S2 E21: Do Less Get More: Aubrey Graham's OTTB Retraining Philosophy in Action (Part 2)

S2 E21: Do Less Get More: Aubrey Graham's OTTB Retraining Philosophy in Action (Part 2) Transcript
S02 - E21
[00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome back to OTTB on Tap. I'm Nev. And I'm Emily. Hey, nev, what's on tap today? We're here with Aubrey Graham of Kivu Sport Horses, a well-known OTTB trainer, reseller, and educator. Aubrey works with more than 50 thoroughbreds a year, whether it's giving them their first post track ride, transitioning them into new careers, addressing behavioral challenges, or refining their training for competition.
She's also the force behind Thoroughbred Logic, a widely followed educational series that includes weekly articles on horse Nation, nationally held masterclasses and local clinics. We're so excited to dig into her background, her approach to training, and get some practical exercises for working with OTBs today.
Welcome back guys. This is the second part of our two-part series with Aubrey Graham and Kivu Sport Horses. If you're just tuning in, go back to episode one, or you can learn about Aubrey's [00:01:00] background. All right, onto the show.
All right. I did have one more question about your series and working with people and educating them about thoroughbreds.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about Thoroughbreds when they first get into working with them? Oh, that's the entire series. Pick one or two maybe, but no one, one let's take one management thing and one riding thing. I think it'll probably be easiest ways to get at this management thing.
A lot of people think that, and this is changing because there is so much good education out there. So for everybody doing good education about this, thank you. The understanding that thoroughbreds are expected to be thin is, they come off the track, they look like greyhounds. And the expectation, at least it was, and again it is changing is that, oh, it's just a thoroughbred being a body score of a three and a half is fine.
Most people who say those things like it's just a thoroughbred aren't even talking about a body score. They're just looking at it and going, it's supposed to be rib. It's fine. [00:02:00] And that's one of the things that, you know, yes, every horse is unique. Yes, every horse lets down from the track differently.
Every horse has different struggles nutritionally in the process. All over the country is different in terms of what's in their grass or soil, their hay, et cetera, et cetera. But thoroughbreds can be tonkey. They can be muscled, they can be right. And I'm sure anybody listening to this is duh.
Because the people listening to this. Know that and are probably constantly trying to get their horses to those places. I love my vet from Georgia Dan Carter, who's fantastic. He's still there. I'm just not in Georgia anymore. I also love my New York vets, but I just met them and they're great.
Yeah. Dan used to be like, yeah, every time I see a thoroughbred that's skinny, I'm just like, oh yeah, you're using a malnutrition and starvation for control. Good job. To paraphrase him basically being like you're just not feeding it so you can ride it, maybe feed it and then learn to ride it.
He was never quite that glib, but pretty damn close. Yeah. So I think some of that I get a lot of horses in that have gotten [00:03:00] fat in the process of coming off the track and someone bought them when they were thin and now they're like, what do I do with it? It has energy. I'm like, oh no, it feels good.
And it's body. That's the horse you've got now. You've gotta learn how to train it and work with it. It was, yeah, it got sold to you as a kids packer when it was, super thin and so sore footed and now it doesn't have those problems. Congratulations for doing well by your horse. Now we gotta up the game.
Yeah. So I think that's one of the big misconceptions, or at least it was right, that they're expected to be rib and. Sure. They are not gonna be your standard quarter horse who's necessarily fat on air, but some of them are. And I have both now. So I have fields for full of various ones at all stages, and every once in a while you have one where you're like, please hide it behind the barn until it eats enough alfalfa to go to the front.
They're literally, that's a stage that I'm at right now with Oscar, where I was in a clinic yesterday and I was like, you're wearing your cooler the whole time. He actually looks fine. He really does look fine, but , he's in a clinic with three, just, just bulging out their skin, warm bloods.
He's gonna [00:04:00] look a little sad here. That's like what I rode with Tammy Smith in a clinic and there were two, two or three Irish horses and warm bloods and whatnot. And of course I'm on my sports car of a 16 hand thoroughbred, and everybody is being told halt back up, kick him, pop him go.
And she's Aubrey, don't touch him. Don't touch him. Less. Stop doing less. Stop you like one handed one finger on the rail, ah, you couldn't get much different. Yeah it's hard. It's hard when you just look around, you're like, I've got my little 15 three little. Two and a half months off the track guy over here with these they look like they're poster children for warmbloods.com.
I do love those situations though. 'cause you're like I am choosing this for so many really wonderful, important reasons and the warmbloods are great and people choose them for their own reasons too. I have a client right now who I love who wants a Connie Crosser or a warmblood or whatnot, and people are like, why Aubrey?
You trained her. Why isn't she buying a thorough? I was like, she rides mine. She wants the other thing. That's great. I want my thorough ones. I don't wanna ride the other thing. Then you're like, sit there on your little horse and you're like, my little horse can do big things too. [00:05:00] This is great. He was the like, pretty much the least spooky of all of the horses that were there.
So I was like, this is cool, but that's the other great welcome to another great misconception. Thoroughbreds are spooky. There's this wonderful, I just wrote about this the other day. They're, or at least used it as an intro. This like voiceover, I don't know what you call them, their voice memes, audio memes where it's like thoroughbreds are the what is it?
They're like, they're motherfucking Ferrari of the horse world and they spook at this and a leaf and their own fart and this whole thing and it's really funny, but I'm like, except my horses aren't ooky. I have maybe one or two out of the 23 that are in the bar, and right now that if it's really windy and the roof is creaking and the door is banging in, I might not get on those horses that day.
Yeah. Everybody else, right? The apocalypse could be coming and I can ride into it on these horses. They are not spooky. Here we come. They're like, do you need me to swing by so you can grab something like, are you armed? Are you ready? Because I'm good. So yeah, they're also not spooky. Under saddle, the biggest I'm re-tracking because I love to do that [00:06:00] and I'm like, Hey, we went left field coming back around.
Under saddle, the biggest thing is thoroughbreds need to go forward. They are fleet footed horses. They are powerful. And if you shut them down and stop them from going forward and try to slow them down as a way to control them, best of luck. Largely you create a horse that gets behind your leg, can buck, can rear, can do all sorts of fun things because that is not their happy place.
And they feel great when they're in front of your leg, when they are moving, when they are able to use their muscles in the correct way and use their anatomy in the correct way and come over their back having and hauling and seesawing and all the things or again, most people don't do this now, but they do try to slow them down.
They try to keep them under the pace for safety sake. Yeah. These horses are safest when they're going forward and. I put all my sales videos up on YouTube or whatever. I'm like, just watch through there. Everyone is above pace. That is not the pace. You wanna go into a dressage ring and expect to get an eight.
That's, but that's a pace that these young thoroughbreds have to [00:07:00] go to get their bodies in the right place to feel comfortable in the bridal to want to work with you. So yeah, you trot a little faster. It's not running, but it's a little faster than your eight. And that's a hard place for people to be comfortable, especially when they feel like these horses are so powerful, which they are.
But if I can't get a horse in front of my leg, I don't feel safe. So I want forward and I will train the half halt from the forward to get them to collect, not true collection, but to sit down and really use their body correctly. And I found that with the clinics, this tends to be one of the things that when I would teach Urban Logic clinics that I constantly am saying is kick go forward.
And people are like, what do you mean it's a fast horse? And you're like, yes, please go more forward. And eventually then the horse gets it, and then you don't have to go that forward. Yes. Then you just put your leg on and they come up into the shoulder and they're there and they're in front of your leg.
But that tends to be one of the big misconceptions that I see, especially when they come from barns that aren't as first in thoroughbreds and they're like, it's a fast horse. Slow it down. And you're like, no, go [00:08:00] forward. Yeah. And I wonder if that could also be married with the.
Misconception that once a thoroughbred is in motion, it's gonna be really difficult to stop. And I think that's a big misconception as well. So many of them have good mouths, great breaks, and it's just a little bit of the conversation is a slightly different than a traditional riding horse. So I think when you do have somebody that's afraid to let a horse go forward and they start to grip with both reins, it's just a recipe for disaster.
Versus there's things that you can do to just know that the horse is gonna stop, so this is funny that you mentioned this because two two reasons. One, that's exactly why I started thoroughbred school, where I started teaching in-house lessons on my, I used turned all of my thoroughbreds, the green ones, the ones that had four off track rides.
I turned 'em into lesson horses and not typical lesson horses, but I would teach very academic type lessons with them and get people to do basic equitation that worked for thoroughbreds. And it came about because I had this lovely [00:09:00] rider who brought me this mare that she had done the three foot hunters, the mare had gone around and everyone hated her.
Farrier, hated her. Vet, hated her rider was like, how did I get duped into buying this thing? The trainer hated her. The mayor just had she came with baggage, she showed up. I love that fricking ma. I took her out eventing and she won everything. And I sold her on to be an inventor, but. I almost kept her.
And I'm not, I love my geldings. I am a gelding person. I'm not a mare person. There are amazing mares out there. This mare was one of them. But the young woman who had her was like, look, I don't even know how to stop her. I pull back and , I've had her for a year and a half and we still go faster.
That she was riding her in like a Waterford with a chain, like a Waterford pellum with a chain. Whoa, geez. Like Jesus, the whole nine yards. And I was like, I put her in a hers Springer duo. Yeah. And I , tucked my tailbone, tighten my core and pressed my thigh and knee and the mirror was like, yep, brake's done.
And galloped her around cross country like that. And she was fantastic. And it was [00:10:00] just one of those where I was like, okay, what can I do to help this rider who is very clearly missing, has just been told , sit up and pull back and that doesn't work on a thoroughbred sit up Does. And I was like, oh no.
I need to get you on a horse that I can teach you how to do this. And honestly, there's a lot more people than you that need to have to know how to do this. Let me set something up. And I built the school again, in another I'm just gonna do this. And I was like. Oh, here we go.
And then interestingly, my student, who I said was the one who wanted a warm blood was just down in Ocala trying horses with Dorothy Crowell. And they were talking about the fact that, she somehow this got back to me that she was like, it's amazing. I'm watching her jump a green thoroughbred and the reigns never get tightened and the horse stops and halts on the backside.
And I remember Dorothy just laughing at her and being like, this is good. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like that was quite a compliment, Laura. Thank you. But yeah, so it's, very much the breaking issue is not a pulling issue. It's a full body ride. Yeah. Yeah. I put this question in after [00:11:00] Emily wrote the script.
I actually put it in today because I read your article that you wrote today. Oh, fun. About Palino horse. And my question is putting content out as an educational resource on the internet is not always met with positivity. Can you speak to some of the challenges that you face when you make your posts and how you handle feedback?
So part of it is you get old enough in this, and I guess I'm not that old. I'm 41, but I just get to be a grumpy bastard and I totally own it. I don't care. And part of you're in good company here. We're only the over 40 club. So part of this is. People are audacious and amazing in the ways you never expect.
The backstory on this, if you guys haven't read feel free to go read the Horse Nation article. It's a quick summary of this just chaos en circus that ensued around the fact that a client of mine sent me a Palomino Thoroughbred and I went to [00:12:00] sell, said Palomino Thoroughbred thinking, she was like, it's gonna be a circus.
And the internet blew up. And literally I had I don't get many comments on my posts. I get lots of handful of people that will call me or message me through the internet and or through my website and be like, I'm interested in this horse, whatever. Oh my God. The back and forth, the, it can't possibly be a thoroughbred, it must be a pony.
That girl looks too tall. And then of course you have my friends being like, you mean that girl with multiple degrees? What do you want? Try again on that one. That's also five nine stop it. The horse was 15 three and Yeah. But it was amazing 'cause yes, the, just the audacity of so much of that, yeah, I just look at it and coping mechanisms are, I'd start taking field notes.
I joked with somebody at some point, this is just going so sideways that I am just over here, like mentally taking, I'm gonna write it later. Which yeah, I did, but I'll probably do it in more colorful ways than another point. And it was like , you didn't think when you took that horse on that you were not only gonna have to defend him as a breed, but also in terms of like genetics and [00:13:00] color, no, I feel like colored horses bring out a very special breed of horse person.
They do. And I have something. Oh, it was amazing. And then I would get messages that was like, you have to call me. I need this horse. And I'm like, oh, geez. Why? Hang on. Can you ride this horse? That doesn't matter. I need this horse. I'm like no.
It matters to me. This goes back to the middle manning. This was a sensitive horse. He is an upper level horse that has lots of talent and is not an easy ride. He is not a packer. And somehow somebody sees a color and goes packer or they see needs to sit in my field. I'm like, this horse will terrorize your field if he doesn't have a job.
That's when you wish you could just post like a black and white photo. Like it's in a newspaper from like 1984 and you're like, this is my horse. He is this size. He is a thoroughbred. Yes. And they can't tell what color it is. And then we had this whole coating thing as a kid, you go through the STE reed, which is how we sold horses as when I was really young.
And they'd have you could buy a like a hundred and no, maybe a hundred characters. And it would be all of the acronyms and you'd be like, what does [00:14:00] that P mean? I don't understand. Okay, great. Thoroughbred 15 three. Fantastic. So part of how I deal with it again is I just laugh it off. I take notes.
When people are rude, I feel like I get to be old and grumpy enough to be like, Hey, that's rude. Yeah. That's audacious and totally inappropriate. And sometimes people come back and they've come back to their own posts, not taken their comment down, but they're like, sorry, probably shouldn't have said that.
And you're like, weird. This is a very interesting exchange. And I get really annoyed when people don't read academic syllabus. There's a syllabus, there's a syllabus for a damn reason I had to write it. Department had to approve it and in fact, we are going to do things by it.
So when you have a question, look there first, right? So I make would be that person to be like, we are going to look at the syllabus today. My students are like, who is this professor? And then they realize, I swear in class and they don't believe me for the first three weeks. So it's okay. But I'm like, it's in the damn syllabus.
Like right here's the way to do this. I have all this information on the website. Please go there. Please read these things like reading comprehensive. People don't read Gold Star. They don't. And guess what? If you don't read, [00:15:00] I don't sell you the horse. Yeah. Really Damn simple. No it's really interesting 'cause like obviously we were in the industry for a while and we're still very good friends with a lot of people that are actively selling now.
And it is. They're the amount of work and stress and annoyance that happens from posting one horse on the internet. I wish you could really quantify it for buyers to be like, you should just have to answer questions from one sale ad. Yeah. Where it's a horse that has a Blaze or Jesus if it's got four white socks Yep.
Forget it and just post that horse up. And then you get to answer the questions for one evening. You're not eating dinner, you're not interacting with your significant other. You're gonna be like dealing with people that are messaging you at 10 45 at night. Can I come tomorrow? It's just, it's nuts.
And then they don't show up and then they don't show up. So I charge a fee. So they generally do show up. That's good. That's good. That's a whole other can of worms and discussion, but, and I sometimes just don't because I'm new in New York and not a lot of people know how that works here.
But yeah. Gosh. I mean [00:16:00] it's e Exactly. All of those things, right? My, my poor significant other who sits down at dinner and I like try to leave the phone across the room and he is do you need to go get that? I'm like, wait have you sold any horses this month? No. Yeah. Need to go look. But the it's in the damn ad, right?
Like location read, yeah. And so I just literally will send people please reread, add and it's passive aggressive, but look, I put it in there and it is there for you to see it. Please go back and look for it. And if somebody is like, cool, I found it.
I went to the site. I love the horse, fantastic. But half the time they're not that committed if they're already asking these questions, so meh. So a lot of it I just brush off, but when people get mean, especially if they get mean about people I care about I will be really direct. I'm not gonna go and be petty.
There's been comments on other resellers wait on a horse and things like that, that I'm like, are you out of your mind honestly? And it is just basically a very direct, that's woefully inappropriate. Not only is it [00:17:00] incorrect, but also where do you get off with this?
Yeah. And so I will happily go and play my, nice little crusader role on that every once in a while because that's just stuff that is so hurtful to someone and you know why. Sure. But largely my posts don't get enough attention half the time unless it's a damn Palomino thoroughbred for people to really care.
In which case I just banged my head into a wall and we got him to the world's best home with a young rider who came and probably rode him better than I did. And I was like, yes, please buy this horse. And she couldn't have cared less what color he was. Exactly. Yeah. That's crazy. One of the things that really stands out in your approach is that you emphasize working with the horse, understanding their instincts, their sensitivities and their honesty. How does that shape the way you approach training?
I, think we covered this a little bit, but if you have any more unique viewpoints that you wanna throw in there. Yeah. I think with horses and with being an anthropologist because. The discipline drew me to it. I had no idea what anthropology [00:18:00] was, and this is really relevant for how I deal with horses.
And I only realized this when I've answered some of your guys' questions, some other people's questions about training, philosophy stuff. And I'm like, oh, wow, no that actually all of this comes together. And apparently that's how I work, which is I like to watch. Anthropology's participant observation is the core method to how we do things.
So it's not just standing as a fly on the wall and watching from afar, but it's participating in being part of and doing, and. Learning with people. So being able to speak the language, trying to, going and eating the food, living in those spaces, being there for a year on end at this point in the past it used to be, yeah, you go for field work for five years and you really just dive in and you do the best you can to live like the population, wherever that is that you're studying.
And that way you start to understand from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. I'm bastardizing anthropology while I'm saying it that way. With horses, it's a lot of the same thing. Yeah. Although I'll never, be able to be part of the herd in the real way of being a horse.
But you end up thinking about it [00:19:00] as this I get to watch and see and understand and try to figure out what their language is, how are they communicating with each other, how are they interacting and. In cultural anthropology, you take all these different narratives, all these different stories that you hear, things you've witnessed, other people have told you hearsay, this, that, the other, and you piece it all together and it makes this pastiche that never quite lines up.
It's never a perfect seamless narrative. And I get to do that every day with thoroughbreds. I get to take what their owners told me. I get to take what the trainer told me, what their last sale ad said, what the track said, what their EQU base record is. All that's data. And then I get to go watch the horse and I get to see how they are in turnout.
I get to hang out with them in a stall. I get to understand their, are we pushy? Are we quirky? Are we insecure? Where are things coming from? And then all of the horse data goes next to and integrates with the human data. And you start to really work through this to have this bo based on observation and narrative.
You get the [00:20:00] story around a horse that tells you more about the horse and what they need. And it shapes how I train them. It shapes what to I expect when I swing a leg over the first time. Yeah. I rode one today whose narrative is really sketchy. I don't know much about it. It's not sketchy 'cause it's bad, it's sketchy 'cause I have holes everywhere.
Yes. Yeah. My working student right now, Lily Drew is great because she gets. She's just such a wonderful listener and she gets to sit there and I will run my mouth on things. And she's Uhhuh. Yes, absolutely. And, but she's watched me do so many first rides on these horses and none of them go the same.
Yes. So with this one horse that I got on today, he's a bit anxious. He's stall walking, wants to be outside. He's coming in from a someone else who has trained him in the past. I don't have much data. All I know is at some point someone said someone had draw reigns on him a lot. And I'm like, okay, why?
Right before I get on, I lunged him because I just wanted to see what in the world is under the hood, what are we gonna do? Why were you in Draw Reigns? And I'm [00:21:00] talking to her, I'm trying to run through all of this, taking all this stuff I know about this horse who is a happy go lucky guy outside in a stall.
He's very insecure. He's clearly been told off by someone at some point you move too quick and he is ah, or it's just him, one or the other. Sometimes it's not caused by people. And I go and get on him and he immediately starts head banging. Fortunately he's short so he is gonna hit me in the sternum, not, and he pops around to his front feet and I was like, I see why they stuck you in draw reins.
Yeah. We're not gonna do that. And but waiting to get to the root of that. Yep. So like I aunt was able to, to at least my own satisfaction, answer that question within the first minute or so of the ride and then work through the psychology of, okay, you are not. You are not a bad horse, like at all. There's nothing wrong, you just don't understand contact.
Something might be a problem. We might need to look at dental, we might need to look at your hind end. We might need to think through things, but in the meantime, here's training stuff we can do of just giving you a confident ride where I push my knuckles into the neck and let you, on a soft rein and let you figure out the contact yourself without me moving.
So there [00:22:00] is no resetting my hand. He pulls forward, I don't reset my hand because it's on the neck, so he doesn't feel any pushback from the rider. And it took about 20 minutes and he was riding in and out of pretty good. Lovely over his back contact. It wasn't fancy yet, but you could see that he was like, oh, okay, I get this.
And that, that's just , a random example from today's ride and I did two first rides today of bringing all of these different bits of data together and a lot of it's just watching them in the field and I feel like that's where people are missing so much information.
So what does your horse do in the field? I spend so much time throughout the day. I don't, sometimes I just end up standing there like a statue and people are like, what is wrong with you? Often there's nobody here, so it doesn't matter. But I just, I watch the herd dynamics. I know who's in charge, how do they act, and when that horse is in another field with another horse who's in charge, this horse major spin. If he's out with his best friend and anyone else, he's a complete jerk to anyone else. Like he just, he mar guards his best friend and he is, and he will kick and he could be a complete [00:23:00] just annoyance to anyone else. But if I put him in the field with my, what we call them mafia or the frat boys, my four horses that I've had for a long time who are all together because they hold it together.
And that herd dynamic is known. He sulks, he is at the bottom of the chain and he, and and seeing how those two things work in a space where he is super confident he's got a little sass and all these things, but if he doesn't feel confident, he gives up and curls in on himself and is not the horse that you wanna be riding.
He's not a confident, fun, capable horse at that point. So I watch those two things and I put this together and I try to make sure I get turnout right in the first place that makes these horses confident and not dangerous. So don't kick anybody. But I like him better in the confidence base, right?
Than in the one where he gets told off and he's just not a happy camper. But it also tells me what he's gonna be like under saddle. If I can partner with him, he's going to be super fun. He's gonna wanna do all the things, but if I belittle him and I sit there and tell him he is not doing it right all the time and that he's not allowed into the club, like I'm gonna have a [00:24:00] horse who's gonna be probably pretty cranky and he's a big, powerful horse and I don't wanna see what he pulls out when I do that.
Yeah. So anyway, this is all the training philosophy and all of them get this much thought. At all times. My brain doesn't ever shut off until I fall asleep and pull the batteries out. At some point my dad was like, don't you miss all the thinking that went into academia.
He said don't you misusing your brain? You're like, no, my brain's on full speed. It's fine. One time I run and like I used to do field work in a conflict zone but I was a photographer as well, so I worked on images. So we've got lots of other things to talk about somewhere else.
Yes, for sure. But the same level of problem solving that went into that space is the same level of problem solving that goes into running and running a thoroughbred barn and riding thoroughbreds. Yeah. So it somehow checks all the same boxes for me and it's wow. It's that like insatiable, like knowledge, thirst, it's like you're, you just can't ever get enough of it. And I think when you're somebody that really wants to get to the bottom of thoroughbreds and you never will that never goes away where you're just [00:25:00] constantly just they're all different. They're all so interesting and yeah, you just you don't know anything, but you do know.
So things, it's that proverbial the closer, the more you do something, the less you know. And it's, but the more you want to know, truly. So it's just this really wonderful cycle that is somehow extremely satisfying. Yeah. So let's back up a little bit. When you first get a horse, a new horse off the track, I.
I think you, you talked about this a little bit, but what are the first things that you do to assess where they are mentally and physically? So that's interesting because I don't have a good stock answer for that, right? It's not oh, I immediately do X check, but I think, but I'm gonna think through it.
I'm gonna think through it as I go because I just had one that came in off the track. I, my brain starts assessing where they are at as soon as they step off the trailer. Yeah. How are they walking in? How do they feel about my space? And that's one of my big kind of training [00:26:00] things that I think we can get to in a minute, which is like the giving 'em enough rope to get themselves in trouble.
Yep. Yeah. I don't micromanage these horses. I don't micromanage my college kids when I was teaching. And it causes them to have some really big issues sometimes when they're used to being micromanaged. But I like to see, what do you know about space? Are you respectful of my space?
Are you pushing into me? And I start to get notions of the horse's level of security and security. Temperament, things like that. I watch them in the stall and then I start thinking about who based on their personality, who are they going to turn out with? And that's, this is why I go I don't have a stock answer for that because before I turn them out, I already have a sense of who they are enough to put them in a field with someone I think is not gonna kill them and is gonna help them flourish. And a lot of that is the personality that comes out in the stall and being walked around and, if I put 'em on cross ties or if I'm just handling them, it's just levels of confidence. Levels of if we can measure levels of goofiness for the Galvins.
Yes. Most of them don't have it until they come out of their shell from the [00:27:00] track. And just this I guess it's this weird nurturing desire to be like, I want to make sure you're happy and healthy and okay and what do you need for that? And it starts to answer the question of who do you need to play with, right?
Who needs to be your friend to help this happen? And I could be your friend to a degree, but also sometimes I need to not be your friend and I need to make sure that I've got some clear boundaries and we can sort that out. In which case I want a friend that also helps you sort out those boundaries.
It's pairing up. I do a lot of pairing up, what I want to have happen in the barn and under saddle. I want to have happen in turnout. And I could be really like very conscious and concerted in terms of matching horses with horses will either bring out their confidence or. Get them in line.
And that's the first set of things. And then I pay attention to every flinch of a skin. I'm gonna lean my weight, one pound more onto the leg that you just step next to. Great, we've got some issues when that happens. And then we need to think through these things.
So all of that just registers. And before I swing a leg over, I usually [00:28:00] have a sense of where we're at. Sometimes I get caught totally off guard. But it all adds up. . But I don't necessarily take them through a set of exercises. I do those later. The first bits are this amorphous wash of let's just get a sense of who you are and try to, with the structure that I have here, use the structure to help create a better horse a happier horse, one who's willing to work with you and wants to work with you is really what I'm, what I'm aiming for.
In that there are different approaches to get that with the different temperaments and what they know and things like that. I think it's interesting too to think about one of the most exciting moments of getting horses off the track is that first moment that you take them off the trailer, right?
And or the first moment that you get to see them loose in a round pen or a small paddock or something like that, you get this initial impression of the horse feeling. Maybe it's most high in a lot of ways, or maybe it's most insecure. But then they get turned out for two days and you might bring that horse in and put it in the same paddock and it just puts its head [00:29:00] down and grazes.
And so the amount of information like you're saying that you get in those first couple of days is it's cumulative of all aspects of that horse it feeling at its most insecure or its most kind of high on life where it's racing fit and it's just arrived in a new place. When they arrive at our farm, they can literally see a hundred acres and all the other horses and you get this feeling of are the horses like, oh my God, where am I?
Or are they like, this looks really cool, I love that. Absolutely. I love that part of when you first bring them home and you get to see who they are initially and then see who they are after a couple of days of turnout and relaxation. I've got one I'm very excited about him.
I love Tale of a Caddy Offspring. I don't, I could tell you why it's a long story, but they're just amazing. And this one was brought in, but purchased by a client and sent to me to get him started and resell him. And he walked off the trailer and he had a long haul in the cold.
He was shivering, he was miserable looking. And he was just like, I'm in your pocket. Help, please. Like anything. And you're like, okay, kid. We'll take care of you. Get in the stall, get you in a blanket, get you [00:30:00] alfalfa. I'm really sorry this sucks. And turned 'em out with my herd of really just goofy, easygoing geldings.
They're not super playful. They're just, they're all pretty classy, honestly. I have one herd of classy geldings. Everything else is flipping itself over on its side, playing as hard in the mud as they possibly can. This one deal comes in clean, you're just like, what?
What are your deal? I was like, you can go out with the good boys. And I threw a picture up on my Instagram the other day that I walked him down to the field where the hay bale is and the, and those four horses are, and I took a picture over his back 'cause he just stood there and looked at them and he was like.
Oh. And promptly turned around and trotted back to the barn in the field, and then stood next to the wall of the barn for the rest of the, couple hours of his turnout. Yeah. He's help, I wanna be with people. And I like brought him back in. So today I turned him out and went far better because I turned him, I moved them to another paddock where they don't have the barn to hang onto and he had to actually be social.
But I also put a first ride on him today, and it was the [00:31:00] same thing. He was like, I'm a little insecure, I might do something. Do. And I was like, are you really? He's no, I'm fine. I'm fine. We're fine. Okay. Okay. Just kidding. And it was the same, so they just, it tracks how they handle the paddock and the new situations.
There is often what they're gonna do under saddle. And so it just, yeah, that's pretty, I like that. I've probably gotten this very off track. Sorry. No, you're okay. No, you are good. We did want to move into some training exercises now. In our kind of discussions prior to recording this, you mentioned the idea of giving them enough rope to get in trouble and then letting them learn.
So can you explain that and how do you apply that concept in your own training? And is that on the ground or under saddle or all of the above? This is my favorite theory again, academic. I love theory. I have a lot of random ones in terms of training, but this one has been.
Super. Once I was able to put my finger on it and be like, that's what I'm doing. Oh, okay. I don't like micromanaging creatures. Thoroughbreds get micromanaged a lot. That's another [00:32:00] misconception. Yeah. That people have to you literally watch them walk a horse out of the trailer on their first day and they're holding it, the clip of lead Dr.
Open hanging on it, and there's pressure everywhere. And there's a lot of it can't do this, it can't do that. It can't get turned. There's just no is every, and so I don't like saying no, but if I have to say no, it's I don't not mean it. It's a very clear here's your boundary.
You hit your boundary. No. Yeah. And so I will, one of the ways of training is I the best, easiest visual for this is just walking. I walk on a loose lead drip where my hand walks like a normal human at my side. I stop, they don't stop. I will snap the lead drip and back 'em up a little bit and it's all measured to their level of attention and rudeness and kindness.
Like a horse who's just oh, I didn't know. You're like dink. Or dink back up. Yeah. If they like shove through you and are like, get the hell out of my way human. You're like, okay, you back up. Yeah. And then you leave them alone. I don't change my grip on a lead rope.
I don't change my grip on the horse. I walk off again [00:33:00] and I ask them to stop. And normally it takes twice. And for the rest of their time with me, I don't have to touch the lead rope, walk leading them around. I walk, I stop, they stop, they wait. I will walk four thoroughbreds in sometimes in really terrible weather.
So two on the left, two on the right, and one of them will misbehave, and the other three are like, dude, you're idiot. Knock it off. They're like, stop, shut, stop. But they're also like, we're not in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. They don't assume that I'm gonna micromanage every nobody else is gonna get in trouble, except the other one's just gonna get backed up to the barn.
He's gonna face us and the other three are gonna walk in with me. And then it's oh, I shouldn't have done that. So it's basically, I let them hit that boundary because I want them to learn where the boundary is. So that I don't have to police it. They know, here's your boundary. Cool. I, and then if you literally just stand, this is great.
Another example of this is if you just stand there with them, I want them to just stand and hang out. They can fall asleep. They could shuffle left to they can even bump me with their nose, but they cannot shove their shoulder through me and try to walk off. [00:34:00] Yeah. So I teach clinics and when I have somebody's fussy horse who's like doing circles around them and dragging them around the ring, I'll stand there with that horse cock a hip and just no, I'm just gonna stand here and be completely relaxed while you're being an idiot behind me.
You shove me with your shoulder, you're gonna get told where you have to stand, and then I'm gonna turn right back around, cock my hip again, ignore you, and I'm gonna go back to teaching. And you can see them be like, what the hell? And they're like, okay, but can I do this? And it doesn't get met with a boundary.
And they're like, okay, can I do that? And then it's can IW you with my head? No. Okay. Okay. Boundary, boundary. They're like toddlers. They are. But you just, I just totally leave it alone and I go right back to the reset. There's no grudge held, there's no like this, I don't change my behavior.
It's just they learn where it is. And when they do that and they learn where the boundary is, they start making better choices. Yep. And they're good critical thinkers. They're like, that's not a good idea. Maybe I can grab that bite of alfalfa as we walk by it, but I [00:35:00] have to keep up with her and not drag her off her pace.
And I'm like, okay, acceptable. You drag me off my pace, you pull me over there, you're gonna get in trouble. And it's real quick, get in trouble, like no big deal. But under saddle it's the same thing. Can I go a little too fast? Sure. Can I drop my shoulder a little bit? Eh, we'll work on that, right?
Can I rear? No, you cannot. Can I bolt? No, but we're gonna go right back to the trot before you bolted and I'm gonna ignore it ever happened. Yeah. And it allows these horses to self police in a way that they gain confidence because they know where the cutoff is. And that confidence is really cool because you can see, you just feel them, figure it out.
And again, this is all the same as teaching college students. I ran my classes really weird. And I love doing it because it completely threw the kids for a loop. And that was always fun. They'd come in, I'd be like, okay, yes, I swear yes, these deadlines exist. They're here. They don't exist.
You tell me that you need to turn something in later. You [00:36:00] just need to tell me. I don't care. I legitimately don't care. They're like, what do you mean you don't care? Everybody cares. They care that you don't get. I was like, no, I don't care. Also, if you don't write it you can rewrite it. I don't care.
That's real life. It's a rough draft, right? Like it's the first time you've written something. If it sucks and you failed, fine. And at the same time I'm like, look, the only things I don't like and da, don't do those and you're fine. Up to that point. And then I want you to take a risk.
Everything you do chase what you care about. Take a risk. If you are not taking a risk, you are not learning. And if you are not learning, then why are you in college? So students would not believe me. They were afraid to have the freedom. Yes. And they didn't know what to do when the question their essay was supposed to be on was not.
You know what? When, oh, I don't even know. This ethnography that you just read when, you know, when it was written, how did that apply to the way in which participant observation was being conducted in MEUs? If I ask that [00:37:00] question, I'm gonna get the most boring essays I've ever wanted to put eyes on.
But if I ask people to write their own ethnographies, go do their own research and do something they care about, and it doesn't matter what it is, even if it's like looking at the drug scene in Atlanta in which they are participating, please, just don't get me in trouble. Those are the two rules.
Really. Don't get yourself in trouble and don't get me in trouble. And that works for the horses too, right? Don't get yourself in trouble. Don't get me in trouble. And up, up to a certain point. There's so much. Once you get that confidence that everybody knows where the end cutoff is, and that they start to trust that they can actually do the things they want to do the things and they wanna go jump the big cross country fences.
They wanna go gout across the field. They want to be good because they have the confidence that, the thing that you're pointing them at, they can get it wrong. And it's okay. It doesn't cause them to be micromanaged the whole time. I might be ascribing these guys way too much critical thinking, but I really I find that it works really well.
So it's a real simple thing. I think I learned it from my dad training dogs when I was a kid. We would train them to [00:38:00] heal and it was simple. You watch people get dragged around by their, 80 pound golden retriever on a harness, just dragged down the street being like, slow down. Oh, we're fine.
Oh, hello. There's the mail, right? And my dad's dog was, he stop, the dog would stop and sit down and he never had to touch the leash because they understood what the boundary was. So anyway that's really the core of how I train, which allows them to ride on a looser rain and allows them to jump without me getting, to the best of my athletic ability without getting in their way.
And let them make mistakes. I have a horse that over jumps like crazy right now, but I'm not gonna micromanage that. I'm just gonna try to keep him to ha having that confidence to know that, whatever is comfortable for him to do, he'll get there and he is got support in the process and he's oh, okay, maybe I can make better decisions where I jump a little lower, it takes him about three fences.
But if I start trying to tell him he has to jump lower by messing with his takeoff or messing with how we get there I'm gonna, I'm gonna ruin his confidence and I'm gonna have a horse will stop stopping. [00:39:00] Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of like, when you have teenagers and you're gonna ground them and you're like I can keep them safe if I just, if they're grounded all the time.
'cause I'm gonna prevent them from skipping school and doing bad things. And it's they never learn the limitations of trust if you never give them an opportunity to do the right thing. And I feel like that's what you're saying in a lot of ways where it's like they never learn how to do the right thing if you don't give them to do the opportunity to do the wrong thing.
Yep. And it's really hard when you have a 1200 pound thousand pound or 1200 pound animal that you're like, please make good decisions today. I'll say my horses are way better trained than my two Australian shepherds. But you just touched on jumping a little bit. And that's a big transition for a lot of off the track.
There are breads if they haven't, run over timber or done steeple chasing. But do you have any favorite exercises or a style of progression when it comes to teaching them for jumping? Yes. I actually the nice thing is I'm so not specific on 1,000,008 things jumping, I get pretty specific.
Okay. [00:40:00] So I like to try to start them again in ways to build their confidence. Even if you have a huge athletic horse, we start over ground poles. I've start everything from the ground up. So even if we're jumping, if we're jumping a grid, if we're jumping just a single fence, the poles are all laid down and I let them walk over it, then I let them trot over it.
And so the progression obviously comes from the floor up. I try not to point in very basic training. I try not to point them at a three foot fence to start. That would be a bad idea, but I really like a grid that is actually, it's the same grid they use at the makeover. So it works really well.
They've taken it out of jumpers this year going forward. But I'm a little sad about that because it's my favorite training grid. And it's a nine foot pole. So a pole on the ground, nine feet crossrail, 18 or 19 feet. So a one stride. To an er. But I train it as pole and then nine feet and then pole, and then 18 or 19 feet, whatever you wanna put in there, depending on the str of your horse to a pole on the ground.
And you let 'em walk over it, you let 'em trott over it. Then you raise the back [00:41:00] up into a cross rail. If I have a nappy horse, which is rare with the thoroughbreds, 'cause usually by the time I'm jumping them, they're in front of my leg. I don't jump anything if it's not in front of my leg. That's a terrifying idea.
Don't do it. That's great advice. But if I'm riding like, the proverbial draft cross who's just either in front of your leg, but they're just a little bit slower that I'm gonna put the crossrail in the front of the grid to start, not the back of the grid. 'cause it keeps 'em moving through it.
Thoroughbreds, I want it at the back of the grid. And I can't take credit for a lot of this. A lot of this is from my coach. I trained with Vernor Gavin down in he's in at Poplar Place, so down in Hamilton, Georgia. And he completely revolutionized my jumping on thoroughbreds. I could get him around, I would train them, from the ground up, whatever.
But I didn't know how to slow my body down very well. And so my getting too fast and forward and, hauling horses up after fences if they took off, because that seems like the right thing to do. I learned a lot from him. And so one of the things, one of the big things was no matter how a horse lands off of the fence, don't use your hands.
Get them to walk. So they might be blasting [00:42:00] off, but you sit up half halt with your core. You might be able to close your fingers, but you cannot pull. And I had a horse where I had to do this and we'd canner for maybe five minutes after the fence until he would listen. And I had to ride him last in the day all the time because he would gas out my core so badly.
I'd be like, oh my God, please stop. But I can't pull. So we're going in this 20 meter circle until you stop. Oh man. And I tell you, it took about with that horse was, he was tough, but it took a couple months. I was able to get him around a training level venting course on a light contact in ways that horse couldn't ride before because he knew to wait after a fence without pulling.
So anyway, so it's build the grid up slowly. I love that nine foot base for just for them to learn the takeoff, the one stride, even if they landed trot, they go over the, so now you have a pole, a crossrail, and a tiny little er. Great. They land off the crossrail and they often don't canner yet.
They don't know how to do that, so don't send them forward. The ER ends up being the inviting thing that brings them into the canner eventually. [00:43:00] Once they figure it out, they get their footing down and they're like, oh. And you just get to watch these horses who have never jumped anything, figure out their feet, figure out their form, and then learn that when they land, you're not gonna pull, you're gonna sit up, but you're gonna stop 'em.
And I like to make sure that they come back to a walk or halt before I pat them on the backside. And that builds in and understanding of a half halt. So when you start to string courses together, you sit up, drop your tailbone on the backside, and they're like, I understand. After fences we stop. So they start to bring their hind end under them, and then you're like, cool, no.
Now we can go to the next fence. You're listening. And it all works really well together with that. So that's some of my favorite, just getting, going, work with fences. Yeah. That's a good advice. Funny reminds, it reminds me of a lesson I had years ago with Jane Sleeper and I was on a very green.
Off track thoroughbred. And he was also a bit nervous in wide open spaces. And her farm, basically the option is to ride in a giant [00:44:00] field. And she was like, we're doing gymnastics. And I was like, great, I can do gymnastics. That's no problem. And then the gymnastic cover was like a canner in like double bounce to an ter to another double bounce thing.
I think my horse, I don't think he'd ever even seen a bounce. Anyway, he was a really good boy. But also being nervous, ended up landing and then just bolting every time we got through the line. And so Jane was like, okay, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna land after the last jump and you're gonna drop your stirrups.
And I was like, what? They're like, what? You're like, no, I'm not. I'm getting run away. Yeah. I'm getting run off with in a huge field. There was a perimeter fence somewhere, but enormous field. And you want me to drop my stirrups? And she's yep. And if you've ever met Jane, if Jane tells you to do something, like you do it.
So I did. And it was, I think basically exactly what you're describing, where instead of being able to pull, I had no leverage. And I had to sit up, use my core, bring my [00:45:00] shoulders up, or else I'd fall off and don't, we stopped. That's amazing. So it was pretty, yeah, it was a pretty amazing thing.
That's awesome. I love that. I don't wanna drop my stirs after the fence all the time, but I like that idea. No, I might make my students do that. No, but and you, are you talking about the half halts? Really interesting. 'cause one day, this is maybe a month and a half ago when I first had Oscar, Emily taught me a lesson in the round pen at the walk and the halt Yep.
To start to install the basics of a half halt and to make sure that it's a forward transition and feeling, being able to develop that at the walk in the halt is going to help you as you go up the gates. And it was really interesting to see just how hard work it was for both of us to understand and to teach him.
But once he started to get it, it was really cool. And so you can really slow down all of that stuff to just the pure basics too, which is so cool. Yeah. And [00:46:00] I love that. And that's where this doesn't get boring ever. No. Even if it's just a walk, trot ride, it never does. Or a walk ride, you're like, Nope.
Okay cool. Let's fix the half halt. I do this, do you stop? And they're like, I don't understand. You're like, cool, I've got work to do. Very good. Back to it. Also, if you want a core workout, just do anything at the walk. Do anything intentional at the walk your core will be burning without using your reins.
Yeah. Geez Louise. Alright, so what are some common mistakes that riders make when introducing OTBs to jumping and how do you help them correct those other than making them now drop their stirs? That's gonna be great. I'm gonna use that. Sorry to all of listen. I'll be like, listen through the episode. Figure out why. But one of the most common mistakes, which is the same thing I did, which is getting ahead of the horse, right? Your horse is fast to the fence often because you are getting ahead of them and you are, your body is moving faster because we feel that because they are jumping, we have to jump.
And so often [00:47:00] riders are not trained to do less, we do more. And that becomes really problematic when you have a quick horse that is potentially insecure in their balance heading to and over fences. And as soon as you start moving around as a human, we make it harder. Harder. They get faster to try to get to the spaces they need to get to before we screw them up.
So I like to tell people like, I don't know, I busted my knee lunging a horse of all things, right? He pulled and I planted and I was like, ow, oh, that's not good. And then I spent the next two months, it was fine. I accommodated, but I could run so long as I had complete control of where my feet went.
But if someone was running next to me, I did not want to run with them because if they bumped into me, I did not have complete control of where my feet went and I was likely to hit a part of my knee that was going to hurt. And that made me insecure and it made me worried. And it was an interesting just trying to putting myself in my horses' shoes.
These horses are coming off the track. Their bodies are sore, they're [00:48:00] working through a lot of different muscle growth. They're letting down, they're gaining, they're, and even if they don't have any real issues, they're just not sure of their balance. And so as soon as somebody starts moving around on them, the flight instinct will kick in and they will just go faster.
So they get over the fence faster, they rush to the fence, they rush after the fence, they rush over the fence. Trying to get a thoroughbred to jump slow in the air is such a rewarding process when it really works. And we don't even think that's what we're looking for in the first place most of the time.
And again, this is all Werner coming in. I showed up with my horse forest the one I bought instead of the motorcycle. He. And Forrest is a ding bat. He is just a absolute he is not an upper level horse. Anybody who knows this horse now knows this. He is so happy being just an average Joe.
He packed one of my ex-boyfriends around in a western saddle. He's just such a good boy, but he's not an upper level horse. And so I bring him to Verna and Vernon's oh, dear God, we've gotta jump this thing. But he [00:49:00] was nice to me for a while and didn't tell me how stupid he thought my horse was for a while.
And Forrest jumps with low knees if you get forward. So if you stay back, he clears the fences and he picks his knees up. He's just not the most careful jumper. And again, he's rocking around beginner novice, and just being a huge confidence boost to a young rider right now. And I love that. For him.
This has been a long evolution. But I was getting ahead of him and he was like, okay, jump that, jump that er, go jump. And he was like, okay, wait, hang on, jump the barrels. Okay, wait, okay, jump the crossrail. And then I was like, uhoh, right? We're backing. This is not, you're being demoted.
This is my first lesson with him, right? And I'm like crap. And then he is drop your stir up. Sit still. Don't move. Jump the crossrail at a walk. And I was like, oh fuck, this is really bad. But over the period of another, I don't know, four years since then, five years since then, I've learned to slow my body down.
My horses can now jump slower and better, and that's. It's the biggest compliment I've gotten in ages is I've either sent him video or gone back, like when I was still living in Georgia and take a horse down, and he's you get it now. Like you've been able, you don't do it all the [00:50:00] time, but you're getting better and you're able to control your upper body so it doesn't go forward, and you are not throwing your horses off balance in any way, shape, or form.
Yeah. And that is really, it's a really hard thing to do of just learning, relearning that balance, staying up, staying back, not moving. And it's not how most of us are trained to do things. So that's one of the things I tend to really get on my students' cases for, to just not move. And thoroughbreds are so honest.
You get on Wolf one of my favorite critters, he's out in my mafia herd, and you stay upright, he will trot to the base of the fence and just ping up and over, 2, 6, 3 foot, doesn't matter what you want. You lean forward, you're going real fast every time. And like he's, you just tell on you.
So honest, he will just teach you. He's would you like to learn to stay still? Because I will help. So yeah that's really the biggest thing. It's don't pull, don't move. Let them do their job, stay out of their way, do less. And that is the hardest thing, is just do less. Obviously retraining thorough thoroughbreds isn't always easy or straightforward, but can you share a [00:51:00] story about a particularly difficult horse and what you learned from them?
Let's see. I could take that in so many different directions. To, what I would say sometimes is fail and be able to redirect, which is a really difficult thing for someone who is such an A type personality. And I come from a space where I'm not good at failing and I'm not used to it. I was actually talking about this horse today when I was hopping on the other one.
I don't know why. I've only had one or two that I really, that I just don't know how to figure out. And they stumped me. And oh, we were talking about draw reins, that's what it was. There's only one horse in the entire history of my training thoroughbreds that I've ever put in draw reins for a training per I don't use 'em anyway.
I have no problem with them. I'm not gonna kick off that, internet debate, but. Whatever used correctly, who cares? I don't use them, but I did put a pair on one horse once because I had no breaks and I couldn't figure out how to have breaks and if he [00:52:00] could get a hold of the bit. And at all above the bridal, I was outta sort, we were going for a while and I trained this horse.
I got, I didn't ride him in him all the time. I tried different bits, I tried different things and I did all the things I normally do. And then 47 others, and I just couldn't figure him out. He was a warhorse that had run and the way he won his races is he would leave the gate and not have a speck of dirt on him.
By the time he got to the pole, he ran hard, he ran fast and there was no nuance in it. Yeah. And so I would go and watch his races and be like, oh, he loved his job and he doesn't want this new job that I'm trying to put him into, and. I ended up giving him to one of my friends who trains Western and we both were like, I think he just needs the, a western saddle and a lot of time on your dirt roads and around cattle.
And she sent me a picture of him a couple years later where he's just like hanging out in a barrel racing pattern with the kid. He's just like sitting there. She's on her phone. That's amazing. Just hanging out. And he is just [00:53:00] running, he's running barrels. And he's happy. He probably loves that.
Yes. And he's also able to chill, which is what he could not do with me on them. Yeah. And I just couldn't figure 'em out. There's that humbling, again, we go back to the defeat, the failure the humbling of these horses. And I learned so much from him just about sometimes I don't have all the answers, which is one of the big ones.
That's a nice life lesson. Sometimes it takes somebody else having some answers and it's not just failure, it's redirection. And sometimes trying to shoehorn the horse into the thing you think they're gonna be good at. I thought that horse was gonna be a killer inventor, but he didn't wanna play my game.
And the more I tried, it just didn't get anywhere. Yeah. So sometimes it would be, okay, let's look at the bigger picture as opposed to the thing I want and go from there. And yeah, I had no breaks, I had very little steering. It was not a fun ride. My arms were exhausted. I was like, why? I shouldn't even have to use my arms on what is this?
And I don't know. I learned so much from him just about. How [00:54:00] to manage that situation. I think it set me up to better match make for horses coming in later. Yeah. And I've turned horses into Fox hunters sometimes a lot earlier than I would've in the past. I would've tried to keep eventing them, try, kept trying to make them do the dressage.
Yeah. If they didn't like it. Obviously I give things a fair shot and okay, what rabbit holes do we have to go down to make you comfortable to see if you could do collection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I had a horse that we didn't know he had a low dispensary in the back and I would jump him and he would break the poles.
Oh wow. This is a 17 one hand, seven. He's huge. Wonderful horse. I love him to pieces. He's the best brain in the world. But you put him over a ground pole and he was like, he would get really anxious. And so this is why with Finch, I'm like, we're not gonna worry about this too much. And I brought up, man, I took him to his first starter trial.
I had no one with me. Sorry, you guys get to hang on for one more dumb story here. Oh, you're fine. And I had my dog and this young girl who's probably I don't know, 11 or 12, came by to say hi to my dog. [00:55:00] And I was going into the ring and I saw her, I had no one to film. And I was like, Hey, so and do you mind just taking my phone and filming this round for me?
And she's oh, okay. Go figure. Here's me. Just hand off my iPhone, ride off. Let's hope I find it later. It's, good people, but. In the video, Boomer and I go in Trott around and just start like yard sailing poles. He's not jumping. He's half going through the fences and about halfway through the course, you hear her father go, are you sure she's a trainer on the video?
And it's just amazing. And I walked out of that. I apologized to the jump crew who had to go clean everything up after him. Oh my God. But I was like, cool, we're gonna go home and reassess and yeah, you're like, I don't think this one's a jumper necessarily. I was like, we, that's when we found the dispensary because I was like, something's wrong, right?
He's just not, he's terrified something he's not pushing off. This is a huge horse. I don't understand. So we rehabbed that and a year or two later I ended up taking him Mount Fox hunting and he's now the Huntsman's horse for myopia. Oh, that's amazing. He's the happiest camper. I get updates on him all the time.
I get to go [00:56:00] clinic there and teach clinics and see him and it's just the best thing ever. But I had to give up on a horse that I really wanted to do something to get him to the place that worked for him. And I feel like I got him to about the best place I possibly could. If I was a horse, I'd wanna be him right now.
And that's great. So there's those horses and then there's, there's the heartbreak horses that. I love the rehabs. I love the horses that come in and need help. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. I had a horse named Mountain and I will try to hold it together and tell you the story.
Mountain was sent to me for sale and he was so foot sore that I bought him for the price of board which I was giving a friend a really good deal on board. I was like, can I just let you not pay board this month when the horse becomes mine? And she's yeah, that's fine. And we ended up having to screw him into bits of like handmade plywood, clogs, like with screws, actual screws.
Oh my God. Screws, oh my God. Feed into them and keep him in a stall for six to eight months to grow soul. He had one to two [00:57:00] millimeters of soul. His coffin bone was sitting on the ground. Oh. And everything was a mess. , he was the goofiest, most wonderful, ridiculous horse. I hopped on him once just to check his personality, make sure we're good.
I ended up fixing a fence on him, riding around my property and was like, oh, I'm gonna pull that fence line and fix that wire. And then he lived in a stall for a very long time and I had him going, beginner, novice, he was going to the makeover. He was one of these great success stories of we went from no foot to foot.
There's actually a thoroughbred logic on him on the mountain saga and his feet. And then he cribbed too hard and pulled his intestines into a phrenia. And I lost him after colic surgery. Oh wow. Many thousands of dollars later. And I don't think I would've put him through that again. I had the option to, they wanted to go back in six days later after he still hadn't eaten.
And I made the call to not, and it was one of those where, I still think about 'em all the time. I lost a best friend and it was a horse that was never gonna go to the top. Yeah. He was not, his body was not there for that. His brain, that horse's brain could have done [00:58:00] anything. But he, in that hard horse, he was a hard to fix.
I just refused to give up on him. Everybody wanted maybe euthanize him before we fixed his feet. My farrier, my vet, everybody's like, how much money are you planning to spend on a horse that's probably not ever gonna do anything? And I'm like, as much as it takes even though I don't have money.
This is why we're all stupid. People who fall under that category where you're like, I don't care that I don't have money, we're gonna fix it. And he was hard for that fact, but I, there was so much joy in. Building the team and getting him straightened out and actually getting him out there, that made, the heartbreak that much worse when we did lose him to something completely unrelated.
Yeah. That it's, there's a lot of, there was a lot of purpose in that and it really, it did upend my life for quite a while, just in terms of, I didn't realize how much it impacted me until I looked up many months later and realized I hadn't bought a sales horse in five months. And was, wow.
I am resurfacing and need to sink or [00:59:00] swim at this point and actually get my life back together. So the hard horses come in all shapes and sizes. I've ridden a handful of horses up back up through training I've invented through prelim. And I. I've ridden a bunch backup through training and then something happens.
I've had a couple of suspensory injuries that were old from the track. I've had, forest with his brain that doesn't quite work for that type of job. And you're asked to stay hopeful and , stay in the game and find the joy where you can with this. And I can find it at the lower levels in all of the training, but I also, I do want the horse that goes back up the levels and that's a tough thing to put your heart on when you have so many of these where you're like, that was a tough horse and I learned so much, but it's not what I wanted to be learning at the ballet.
Yeah. And that's just horses though, right? Yeah. That's not specific to thorough breaths. Not at all. That's just horses not, and yeah. So yeah, I can tell four stories all day long, but we don't have time for that. This has been such a great conversation, Aubrey. I feel like we could just talk to you all night.
Where can people follow along with what you're doing [01:00:00] at Kivu Sport Horses or reach out to you if they're interested in your services? Super so they can go. So Facebook is a wonderful place for horses. As odd as that is, it's also all the young generation is like, why do we have to go to Facebook?
But on Facebook, I am AP Graham. And as I told you guys earlier, I go by Aubrey, you can call me ap, but it, that's just because my college students would snoop on what I was doing that weekend or what my boyfriend looked like at the time. So ended up using my middle name. So there's that, there's the website, which is www dot kivu, KIV sport horses.com.
And that has all the sales forces, all the different services that are offered. I can do distance consultations. I love doing that where people are stuck, in Montana and have a horse that they're not sure what its nutrition should look like or what jumping exercises will help it do X, y, and Z.
So that stuff's really fun and you can find all that information there. And I recently with an amazing board have started a nonprofit that we're calling Stall 13, [01:01:00] on the mountain side of things with that story to help those horses that come in that just need more time, more training.
They're either, they have, I. Physical things, temperament things. They're the challenging cases. They're the ones I love. They're tough forces. That's all that information can be found@stallthirteen.org and that's www dot stall. And you know how to spell that? The number's one three.org. And that's, we're slowly getting Instagram up and running under if there's a stall 13 one and then there's AP gram eventing, there's a lot of stuff out there.
Awesome. And do you have any upcoming clinics or events or new projects that people should check out besides Stahl 13, which we're gonna have to have a whole separate episode about that now. Super. I would love to have an episode. You guys are so much fun to talk to. Let's see. Upcoming clinics.
I'm literally in Georgia this next weekend, teaching three days of clinics at various farms. I go back and forth to Georgia about once a month except when the winter makes everything impossible for everything. Yes. So life gets kicked back into gear. So I'm teaching a bunch of clinics. I [01:02:00] am hoping to have, I'll be in with myopia.
So with that hunt club I mentioned. And anybody who wants to ride there in Massachusetts a little later this year. I'm doing a few things in Ithaca at the Ithaca Equestrian Center. I'm all over the place. Basically. I teach clinics wherever people want me. Awesome. As long as I can get there and let's see, other endeavors, right?
Stall 13 is the big one right now. And really I'm just trying to keep setting up in Lansing and make this place work for what I want it to. And it's an amazing opportunity. So I'm trying to do that. And yeah, I'm trying to get a book proposal together and actually get all of this writing that I've done into some form of coherent whole that can get out there for people to look at and hopefully have a better sense of how to handle and train and manage their thoroughbreds.
Awesome. And we have one last question for you, which is, can you describe an OTTB in one word? God, you make the academic use one word. Aw. This is, it's torture for basically everybody would do to me. They're like, everybody else write six pages, Aubrey, [01:03:00] one paragraph. I would, you could go with the cliche heart, right?
Which is what they have. They come out and they have so much heart and so much try, so much drive. But I'm gonna go with try. I think that is, that's try that. Is that encapsulates heart. Encapsulates the drive. It's, they, you always reward the try and they have so much of that to reward.
Yes. Yeah. Love that
Okay. Aubrey, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been an incredible deep dive into thoroughbred training and everything else that you're doing to help OTBs find their best second careers. And we'd love to have you on again in the future.
Thank you guys so much. This is amazing. I've loved getting to get to know you all and have this fun conversation and now I'm like, yes, we should actually go get beers and hang out and just talk horses all the time like this.
This would [01:04:00] be fantastic. So come to PA anytime you want to. Perfect. But yeah, thank you guys again. I appreciate the opportunity. If you like what you heard today, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. You can follow OTTB on tap on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And contact us with interview candidates and topic suggestions at o ttb on tap.com.
We love hearing from you. Cheers. Cheers.