A Story

[BlackOak2]

Of why 8arbarossa's an 'cross-eyed, inbred, thoroughbred stallion that's just as likely to win the race as he is to take a sharp left, jump the fence and shave off his rider under a low-hanging branch'... according to this topic:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/forum/v ... =8&t=20531

I once rode at a barn, that one of the boarders was a trainer.
She bought a thoroughbred off the track to retrain. Apparently, he was a failure on the track. Anyway, he was young, only 3 at the time of the sale, but SO tall! He must've been pushing over 17hh. His mane would always kind of stick straight up, rather than laying over. And when you would work with him, he was So Sweet!
Except...
During training, his new owner (the trainer), would say that he had unique idiosyncrasies. He'd be riding fine, listening and learning as she worked through retraining him, then suddenly, he'd do something comptletly out of wack, like leaping sideways through the air, standing on his hind feet or break into a haul-out run with the bit in his teeth. And it continued to happen every once in awhile.

My favorite two stories of these:
They were out on a trail ride. Nice, quiet, he was being very well behaved along with the other horse and rider out with them. When suddenly, he took off, aimed for a low-hanging branch and Attempted to skim her right off, like skimming slime from a pond. It didn't work, she really was a good trainer. But he tried.
The other one was another trail ride. They were walking down a rode. When he suddenly stood up and started walking, well they can't really maintain balance when standing on two legs... Anyway, this hadn't been the first time it had happened. So the trainer (his rider and owner) decided to force him to stay up there. To teach him a lesson. By shifting her weight, she was able to keep him reared for ... longer than he wanted to... He was less willing to rear up after that.

Then she finally decided to do some digging into his pedigree. She found out and told us that his father had as she described it 'a few screws loose' and he passed that trait on to a lot of his kids... and that the same sire had been inbred... either his parents were half-siblings, or first cousins... or maybe it was father and daughter. Too close a relationship to make a sound offspring.
The last I heard, he had been sold. He still had his 'episodes' but was purchased by an experienced rider that wanted a 'challenging' horse.

...

So that's the horse that reminds me of you, 8arbarossa. Rather the story. He was a bay... but I don't remember socks or face marks.

[8arbarossa]

Of why 8arbarossa's an 'cross-eyed, inbred, thoroughbred stallion that's just as likely to win the race as he is to take a sharp left, jump the fence and shave off his rider under a low-hanging branch'... according to this topic:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/forum/v ... =8&t=20531

I once rode at a barn, that one of the boarders was a trainer.
She bought a thoroughbred off the track to retrain. Apparently, he was a failure on the track. Anyway, he was young, only 3 at the time of the sale, but SO tall! He must've been pushing over 17hh. His mane would always kind of stick straight up, rather than laying over. And when you would work with him, he was So Sweet!
Except...
During training, his new owner (the trainer), would say that he had unique idiosyncrasies. He'd be riding fine, listening and learning as she worked through retraining him, then suddenly, he'd do something comptletly out of wack, like leaping sideways through the air, standing on his hind feet or break into a haul-out run with the bit in his teeth. And it continued to happen every once in awhile.

My favorite two stories of these:
They were out on a trail ride. Nice, quiet, he was being very well behaved along with the other horse and rider out with them. When suddenly, he took off, aimed for a low-hanging branch and Attempted to skim her right off, like skimming slime from a pond. It didn't work, she really was a good trainer. But he tried.
The other one was another trail ride. They were walking down a rode. When he suddenly stood up and started walking, well they can't really maintain balance when standing on two legs... Anyway, this hadn't been the first time it had happened. So the trainer (his rider and owner) decided to force him to stay up there. To teach him a lesson. By shifting her weight, she was able to keep him reared for ... longer than he wanted to... He was less willing to rear up after that.

Then she finally decided to do some digging into his pedigree. She found out and told us that his father had as she described it 'a few screws loose' and he passed that trait on to a lot of his kids... and that the same sire had been inbred... either his parents were half-siblings, or first cousins... or maybe it was father and daughter. Too close a relationship to make a sound offspring.
The last I heard, he had been sold. He still had his 'episodes' but was purchased by an experienced rider that wanted a 'challenging' horse.

...

So that's the horse that reminds me of you, 8arbarossa. Rather the story. He was a bay... but I don't remember socks or face marks.

nice, your story reminds me of a forest trail i did with Lily once. we rented two horses and and went into the forest. i havent ridden for some while but i wanted to gallop. the horse was a lazy ridingschool horse, so i had to work to keep him going. He was probably used to scared kids and not used to work for his food. So every chance he got he changed direction to low branches.. just like your story

It also reminds me of my cat, totally crazy.. but because i understand his crazyness we still get along.
Its so strange some people want animals to adjust to their wishes, animals have personallities and i let them have their own.

tnx for the story

[Hazel]

Yikkkessss. Gotta love the TB industry's tendency to breed anything that's halfway decent on the track, no matter what problems the horse might have. Glad this boy got a happy ending tho. ^^

I'd be curious to know who the sire was, if you know. :D

Reminds me of a couple TBs I've known...one had an owner that encouraged its insane behavior (he wound up having multiple surgeries from accidents with this horse--several fused vertebrae, for one--and yet he didn't change his methods at all). Another lad developed ulcers and started acting out really badly. Since it was such a drastic behavior change for him, tho, they got the vet out and that diagnosed pretty quickly.

[BlackOak2]

tnx for the story

Of course!
Some stories are always good stories. I do have a couple that have hung around my memories.

[BlackOak2]

Yikkkessss. Gotta love the TB industry's tendency to breed anything that's halfway decent on the track, no matter what problems the horse might have. Glad this boy got a happy ending tho. ^^

I'd be curious to know who the sire was, if you know.

Reminds me of a couple TBs I've known...one had an owner that encouraged its insane behavior (he wound up having multiple surgeries from accidents with this horse--several fused vertebrae, for one--and yet he didn't change his methods at all). Another lad developed ulcers and started acting out really badly. Since it was such a drastic behavior change for him, tho, they got the vet out and that diagnosed pretty quickly.

No, I don't. What I do remember is that it was a relatively unknown, lower level Tb that did okay on the track. He did come from decent lines, but was bred rather poorly. His Get didn't do well on the track either, kind of hit and miss but I did hear that a few of them did fairly well in the show jumping rings.
However, that's all I remember about that.
Well, that and his loose screw was fairly notorious on the circuit. Though I don't know if that was the local, regional or international circuit.