shows a 50/50 balance.

So is the racehorse on the forehand when galloping? I don't think so. Instead I think we could do better to bring the perfect balance of the gallop to all of our gaits, all of the time.

But feel free to disagree.

Two things in the end changed this mare into a mare that in the end could literally canter on the spot, with finger tip control. Now I wish I had known about the canter backward, she would have been the one to try it on.

One was that I had to learn,

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