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 Expert
Posts: 1286
  
Location: Mississippi | Now that we have discussed your post run routines I would like to hear what you do pre run. My new gelding panics when other horses run near him or up behind him which makes the warm up pen very difficult so I usually just try to stay away. I was told this was a problem when I got him and the trainer had tried to break him of this with no luck so I have come to accept it as just one of his quirks. A lot of our races it is hard to find stable ground to lope circles etc. I am looking for some ideas of things I can do outside of the warm up area when there isn't a lot of room. |
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 Certified Snake Wrangler
Posts: 1672
Location: North MS | Do you have friends that could ride so you could practice warm up pen problems at an arena? Lounge him on the ground while they ride around. Do all sorts of groundwork exercises to get his mind focused on you and not the other horses. Then you ride in a corner doing certain exercises. Move to different areas of the arena and repeat.
Also you could practice drill team patterns with friends. He can get used to riding with other horses at different speeds. The trainer may have tried to just use flooding and try to force him to ride in a warmup pen right from the start. Put some time into it and fix it from the ground first is my suggestion. Otherwise you are stuck with just walk and trot in a small area and maybe rollbacks. Good luck! |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 602
| Does the horse have the same issue when you are cooling him off? I had a gelding that would jump side ways if a horse came within 10ft of him. I would warm up somewhere else and then when cooling off, I would ride in the crowded arena. At some point he accepted it. If you try to break him when he is cooling off its rewarding and you/him are not nervous about the race anymore. It becomes a calm environment. |
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 Expert
Posts: 1857
| I rarely use a warm up area, to much going on for me. Long trot, even if you only have a few yards you can get them to stretch out their legs, roll backs, flexing, backing. If I happen to have a big enough area to lope some large circles I will a couple each direction. Sometimes you'll find me weaving through the trailers, moving them off my legs. (of course find paths that there are no horses tied to the trailer). Then Ill go stand by the arena until about 5 out and start walking in the warm up area until my run. Between the calf ropers and barrel racers sometimes it's a mess, and if at a 4D event it's really a mess in there. If I have a colt that could benefit from it I'll suck it up and go trot along with them but I rarely break into a lope in the warm up area, I had a really bad accident when I was younger at a high school rodeo warming up and now I'm a chicken. |
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 Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | I do a lot of walking. I don't lope a ton of circles before I run. I usually start off walking for probably 15 minutes, then I move on to trotting nice and easy and quickly step it up to a long trot. I will ask her to collect up and really reach and use her hind end for a few strids then I will let her out to trot relaxed then ask her to collect up again. I do that a few times but not too much. Just enough to get her really listening to my cues and to make sure she isn't hollow in her back. I then pick up a lope in each lead. Most of this is done in a straight line so anywhere will work....parking area, ditch, etc. Once I feel her muscles are pretty warm and it is getting closer to run time I will ask her to trot and lope a few perfect circles. Then I get off check over my equipment, give her a pep talk, think about my game plan, loosen my cinch, lift my pad, tighten my cinch, get on, put my rubber bands on and head over to the waiting area and walk in as quiet of an area as I can find to keep her from getting too worked up. I want to keep her as quiet and relaxed as possible before I head to the gate. I keep her away from the gate until the runner before is running. I then head over so I am up there by the time they call my name. |
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 Expert
Posts: 2457
| Saddle up, walk, trot, lope both directions once or twice - this can be either in or out of the warm up pen. Thankfully my mare doesn't really care if someone directly runs into her - she'll just pin her ears and swish her tail. OT side note - we joked last year that it was gonna be a good race if she got ran into because it pissed her off enough she'd run harder and the fact that it happened way too much - in and out of the arena.
I think you have to know your horse - with that said - I work on flexion during my warm up and really get her listening to my legs and seat: ie - counter flex, extending and shortening her stride, and really rounding her back. I know how I want her to feel and once she is there, I leave her alone to do her job. Then 2 riders out we walk to the gate and relax. As soon as I gather my reins, she knows its' go time and elevates and is ready to roll. |
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