Quote:
Originally Posted by exactatom
When they got her in the gate, she broke through a la Barbaro.
When they were trying to load her in the gate, the gate stalls were closed.
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Wow. That is not good at all. As a matter of fact, that is borderline terrible. And probably a problem that if it has gone on with her for a while or is becoming a problem all of the sudden, it is liable to stay a problem, which is obviously not good at all.
OK, let me explain .
There are horses that break bad because they hate the gate. As you try and stand them in the morning, in many cases they only get worse. So the starter will work with the trainer to come up with a plan that seems to be the best of a bad situation. Like a blindfold, of padding on her hips, or whatever. From that point forward everyone tries to do the same thing. So with a horse with this type of importance, no doubt a phone call was made, prompted by the trainer so the starter where the horse calls home base, can relay any info to the starter at another track. This sounds like a work in progress that is going from bad to worse. What will prevent this from happening next time is for a guy on the gate crew to " tail"her. That is, once she is in the gate, you hold her tail up so she cannot bring her weight back. Hopefully that has not failed yet. I just don't know.
If they load just OK but truly hate the gate, standing in the morning which is what you saw, is supposed to be something like walk in, stand, back out, and repeat several times, and then after the last back out, be led around the gate and she gallops off or hand open the gate and let them walk out the front. No breaking at all. Breaking with the doors closed and the bell ringing usually makes things much worse.
That might be why you are not seeing gate workouts in the morning. Those will make an upset horse that needs to calm down turn into a lunatic. Mainly because it is not physical , it is all mental and the horse can't think straight if they get flustered.
There are others that break bad because they are conically muscle sore behind. They actually do not mind the gate, it just seems like it because they always break tardy. But it is the tightness of the butt muscles or back leg muscles or lack of muscle from the horse getting off that area by throwing their weight forward while exercising over a period of time. Often you will see these horses coming over in a blanket on its butt area even if it is not cold out. Not summer though. They will typically have a liniment on them as well. It might look like their rear end up high is wet.
A ton of jogging, not galloping as a warm up all the way until post time if necessary will be about the best you can do with a muscle sore type. You usually see these horses running for claiming prices and have a history of coming from pretty far back.
Lastly, there are indeed those that just break poorly for seemingly no reason at all. Those types DO need to practice breaking and that usually helps quite a bit. But unfortunately, it almost always seems to be the first reason I mentioned. And those cases can really be tough to crack.
Hope this info somehow helps down the road and clears up why you don't see horses like her working from the gate more often.
Quick story if you care. I had a horse I ran at the Meadowlands or Belmont, can't remember and he was claimed by Johnny Campo from me for about 25k. At the time, Campo was BMOC and had Pleasant Colony training up to the Gold Cup in NY. The horse he claimed from me was a real knucklehead at the gate. Typically, if a horse is claimed the barn that is turning over the horse to the new trainer will alert them of a problem that could seriously hurt the horse or a rider as a courtesy. My groom tried to tell the people taking the horse but they blew them off and were saying go back to Md. and stuff like that. So they wouldn't hear of anything we tried to tell them. A couple of months later I read that my old horse stepped all over Pleasant Colony leaving the gate as a rabbit for a workout and ended his career. Damn shame nobody would listen.
