Dear Martha,
I have a 5 year old paint that I started on the barrels over a year ago, when he was 4. He was broke when I bought him, but I spent about 5wks just riding before I even introduced him to the barrels, I started him slow and after about 3 months, started hauling him.
He was running really smoothly and walking in the alley fine for a couple of months and all of a sudden, he started rearing up at the gate and then it turned into rearing up coming out of the 2nd barrel. Finally I was at a rodeo one day and was going to run him and he wouldn't get 50 feet from the alley with out rearing up and turning away.
I finally decided that he was in pain somewhere. So I took him to a farrier/horse masseuse and he found that his stifle was hurting him. He suggested that I turn him out for about 4 months. I did this and I started back up by just conditioning, not even going near the barrels.
Eventually, I started walking and trotting the barrels again. I took him to a barrel race the other day to exhibition him and he warmed up in the arena just fine, but when it came to entering for my run, he kept turning away and didn't want to go in, so I got off and walked him in. I trotted/walked the pattern and when I left the arena, I took him back to just stand by the alley, he refused to go near it!! It seems like after all this time, I'm right back where I started!! Any suggestions? When he does do the barrels, he works AWESOME, I just don't know what to do to get through this!!!
Thank you very much for your time,
Cortney Thayer
It doesn’t do any good to “just turn a horse out” without addressing the problem that is causing his pain BEFORE you turn him out. You have now created a gate problem as well as allowing a soreness issue to turn into a chronic problem because you turned him out with inflammation still ongoing. I would say that you have your work cut out for you in that you are going to need lots of time and patience in order to turn this horse around.
First of all, take him to a really good performance or race horse vet and see if they can help you address the soreness problem and find out how maintainable it is going to be. Once you get this horse pain free, then you can begin working him slowly back to a competitive level.
Understand that this won’t happen overnight – you will have to spend a lot of time getting this horse comfortable with going in and out of the arena before you start to ask him to work the pattern with even slow speed. Plan on doing lots of time-onlys or exhibitions and NOT making any runs for quite a while.
Martha Wright
