Benny is a retired Standardbred who has some amazing owners that are looking to give Benny a new life after racing. I’ve been privileged with the job of helping Benny go from a pacing race horse to a relaxed trail and arena horse. This is part one of a three part series posted to show his owners how he’s coming along. These kinds of videos come with all training of horses here at Stable Horse Training.
This video covers arena work with plastic bags and leg cues for moving forward and turning. I also talk about taking a short walk on the property out of the arena into the forest.
This is Benny heading out on the trails for walks as it’s his first time being out in the open world of trails. He does very well and even goes into running water both times, which is unusual. It’s my understanding that Benny has never been out in running water, let alone on trails. So he’s doing very well!
This video is about Benny going on his first and second trail ride after taking a couple of walks by hand the first two days. For a horse that has only been ridden for a month now and never been out on trails, he does extremely well. Benny is a very smart horse that I expect will turn out to be an amazing trail and riding horse.
This video is about Benny going on his third trail ride where he gets walked while on the main road and ridden for the rest. For a horse that has only been ridden for just over a month now and never been out on roads and very few trails, he does extremely well. Benny is a very smart horse that I expect will turn out to be an amazing trail and riding horse.
In this video we take Benny on a walk in one of our local parks, Allco Park. This is a quiet park with few people usually and has great trails with good water access. The waterways that are used for crossing are well kept with few large rocks in them and a sandy bottom with river rock. These are ideal conditions to do groundwork in the water to acclimate a horse to the flow of the water and feel of it. Benny has had only a couple of experiences with water and this is to further acclimate him to it in preparation to ride through it.
Also, at the end of this video I added in a clip of him being really worried about a simple garbage can. Sometimes you come upon these types of situations that might not have been in the agenda and you just help the horse out in the moment. With a bit of time Benny got to a point where he could just stand near it, but at first if he had the opportunity, he would have taken off. Which of course is dangerous and not within control of the handler/rider. Each time we get past a small hurdle like this for him, he’ll only get more confident and stronger so it was a great opportunity found.