Backwater Ranch

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Thought for the day:

Ideally Bits are for communication not control and we don’t really need bits for the basic education of horses if your basics are thorough. I’m talking about being bitless in a controlled environment such as an arena or open paddock that the horse is familiar with not new environments where other factors are involved such as new areas or trails. Training these things at home will develop a calmer horse when we take them out because a “language“ has been developed that we can use to help us in more stressful environments such as anywhere we might take our horse where they feel unfamiliar.
If I need a bit to “control “ my horse & his behaviour there are basics missing that must be addressed otherwise anxiousness develops and shows up in being non responsive to voice & body cues & anxious behaviour.
It’s possible and important to teach your horse to respond to your energy, voice & body cues and once they understand this riding & communication becomes much easier and clearer for horse & rider.

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This also applies to buying any horse.
Different handling will often give you a different horse. I see it all the time.

Why I - almost never - call a polo pony "beginner safe."

I saw someone posting about rehoming three retired polo ponies the other day and saying they were beginner safe and had no quirks. I commented that what we think is beginner safe in polo is not what the general horse public thinks is beginner safe, so just be careful.

We've had a lot of horses here who were used for little kid polo and absolute beginner adult polo prior to joining us. Those horses, taken out of the polo environment - where you lope 15-20 minutes continuously every day or you play at least one chukker (7 minutes) of polo where you're running and turning continuously, sometimes two (14 minutes), sometimes more (Lord, give me strength not to name names and start drama even though someone sure should...) - often quickly turned into entirely different horses.

It wasn't just the continuous work in polo - it was also the lack of any inexperienced handling. We had a horse here for many years named Rocky. Rocky had been played by little kids. Rocky knew his job. Rocky, adopted out to a civilian, figured out in the space of a week that he could do stuff like pin his ears and charge at her.

A week.

If Rocky had ever gotten it into his furry little brain to pin his ears and charge at a person during his polo career, someone would have clocked him in the head with a bucket, without really thinking about it, and Rocky would not have done that again.

I'm not going to argue about training methods, I'm just saying, that's what would have happened and Rocky would have quickly reverted to being a solid citizen. Outside the polo world, he got returned and lived with us til his legs quit on him and we had to put him down.

Goliath was another good example. Goliath had been used extensively as a polo lesson horse. In the polo environment, he was great and in fact was mentioned as a favorite by many youth players who rode him in chukkers.

In retirement? He was a bo**er. I had to kept getting on this darn horse and shortworking him and re-installing his manners. He was slicker than Bernie Madoff - he knew EXACTLY what he could get away with the second you sat on his back. Danica, Jelena and I rode him around in a halter routinely, ponied green horses off of him, etc. In the same period of time, he had the shortest ever adoption - he spun out from under his adopter on their first ride and got returned. She was a good rider but I think she had some level of fear/anxiety and he picked up on it with the intuition of a cult leader identifying who will follow him blindly within 5 minutes of meeting. Later, he took off like a bat out of hell in the indoor with a teenager who was trying him out and had mostly ridden trail horses and simply didn't understand we do not boot Thoroughbreds in the ribs.

I can go on for days with this. Priceless, returned for behavior. Leila, returned for behavior. Tolly, returned for behavior. Daniella (later Serra) returned 2x for behavior. U2, returned for behavior. Smidgen, returned for behavior. Aston, returned for behavior. Caroline, returned for behavior. Caru, returned for behavior. Rocket, returned for behavior. Sometimes it was as simple as people not realizing you can't cinch up a polo pony tight while it's tied to something - the kind of mistake someone in polo would have just known not to make. A lot of times they just figured out really fast they could do something like run back to the barn and nobody in their new world could do a darn thing about it.

Sometimes they decided they would not load for people who didn't just confidently load them on a loose rope. In polo, you're constantly loading - often more than one at a time. You don't think about it, look at them, or anything, you just grab a couple and go and they always go. Some day I really am going to do a video about why your horse won't load because your body language is all wrong and you're standing in the wrong places.

So if you're in polo and thinking about how to place your older horses in an appropriate home, please keep in mind that the horse world in general isn't the polo world. The level of confidence as riders is much, much lower. The amount of experience working with anything that is even marginally sensitive is often slim. I found it was best to set a rule that we did not adopt out to beginners, and we never characterized a horse as being totally beginner safe unless I knew they were beginner safe with actual beginners on them.

Pictured is Moscow Mule - one of the very, very, very few who was actually beginner safe, in the broader sense of the word!

Hi I have several horses& ponies available for on property part lease all food, farrier, vet & gear included. $100 per week. Lease includes 2 1/2 hour lessons.

Forget intrusive thoughts!
I have intrusive horses!!