Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Super-alert horse

From: Ruth Crowley

hi jessica! we took my 5 year old morgan mare, hocus pocus, to her first show last week, morgan regionals, in hunter pleasure. she did much better than we expected, handled herself well among all the stimuli of the fairgrounds, put up with having hooves sanded and mane showsheened, etc. we took her for the express purpose of finding out who she would be in that situation and how she looks compared to her fellow morgans. what i learned was that she looks good enough to be in show horse company and she has the mind for it; now all she needs is some good training to pull her together. i'm very encouraged.

here's my question. she seemed very pumped up after the show, full of herself, and either nervous or happy/excited. it's been a week and she's continued to behave differently in our rides and with her new trainer. she's extremely full of energy and it's much harder for me to get her to slow down and listen. however, when i do, her learning curve is much steeper than in the past (i.e., she's learning more quickly) and she's very cooperative. her trainer thinks maybe she has joined up, caught on to the fact that there are all kinds of new things to learn and praise for learning them. i wonder if maybe i'm just feeding her too much protein, since i have been trying to get her weight up over the last 3 months. this is not exactly a problem. i'm curious about your diagnosis re her new attitude, and wonder whether other people have experienced this (overall positive) post-show syndrome.

Thanks for all your help! Ruth, proud owner of hocus pocus, former saddleseat horse key to fame (aka motorcycle horse), and the opinionated appaloosa montana azul

Hi Ruth! I think that you may BOTH be right -- and I really like your trainer's attitude! If your mare were alert, nervous, and frightened, she wouldn't be learning faster, in fact she wouldn't be learning at all. You can't teach anything to a frightened horse. Your horse sounds very, very alert -- and that's another matter entirely.

Horses DO love praise, and when the people who take them to shows are careful to ensure that those horses have a good time, it can have this effect. Your mare may be a natural showhorse. Some horses are frightened by shows -- not necessarily by their trainers and riders, although one does see a lot of that! but by the noise, the crowds, the dust... some horses make it clear that they don't enjoy showing, and it's kinder to find these horses something else to do. But some horses absolutely love it, and from the moment they get off the trailer at the show, they are convinced that every single person at the show is there to admire them.

I have a mare like this -- she always enjoyed showing MUCH more than I did, as a matter of fact, and it didn't matter what kind of show it was. She would stand like a statue while total strangers ran up to her and patted her on her nose, which is something she didn't normally tolerate, and even after a long, hot, dusty day at a show, she couldn't even walk from the paddock to the trailer without arching her neck, carrying her tail high, and snorting softly at every stride. Then, for the next several weeks at home, she would still be "high" and visibly pleased with herself, and her learning curve would be very different and very impressive, almost as though she had shifted into an entirely new "gear."

Your mare may be like this! If so, you've got a show horse.

As for the feed, it's true that adding feed and putting weight on a thin horse can create new energy and a new attitude, but if you think that she is getting a bit "high", why don't you try to add weight by adding fat, which isn't a challenge to your horse's digestion, rather than extra protein?

My own super-alert show mare would only put on a certain amount of weight, no matter how much I increased her feed; past a point, she would not become fatter, but she would become extremely nervous, and eventually she would try to bite everyone in sight -- TOO MUCH feed is NOT a good thing. When we reduced her diet and fed supplementary fat instead of just giving her more of her usual feed, she stayed at a good show weight, and was her normal pleasant self.

Horses do very well with fat added to their diets -- talk to your vet about this. If you can maintain her at a good weight and keep her cheerful AND attentive, you'll have a great summer at the shows...

Jessica

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