Rovie the Bolter

I was minding my own business, blogging and checking Facebook, when my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is this Dom?"
"Yes it is."
"Hi, my name is Lauren. I got your phone number from Sandy. She says you're really good with crazy off track thoroughbreds..."
*heavy sigh* "I am..." I reluctantly admitted.
"O good. I have a crazy off track thoroughbred and I really love him so it would be great if we could get the crazy out of him."

And so I wound up hearing about Royal Vision, aka Rovi. This time last year, Rovi was still racing. Looking back, his owner says that she should have given him more time off before starting him as a riding horse, but you can't change the past. You can only move forward.

Originally, Rovi was bought as a potential husband horse. He was easy to handle and very, very quiet. So much so that they're now wondering if he was initially drugged.

As it turns out, Rovi is a smart horse with a lot of talent and good looks to boot. He has made amazing progress in the ring. His owner schools him regularly in dressage and he is jumping up to three feet consistently.

However, Rovi has one major downfall. Outside of the ring, he has developed a nasty bolting habit. He grabs the bit in his teeth and takes off. Nobody has been able to prevent him from bolting and once he's in a gallop, there's no stopping him. His owner has come off of him a few times and he has hurt a few people along the way.

Lauren is a very capable rider and she wants a well rounded horse. She is very understanding of the fact that retraining a racehorse is a process and won't happen over night. She has been working hard and taking her time, and she has other horses that she can ride in the meantime, including a four year old OTTB who she takes on hunter paces. She is also realistic and knows when it's time to ask for help.

Heading out into the open with Rovi.

I called Sandy when I was done setting up an appointment, just to see how bad this horse really was. Sandy's thoughts on the matter were, "I'm glad she called you. Rovi is nuts and Lauren definitely needs your help. Good luck with him. Let me know how it goes, and be sure to get pictures."
Uh oh.

I asked what happens if someone tries to hold Rovi back and I was told that he just sort of ricochets back and forth like a pin ball.
"I wouldn't be surprised if he was the type to go up and over, though," Sandy warned me.

I opted to wear my crash vest just in case.

On Thursday evening, I went up for my evaluation ride. Lauren and her dogs met me at the barn. She was pleasant and welcoming and I could tell right away that she's a well-informed horse owner. Then I met Rovi. I'm not a sucker for thoroughbreds, but I can see why she wants to keep this horse. He's tall, dark, and well put together, with a handsome face and intelligent eye. At the very least, he's a good looking horse. He's also bigger than I expected him to be.

We chatted about goals and methods, my history, her history, and Rovi's background while she tacked him up. She told me that she usually rides him in a standing martingale and I told her I would prefer to ride without one.
"It's your call," she said, removing the tie down, "but I will warn you that there have been a few times that he's hit the end of it. I don't know that he wouldn't rear."
"If he rears, I'll handle it," I told her, trying not to sound dismissive. "I'd rather he be able to get his head up than he feel restrained, and I'll need to be able to give him full range of motion for some of this."

I led Rovi up the hill to the riding area while Lauren ran inside to get a camera (you know, just in case). The riding ring is a large, flat paddock at the top of the hill, and Rovi seemed more than comfortable there. I hopped on him from the ground and gave him a minute to walk around. Then I installed my 'parking brake' while explaining the concept to Lauren and theorizing about how our ride would go.

A few minutes later I declared that I was ready to head out on the trail, where the bolting action occurs.
Lauren looked surprised. "Are you sure you don't want to ride him in here some more? Maybe walk, trot, and canter him around a bit?"

Explaining as I go.

I politely declined. "You don't have a problem riding him in here," I reasoned. "Let's tackle the actual issue. I don't want to waste your time. I want to see what he does and why."

She agreed and we headed out the back gate in the pasture. I asked a series of questions about Rovi's MO, trying to gauge what kind of ride I was in for. So far, the horse seemed alert, but relaxed. He was giving me no indication that he might do anything naughty. That in and of itself was a bit alarming. Horses who misbehave because they're spooky are usually easy to fix. Horses who act out for other reasons are a little trickier to figure out and resolve.

As it turns out, Rovi had accidentally figured out that bolting was a good way to scare the humans. It had become a habit. In fact, it was so much of a habit, that Lauren could tell me exactly what spot he was most likely to do it in. She agreed to walk me out to the location and give me a heads up on when to expect the worst.

What I didn't realize is that Rovi's preferred bolting spot was pretty much the worst case scenario. For some reason, I was expecting the issue to be in a big open field or in a particular stretch of wooded trail. In fact, it was a grassy lane between a corn field and a relatively busy road. Worse, the grass sloped down to the road. Lauren warned me that Rovi had in fact bolted right onto the pavement in the past. Of course, the surface of the road was the slickest type of asphalt they make, and this adventure wouldn't be complete without a hairpin turn at one end of the corn field and a blind, wooded, down hill section at the other.

I gulped when I saw what I would be working with. The behavior of the horse was no longer my main concern. The lay of the land was.

Unfortunately, this is the only way to get to the trails from Lauren's barn, and if Rovi's going to stay and be a well-rounded horse, he needs to get over it. The only way to tackle this issue is head on. That didn't make it any less intimidating. The owner wasn't kidding when she said this was a dangerous situation.

"So basically you get to the end of the corn field and turn toward home, and any moment after that he's liable to bolt," Lauren informed me. I nodded and rode toward the problem spot.

All the way out across the trails, I practiced the parking brake I'd introduced in the ring. Rovi is a smart horse and seemed to get the concept right away. We even got to test it in a less-than-relaxed situation when a herd of deer trampled through the brush next to us, and startled Rovi pretty badly. He jumped sideways, but didn't take off. This clearly wasn't going to be a spooking issue.

As we rode down the grassy stretch away from home, I could feel the tension building. Rovi flexed all his muscles, arched his neck, and jigged, prancing sideways and tossing his head. I stopped him and made him wait. A few repetitions in, he finally relaxed and I let him move out to a trot, figuring I'd reward his good behavior with what he wants most. But when I asked Rovi to move out, he threw a big buck and jigged sideways again.

"Sorry, bub, but you just lost your trotting privileges," I patted him.

Rovi's handsome head, stolen from FB.

The biggest issue with this particular stretch of trail is that it rendered my parking brake pretty much obsolete.  The beauty of that exercise is that it takes the horse's forward motion and diverts it into a spin, which is easier to control and sit out, until the horse stops moving. Unfortunately, spinning on a slippery slope beside traffic was not going to be even remotely safe.

Still, I couldn't have Rovi grabbing the bit in his teeth and making a run for it without steering or brakes. I can stay on a galloping horse all day, but it doesn't help either of us to get hit by a truck or fall on slick pavement. I could feel that if I let this horse bolt, I probably wouldn't be able to stop him. It would be a great before video, but I might not be alive at the end of it. This was going to turn into a preventative thing. The goal was not to let Rovi take off in the first place.

Instead of bending Rovi around in a circle, like I usually do, I started to work on suppling his neck while moving on a straight line. Then I worked on making him stand calmly facing away from home. His mind was obviously going a  million miles a minute and I could hear him thinking, "Turn around. This is where we turn around. Just let me turn around!! Run, run, run, run, run..." The first time I asked him to stand still, he backed up and threw his head and threatened to rear. The more times I repeated the exercise, the faster he held still, and the longer he held it.

Eventually, I got to the end of the field, took a deep breath, and turned Rovi around. Instantly, he went tense. He didn't bolt, but it wasn't for lack of wanting to. I started to suspect that he really just wanted to rush home. The racehorse training was telling him to run, but the dressage training was telling him to wait for a cue to do so. He was basically waiting for the starting bell. Only, in his mind, every little thing in the world around us was the starting bell.

"Car! That must mean run. Your leg brushed me. That must mean run. CORN JUST RUSTLED. That DEFINITELY means run!!!"

As soon as Rovi thought about taking off, I turned him around and made him face away from home. He was pissed and backed up, threatening to rear. When he finally gave up and relaxed, I turned him back toward home. I'd found an effective way to stop him from taking off. After all, it's pretty hard to bolt backwards, and he had no interest in galloping further away from the barn.

After a few repeats, Rovi started to get really frustrated. I obviously wasn't gong to let him have his way, and he just plain couldn't stand it. He seemed to realize that bolting wasn't going to happen, so he started to pull all sorts of other tricks out of his bag. He jigged, he threw his head, he locked his neck and moved sideways into the road. Every time he acted up, I turned him away from home and waited. When he started to move into the road, I did the counter intuitive thing and bent him toward the street instead of turning him away from it. His dressage kicked in and he leg yielded back onto the grass. Lauren looked impressed.

It was a long, exhausting ride back up the corn field, but Rovi didn't manage to get away from me. I finally had enough of a handle on the situation to be able to explain to Lauren what I was doing.

Lauren and Rovi in the indoor. 

As he backed towards home, I told her, "Backing up and threatening me is obviously not ideal, but it's not an outright dangerous behavior. He has shown us that he has a dangerous habit and that is the priority. After we resolve that, we can work on all the smaller bad things, but until he stops thinking about taking off on me, I don't really care if he jigs or moves sideways, or backs up." She nodded in agreement.

There were a few times when Rovi backed me into the street, and I finally crossed the road with him to where the ground was flatter and there was more space. The scariest moment in our ride was when I heard a fleet of sport bikes revving in the distance. The telltale whine of the engines grew closer and I was really afraid they would come whipping around the corner, unaware of me or the horse I was on. Thankfully, the whine died down. They had taken a different road. Phew! There was also the BMW that came flying down the road with no intentions of stopping, but Lauren put an end to that by walking right into the road and stopping him herself. I was glad she was there.

When we got to the end of the cornfield closest to home, Rovi was still pretty worked up. He had stopped trying to bolt, but he was still very antsy to get home. I parked him on a flat patch of grass and waited. We hung out there, ignoring him, until he finally relaxed and took a deep breath. Then, and only then, I let the reins slide and crossed the street, back to Lauren's property.

We ended on a good note and Rovi walked quietly the rest of the way home. It was time to give Lauren my evaluation of her horse.

"So I think you have a very nice horse with a lot of potential who, obviously, has a very bad bolting habit. And I do think it's as bad as you told me it was. You are clearly the type of person who has a clue, and from what I gather, you are a good rider. I don't think you're over reacting, and I do think I would have been in big trouble if it wasn't for a couple things today. I don't think I could have stopped him if he managed to take off on me and I don't think I could have prevented him from doing it if it wasn't for the ring work you've done with him. If you hadn't prepared me as well as you did, we would have had a major problem. The unfortunate thing is that where he persistently bolts is pretty much the worst possible place he could pick.

"I do think I can help you and him and resolve this issue. I think the key to fixing this habit is to be preventative about it until he doesn't think of doing it any more. My plan for a horse like this would be to do exactly what we did today as many times as it takes for it to be a non issue. Just walk to the end of the cornfield and walk back until he doesn't think about bolting any more. Then, and only then, we'd do the same at the trot, and then the canter. Once I can ride him at whatever gait I pick without an issue, I'd put you on him and coach you on how to ride him through all this.

"What I think you need is basically a body on his back that can prevent him from bolting until the bolt is no longer on his mind. That body appears to be me. My homework to you would be to keep doing what you've been doing because the ring work you're doing with him gives me the tools I need to effectively prevent the bolt."

Lauren asked me if I'd be comfortable riding him without a ground person and I told her no. I do want someone there to potentially call 911 if I hit the ground, and to catch the loose horse if it comes to that.

When we reached the barn and I dismounted, I told Lauren to feel Rovi. The only thing we did was walk for about 45 minutes, but the horse was hot and damp. He's physically fit and raring to go, but not being allowed to run for home had mentally exhausted him and he was puffing. I mentioned to Lauren that the horse is 8, but you have to treat him like he came off the track as a three year old, not a seven year old. He basically has the brain of a three and a half year old at this point, and baby steps are important. He may be capable of jumping three feet and showing in the dressage ring, but his brain still has some catching up to do.

At the barn, I met Lauren's husband, who seemed thoroughly impressed that I had ridden the infamous Rovi out in the open and through his notorious problem spot and not only hadn't died, but hadn't let him take off on me either. I'm going back on a weekly basis until further notice. Here's hoping I never have to experience that bolt!