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[RC] who is captain of the ship - DreamWeaverA horse should learn from a ride what YOU, the rider, intend for him to learn. He will only learn to race if YOU LET him race. If you can't keep him from racing, you should not have gone to the ride. You might not have realized that till you got there, I understand, but don't blame the distance, blame the rider! There is another side though. It's not just what you teach the horse, but what the horse isn't learning by going on the shorter distances. Some horses are mental works of art :+>, and do greatly benefit by 'going the distance'. I can use myself as an example. You know what they say about hindsight, now I can look back and see the things that I maybe did right and maybe did wrong and maybe could have done better. One of the things that I would have definitely done different is that I would not have allowed Rocky to have done any limited distance rides (and, if you look at his record you'll see that he only has one showing up, that is because back then they weren't sanctioned very often). I feel now that this delayed his becoming a good endurance horse -- it eventually did happen, but it didn't have to be so difficult! Somebody might see his record and think oh look, that horse started with a few LD rides and look, he's got around 6700 miles now and still going. That doesn't mean that it was good for him. I thought it was at the time. By doing limited distance rides he learned that they were over before he had to take care of himself. He didn't have to, he would breeze thru them with all A's! He was never raced on a LD, and never finished one in the top ten even when there were 12 entries. Now I'm starting a third horse, who has completed 6 endurance rides (305 miles) and at his very first ride he already learned more about taking care of himself than Rocky did after a dozen or more rides. Karen in NV
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