S2 E7: Fundamentals First: Tom & Clare Mansmann’s Approach to Retraining OTTBs (Part 1)

S2 E7: Fundamentals First: Tom & Clare Mansmann’s Approach to Retraining OTTBs (Part 1)
[00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome back to OTTB on Tap. I'm Niamhe. And I'm Emily. Hey, Niamh, what's on tap today? Today we're joined by Claire and Tom Mansman of Pacific Farms in Hume, Virginia.
They are lifelong and generational horsemen with experience through the CCI four star level of eventing, as well as show hunters, jumpers, dressage, fox hunting, and even a little ranch work. Claire has also been a guest blogger and writer for Eventing Nation, and we'll leave a link in the show notes to a roundup of all of her articles.
Reading through them, I've. got the sense that we could talk for hours about Off the Track Thoroughbreds. So Claire and Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, thanks for having us. Thank you. So I don't know who wants to go first, but we'd love to just do a little dive into your backgrounds in equestrian sports and then also how you came to co found Pacific Farms.
So Claire, do you want to start? Fire away. So let's see, I grew up actually in Southern California with a non horsey family and I got riding lessons as a birthday present when I was little. And that was definitely what happened after that is not what my parents thought was going to happen, not what they intended even slightly and my family moved to Texas.
And that's where I got a horse and got into eventing. And then I was on the young rider team when I was in high school and the O'Connor's Karen O'Connor was our coach for area five. And so she actually went to Florida before I finished high school with them for the winter. And then they brought me back to Virginia and I just Niamher ended up going home.
Which is, not a totally uncommon story. Emily is this sounds a little familiar. Yeah. Yeah. And That's how I got, just into writing and looking back, we could definitely see I can see old videos of me in the show ring and the hunter ring in California.
And it was all on thoroughbreds, but I didn't even know, , that's what everybody was writing. Tom had already started Pacific Farms when we actually met. Oh, okay. And but I started working for him. This is skipping ahead because I had broken both of my arms falling off of a racehorse.
Galloping racehorse. Oh my goodness. Oh my God. I needed a job. I needed a job. So that's actually, we'd known each other before that, just from the scene out here but I started riding racehorses because my horse was going advanced and he was really fast and would run off with me a lot.
And I was really scared. Wait, I just have to interject a really quick question. Did by any chance, Jimmy Wofford say to you, if you want to learn how to ride your horse, you should go gallop racehorses? So actually I was with Karen at the time. So Karen's and they did, she said, but she learned it from Jimmy.
So I was going to say that seems like a, Jimmy thing. So Karen sent me. to start riding on the track. And then I just fell in love with it, actually. And then right around then, I started riding with Jimmy. And he loved that I rode on the track. And then when I would get a little bit run off with more than I should have or if he thought I needed to be more fit, he would just gently say can you ask them to put you on some of the stronger horses?
You're like, great. Yeah, and then, Tom can talk about how he started Pacific Farms. It just so worked that we're both from Southern California, but we met out here. Oh, that's cool. We already named the business Pacific Farms, which has worked out really well for the Yeah.
It's a little serendipitous. Yeah. And how about you, Tom? Can you give us a little info about your background? Yeah. As we say to our children, back in the 1900s yeah, so I grew up with horses. My father is a veterinarian equine veterinarian. And so we grew up as a family, literally.
On a property where my father had his equine practice. So we always had horses. I have , two other brothers. And I was introduced to, and my father rode, he rode all the way up until veterinary school. He actually did ride in a few point to point races and he's an a pony clever. My mother is an a pony clever.
They're both, as we were talking, they're both from Pennsylvania. And on my father's side, his mother was a very accomplished horse woman. And she was also one of the early women masters of a fox hunt in Pennsylvania as well. And her father immigrated from England and he was a professional horseman and he came here to work for a family to manage their horses and so forth.
I guess from that, it makes it more of a generational thing. We were introduced to riding and my father did both my parents own race horses and did some very small scale breeding. And at the time their practice in Southern California, they did a lot of work for thoroughbred operations that were running at, Santa Anita back then, Hollywood Park was still around, Golden Gate and I do remember, I have a childhood memory of going to see my parents taking us to Tijuana, Mexico to watch one of their horses actually run in a race.
Fast forward we were introduced to writing as children and I got into other team sports as well. I really loved baseball and basketball. But I started getting serious about writing when I was introduced to 3d eventing. I think I was about 13 years old. A man named Don Sachey, who's still with us went from the east coast to the west coast at the time.
And he started me. Because I was riding local hunters with my mom liked to do show hunters. So as I started to get into introduced to eventing, I thought this is really interesting. And I got the bug. I was able to do a couple of long format three days back in the day on the West coast, and then I came to the east coast.
I was 17 years old and all I had was a duffel bag. And I worked for a woman named Jessica Ransausen. Yeah. And she's there in Unionville, Pennsylvania. Incredibly interesting [00:06:00] woman. She was very kind to me. She went to the Olympics in 19 60, 19 64, and then again in 1988 after raising her two children.
That's amazing. So Jessica had a very big influence on me. 'cause I knew that in this sport of three deveni and I had to learn. Really learn how to do flat work and do to be competitive to do the dressage. So I wrote with Jessica for five and a half years and with her daughter, Missy.
You would drive down from Unionville to Middleburg and take jumping lessons with a man named Walsh Bishop. And one summer Missy and I drove down to Middleburg and Walsh said, I'm going to Europe with two horses. Can I hire you to run the business while I'm gone?
Oh, wow. And I said, sure. That'd be awesome. And I think I had just aged out of the young riders then it was 21. I had, I'd gone to the young rider championships, I think, two or three times. And so I took the job with wash and I ended up working for wash for about 11 years.
And, he wrote a lot with Jimmy as well, and they all came from the Legoff kind of era. And he thought it was very important for all of us to gallop racehorses as well. So I galloped for a man named Dougie Fout who's still at it for several years. And Claire and I met in Virginia.
And then. The rest, as they say, is history. Wow. Both of you guys have really fascinating backgrounds and I do this every time we have anybody on the podcast, but within the first 10 minutes, I'm like I really want to have them back on again to talk about this and specifically Claire, I really want to do a whole episode just about you and your horse, Sunday's Thrill.
I could take it for myself. Amazing horse. An amazing animal. And yeah, we've been dying to have people from the West Coast on. So it's actually really fun to have you guys as a small intro to that a little bit. In Virginia longer than anywhere else.
It's hard to get away. I still tell people I'm from Texas, but I only lived there for, I don't know. And anytime we meet somebody from California or anywhere on the West Coast, it's always a running joke because it's still to this day to go to one horse trial. If you drive less than eight hours, you're super excited.
WheNiamher they're introduced to the East coast, like Claire and I did initially. And you're like, yeah, there's 12 horse trials within, Two hours if you have to drive in two hours, you're upset or if you have to write labeling you're like, oh, this is terrible. Yeah Over the state, so get so spoiled up in this area for sure one of our RRP Trainers last year that we had Anika.
She is in Fargo, North Dakota. So not, California. Wow. She was telling us how far they have to go even to, go to her trainer. I think it's a four hour drive. She's the horses get really well traveled though. And I was like, Hey, I didn't really think about what a great opportunity is to Get your horses used to long haul traveling, because if you're going to Kentucky from basically anywhere in the country, it's a haul.
Yeah. Yeah, it was very interesting just hearing about how she manages to train throughout the winters and stuff. Like I've seen the Fargo movie. It doesn't look pleasant. It doesn't look pleasant. No. It does not look pleasant. And just the access to, not only to trainers, but to people. Good veterinarians, good fishers we still have friends that like shipped us from five, six, hours away just to use our farrier.
Yeah. Yeah. And we actually talk about that quite a bit because it's one of the reasons that we started the podcast to begin with, because we have this Facebook group, OTTB Market, and it has, 100, 000 members in it. And you realize that. Many people that own horses live in deserts in terms of like veterinarians, farriers, trainers, even just basic stuff.
And these sort of common questions pop up and your initial reaction is you should already know that maybe, but if you don't have access to professionals to talk to, then how would you know any of that? Or if you didn't do pony club or. So yeah, it's so you answered this a little bit regarding your background with off the track thoroughbreds, but in your program at your farm, is that pretty much your specialization at this time?
And what do you find the most rewarding about working with thoroughbreds in general? What's funny is not necessarily at all our specialization. And Claire and I both have a heart for. Thoroughbred horses but we work with all horses. Yeah, we have a barn full of, we've got Irish, we've got drafts, we have Do they still even do PMU babies?
We've got a PMU. Yeah. We got a little bit of a name doing the thoroughbreds because I think we started talking about it. We didn't realize. Quite frankly, that it's more unusual.
It's So just going back to I don't know, it's like on the couch with the psychologist, but going back to the childhood thing, my dad , I do remember because he did breed some horses and he worked with other thoroughbred operations. Our early horses were thoroughbreds.
Yeah. My, we had one pony and it was like a monster pony and I got out the pony as soon as possible. One of my favorite horses was literally a horse where his name was finesse man. And he was a thoroughbred horse and he came up from Santa Anita and he had, my father specialized in upper respiratory disease in horses.
So he, what's called shipping fever or pleural pneumonia. Anyway, long story short the owner decided that they didn't want the horse anymore. And of course my dad's a super softy. They're like, Hey, Dr. Manson, why don't you just keep them? And maybe your boys can ride them. And he's so here's this three year old Cole.
that needed to be castrated and he survived the pleural pneumonia, but he ended up having what's called a pleural fistula. So he had a permanent hole in the side right where you put the girth because they had to tap this. This could be a whole nother podcast, but yeah, they, he had pneumonia so bad that they had to tap the side of his chest to drain all the fluid out.
Oh, wow. With discourse. actually [00:12:00] lived, but he still had this permanent, and think of an earring open and he had a small hole in the side of his ribs for the rest of his life. Oh my God. Fast forward. The horse gets sent out to the East coast. I get to the Radnor three day event. I'm a young writer.
I'm in the Radnor three day event and I have to jog the horse up with a hole in its side. So it was a wonderful horse. Obviously I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like 16 years old and headed to the second three day I've ever done. And clearly he was okay if he was in a three day, right? Oh yeah.
Yeah. I mean he just had a hole. Stanley just had a hole on his side oh my gosh. , I go up to the jog and it was Ken Allen and Kathy Cone. Uhhuh and somebody else, like serious, and I remember them very well. , . So I had to start making jokes right away. Otherwise, like they would just be flabbergasted, like, how are we gonna pass this horse with a aside?
So I was going and I was like, yeah, so he has a hole in his side, but he's fine. Anyway the horse finished we did great. I think we were in top three or something like that. And it was wild. Example of how awesome these horses are. Here's this teenager out doing probably what I shouldn't have been doing.
He's just such a good boy, had a wonderful gallop and a big jump and just everything that, makes up a classic there, yeah. That's a great story. We love like underdog stories like that. And also when I was reading about your horse, Claire, it reminded me so much of Emily's horse, Alex, and in so many ways, , I feel like I should just leave the chat you guys just catch up about.
I feel like you posted something recently, Claire, about getting run away with, and it sounded very Resemblatory of my time eventing back then. Together. What's funny about that horse is that he was not an off the track thoroughbred. Oh, he wasn't? He was an appendix quarter horse. Oh my god, that's funny.
He looked like a thoroughbred. Way more thoroughbred He looked like a thoroughbred. Yeah. It looked more of a thoroughbred than buff dude looks like.
But , people used to people I rode with for years had no idea, except I had a lot of AQHA awards. Oh, that's cool. He was the only one. So I got really cool ribbons and points and stuff like that since he was papered. But he necessitated me to learn how to ride a race horse, which is really interesting actually when you think about it, because we, Maybe blame is the wrong word, but a lot of people blame a lot on the track.
Yeah. And maybe sometimes, but actually sometimes just not. It's just the way these horses, they're built to run. Yeah. And they, horses listen to our bodies and they listen to our intention and they listen to. How we feel about them and they listen to us more than they should sometimes, and maybe more than we should.
And can I say that Jake would have run off with me now today? If I'd start, if me now started him, probably not. Because I know who started it and he actually, he ran off with me the day I tried him.
Classic. Yeah. That person that like showed the horse to me being like , That was always an interesting thing because even looking back he rode just like an off track thoroughbred, but.
He identified as one.
That is amazing. Trying to think back to something you were saying, but I find that Where you said that sometimes people blame the track. I find that really interesting. Because I am on a new adventure, personally, with a homebred horse. And I, at times, am like, gosh, I wish I could send you to the track.
Yeah. So you could learn some stuff. Yeah. So I didn't have to teach you every little thing. So I'm used to getting them, they already know how to do everything. You just have to speak their language. Yeah. It's an interesting job. You almost take it for granted until you see what they can do.
What's out there? That's, that hasn't raced or hasn't been? Oh yeah. we were sent recently some horses that they were four and five years old and they were completely feral. Oh boy. They were thoroughbreds. But that didn't, they had halters on, but they arrived like in a cattle stock trailer.
Oh, no. No, they didn't have halters on. Some point they had halters on, but somebody had taken the halters off and there were no halters on. Yeah. Oh, jeez. Anyway, so just like being able to catch a horse is, when you go out to a field and the horse like comes to you, that is amazing.
And for the horses that have raced, quite a bit and they've seen jumbotrons and they've seen crowds and they've been like we were talking about earlier on and off different vans. They've been bandaged. They've been tied. Give us a horse that's been on the track and certainly that's raced.
Yeah, I super agree with that. Today I was actually at the farm and I just got a new four year old off the track, hopefully for the RRP and the fox hunt. Leaves right from our farm, basically. And they, my bar manager's Oh no, they were done hours ago. And lo and behold, they were out for a really long hunt or they lost the hounds or something, but they were coming back and his paddock is like right by the road.
And so all day long, this is going now, my quarter horse, who's. Loses his mind to the point that like, I can't ride him the day the hunt comes through. I can't catch him, can't ride him. I go down and I haven't done anything with him in five days and he was high octane when I brought him up, but there's just something about being able to tap into that and understand like how to just manage it and say okay, it's time to work now.
And just knowing that work ethic is already baked in is so nice because they just want something to do [00:18:00] and they want their brain to be engaged and. I don't know. It was pretty awesome. Too, for Claire and I, the fact that we had the ability to work on the track and gallop horses and be around and work with racehorses, which just so happens.
We both really love that. It's yeah. Golden years of our riding kind of memories and so forth. But connecting those dots of okay, what do these horses do? And, going out in sets and working a horse we got to break horses out of a gate it's like really cool stuff.
And then you go, Oh, okay. I guess at the end of the day To be a good horse trainer, we want to really try to think like a horse. What do they need? What are they looking for? What is, what are they spooking at or what, and so being able to actually work on a track and gallop race horses and connect that with.
With, after race training was really special for us. And I think very enlightening, super enlightening. Yeah. Simplifies it a lot. I'm sure. Yeah. Having just all of the pieces of the puzzle there to work with. All right. So we got a little off track, but let's get back on. That's totally fine.
Since y'all are such great advocates for the retraining process and off track thoroughbreds, we have some questions for you. The first one is, do you have a specific philosophy or method when it comes to retraining off track thoroughbreds and how does it differ from traditional training approaches?
I think that kind of piggybacks on what we were getting at there. But I think one, I think we've simplified it over the years because now We've gotten to, there's a point where you're we're always developing, but you're developing a method and then you're using the method, and I think what we really look at with the horses is you're going down the checklist, looking at figuring out what they know.
We're really blessed now. We've, we have a couple connections that send us horses that, joke, like when we talk about the feral horses that came, like we get on them and we're like, Okay. This is just easy. You know what I mean? Yeah. But we do have a a run through of what do they know?
So we usually get on them when they come pretty, barring any other issues or something like that. We usually hop on and see what they feel like, but then we go pretty quickly to doing a lot of groundwork. And and then a big thing that. Has gotten talked about with us a lot and that we talk about a lot is that we pony them a lot.
Oh, nice. And we introduce them. Before you get to the ponying, we make sure, how are they leading, driving from the ground all of that. And they'll do that all over the farm and it's just good for their bodies. We get to know them so well. And I think for both of us, when you go to get on a horse that.
You have some information on, but we don't ask a lot of questions quite right now, we're going on the trust process that everything's fine. And it usually we can, you can, we can tell unless it's somebody we really don't know. But you just learned so much about the horse's reactions as well.
So you feel comfortable with what they do. And then we get them out ponying and it's so good for their bodies, their fitness. Their feet and all of that, but also they go, with the pony horse they go on hacks. We've taken them hunting. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's it. It's an interesting thing, but each, each course do you, you have to assess cause they could, it could be a two year old, they could be an 11 year old, they could have had some horses, you don't know how much under saddle they've done.
Or if they have any, minor thing, like quirkiness, if you will, about girthing or something that so what easiest is typically the horses that came off their last race. Cause you're like, yeah, they've had a rider on recently. So I should know what that's all about. There's nothing scarier than being like, I was told it's last race was like three, three weeks ago.
And then you look up the race record and it's a year and three weeks. You're like, what have you been doing? So arriving with race plates on, yes. Then you're like, yes. Oh, and you just. Went on to Equibase and it's true. Yes. The horse was verified for X amount of time. Yeah. So yeah, we do Claire was saying we do want to we interact with them right away.
The old school thing would be like turn them out in the field for, the summer or, several months or whatever. And that may be necessary. But initially we want to just interact with them right away. Assess their soundness just on a circle like that. That's one thing.
I think long term we've really realized that any horse, not just the thoroughbred horse, but. Sometimes more specifically the thoroughbred horse they're going to need some hoof care. Because the style in general of shoeing race horses, thoroughbred horses on the track can be different than the shoeing that they may need as a sport horse.
So the foot the foot is something we Pay close attention to from day one. Like Claire was saying, we we introduced him to, unmounted groundwork and we do use the pony horse and it's the older we, I get the more I realize. So you stop saying, he made this little glance over aging backwards.
That's right. That's how I feel. Yeah. We've gotten to the point where we can introduce these horses to almost anything before we get on them. Yeah, so water jumps, banks, ditches, hacking out, going through cattle, fox hunting, being around hounds, like everything we can now do is And then we'll go, cause again, 30 years ago, I would just get on it, ride it through the field of cows or get on the horse and, trot over the ditch or what, or try to, right now with this method, it is so frictionless.
It's [00:24:00] unbelievable. It's just unbelievable. Again, that's making some assumptions that a lot of those basis are understood that they lead, they load they drive. Danny has really that, I guess I wanted to insert that part. I would say Claire and I either take a riding lesson, a clinic, online clinic, or read a book, a new book or a podcast or something.
The old one about how to train a horse. On a weekly basis. So we're so hungry to learn our method, if you will has definitely evolved. And you interviewed us five years ago. We would go we do this and this. And I don't think there's anything I think it's just quite honestly gotten better and better.
And we've learned a lot from the horses. And I think it's important to , like you're saying, I think the subtext of this is that you can Niamher know too much about horses in general. And one of the big takeaways, I didn't get to ride with Jimmy. Unfortunately, I Niamher had a horse I could actually ride with him, but I went to every time he taught a lesson up here, no matter where it was, I would go and audit and walk around cross country courses and just listen.
And then I would ask him questions. Afterwards. And you better believe if he told me a book to get, I went right out and got the book and read it. And I think there's something to be said for the types of people that really and truly want to learn in all of its formats. Emily and I both are a big supporter of finding techniques online, signing up for workshops, as just as much as you can get into, and we're so lucky at our farm because it's a thoroughbred breeding.
Facility as well that we have, we get access to the very beginnings of it. And when the horses come back off the track and get retrained. So we're still very much immersed, but yeah, I think you have to continue that. evolution for yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
There's so much to learn. That's why it's even funny to even do like a podcast or, something like that. I'm like, I don't know one, cause I'm still so young, obviously. And you're still, there's just so much we were really blessed. We got to spend a lot of time with Jimmy before he passed.
And. The last few years he would just come out sometimes just to be around, just to talk horses. Yeah. Just to talk about it. That's who just come hang out. And because he still just loved horses and. He was still thinking about things and revising things. And I have sketches for a gymnast set of gymnastics that's different than the sketch that's in his book.
And I'm like now which one do I call it? So he was still changing things and he was still, and that's actually the last conversation we had. He said, you guys now are, I wrote it down because it was special, but Jimmy isms that we should have written down, you guys are now entrusted with the next generation, right?
That's going to bring up these horses. So you have to write stuff down and you have to take things that other people do to take things that I did and change them. But write it down and write down what worked. So he was like, do you know, look at page, whatever on the book and work through it and do it differently.
And then write down if it worked or not, that's your job. And so that's that's still what we're doing with the horses is, taking something and going, that was really helpful with this horse. And you try it on the next horse. You're like, Oh, it really didn't change that horse. I don't, whatever it's, and just trying to not get complacent that every horse is the same, but at the same time you can have a consistency that allows you to help a broad range of horses because you know what you're looking for and you know what you're asking.
Yeah. And you're trying to, I think we're all just trying to understand them better. I think about this more times a week than I should, but that it's amazing to me that horses will do anything for us. And I'm constantly in awe of that. Sometimes I think about my dogs, for example, and I'm like, why can I control a 1200 pound animal better than my two dogs?
Our horses are so much better trained. I think that's a common. Yeah. No, but sometimes you're on the end of the leash rope and something crazy is happening. And the horse is looking at you like. Tell me this is okay in the way that you've taught me. And then you go, Oh my God, it's magical a little bit, and not to get all like scientific about it, but they're herbivores. Yeah. And we are carnivores. Need or not. And the fact that, and it is, it blows your mind if you really ponder. That they'd even want to be around us. It's bananas. WheNiamher someone has a horse like stop at a jump, and it Niamher feels good when a horse stops at a jump.
Nobody likes it. But, everybody gets deflated, and they get upset, or they can't do this, or they can't do that. And I'm like, we should Niamher be surprised that they stop at a jump. Every time they jump, we should go, oh my gosh, wow. It's amazing. So you want to set up for success.
And yes, you've trained them and you've put it into them, but we should really be the very least pleasantly supply surprised every time we reach out, let alone should we ever, we really shouldn't be surprised when they stop. We should be like, I would. Yeah. That's that's fair. Okay. Makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No it's pretty incredible. I did have a question about, we've talked a lot about eventing and now groundwork and fox hunting, do you point the horses and the thoroughbreds that you retrain at specific disciplines or do you let them tell you what they want to do?
How do you assess what they might be good with, good at and how does that influence your training? Yeah. I think with each horse. You [00:30:00] can, there's a little bit of, I don't it's probably hard to describe. So maybe it's more just more from experience, but you can look at some body types, just confirmationally.
And, decide what direction you might lean towards, but even those, that will sometimes surprise you in general thoroughbreds are so athletic, they literally can do anything economically. When it comes to resale we don't do a lot of, but we were conscious that we are not a not for profit.
We have a little business. There are economic roles that I think are more profitable if the horse can meet those careers. I, unfortunately, I we're seeing that start to dwindle more and more, but that's a whole nother conversation. Conversation so if the horse shows some scope in their movement and in their jump and you usually can see that without a very large jump and you can usually see that at the walk in the canner, quite frankly.
So same, the same thing that you would be looking for and buying your two year old or your yearling at the. Basic tipton sales. We're looking for as well. Let's go to the walk in the jump. From there. What I mean by maybe some size or some conformational things.
If it happens to be a smaller mayor. They may be more sought after, for example, in the sport of polo and and I think if they showed that they have some kind of classical form when they're jumping again, through a small gymnastic, or we like to start them over logs and kind of cross country then, maybe the show hunters could be a route for them and, But I think in general, without, putting the horses ever in a box, we start them with all of those opportunities.
So they're started outside of the arena, inside of the arena. They're started with the fundamentals of flat work, whether that moves into. upper level dressage, or it's just basic balance rhythm and balance. They're introduced to jumping, whether they're going to be a jumping horse or not. Again, these are all things that preclude that they've already been evaluated, that they're, Ready and sound to do these things at a very low level or initially we introduced them to, trail riding and writing, writing out and all the things that they would see in the hunt field.
Or in a working ranch situation. So we are very blessed to have the facility that we could introduce the horses to, literally all 10 of the careers that the retired racehorse project features. That's how we start. And then we let the horses choose their path. And it is true around here too, much like where you guys are like, we can take a horse to an event one weekend, it can, during the week, and then we can go to a hunter show, or go to Upperville, so we'll take them, we use all the opportunities, so we can have a horse It's going to be geared towards eventing or fox hunting but Upperville has this schooling series.
So we're going to go to Upperville. That's such an opportunity for them. They don't have to win. I, we don't know what I mean. They need to go and then later. And I think that's something we really think about too, is we like to get them off the property. We like to get them going to things.
They don't have to go win right away. They have to go and they have to learn how to compete and learn how to be that horse that if somebody wants, they can, tie their bumper pull trailer at the back, and leave it all day and go to the hunt breakfast and that's the all around horse.
And then some of them have. Talent for significantly more, but if they don't have those things, then that talent doesn't really matter very much. Cause what are you going to do with it? I Niamher didn't grow up around show hunters or anything like that, but I have to say my exposure to the world of show hunters has made me understand something incredibly special about those horses and it's that they put in and do more.
And not in a bad way in a way that like, I think is from an outsider's viewpoint, it's Oh, it's just so easy and so nice. And they just go in and they pop around. And I photographed the fair Hill thoroughbred show last year. So I was there all day for both days, photographing.
And I was mesmerized by these horses going in, doing a model class, coming out, doing the equitation. Being in a ring with 40 other thoroughbreds gathering around and it was just I don't know, it was just amazing. I was like, these horses are good horses, man. It's really cool.
These horses are incredible. They're so broke. They just stand they go in the ring, they learn patience. They like go do the model class. They go in an equitation class with 35 other horses, all going around some of them with like limited steering seemingly, and I was beyond impressed.
We're getting into this a little bit, but how do you guys what are your viewpoints in terms of nutrition, general care, horse husbandry, and turnout, those types of things, like what's your general philosophy?
Obviously it differs from horse to horse, and you got into it a little bit before when you were talking about not just chucking them out in a field for six months.
Yeah, I think so. In general, I would say we're a little bit old school in in as far as classically trained.
So again my parents were both a pony clubbers and so we were pretty much taught at a young age. And with my father being a veterinarian. How to bandage how to, how to assess a horse has an [00:36:00] abscess and things like that. And then working for Jessica for those years, taking care of literally, the.
George Grand Prix dressage horses. That was a whole kind of thing in of its own just because of the dressage as a sport and also the value of those horses. And then when I worked for Wash Bishop, he was vying for the Olympics for those 12 years, so three different Olympics and taking care of three day event horses with their fitness level and nutritional needs was all it's.
Intermingle all of that. And then with Claire's experience working for the O'Connors and taking care of top level event horses, we applied all of that to our our little business. And I think the farrier foot balance is really important in our program.
Nutritionally we tend to feed as little high concentrated feeds as possible. So as we certainly feed grain. But we feel like horses do really well on Good high quality hay as much pasture as possible. And we are comfortable using high concentrations of alfalfa not as a pellet and not as a cube, but actually like the hay and for some horses they get more than others.
But in particular with the horses finishing racing we have found that we do feel like it helps with stomach mobility and for things like ulcers. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what's funny about the years we spent with the I don't know if you want to say the high end horses and of course some of these racehorses were very high end racehorses.
It's not that they're low end, it's just that one of the things, I think a big part that we've taken away from our early years of, maybe not high stress, like I, it really to us wasn't high stress, I think all the people we worked for, it was very high care, the horses were all getting turned out, the horses, they all lived his natural lives in their competitive realm as they could.
But it has made us, like we've seen it all made us a little bit more relaxed in letting the horse be the horse, and that it does, it can take time and we don't need to. stress about it. The feet take time. We need to get their teeth checked and there's a list of things that they're not gaining weight.
Example that are pretty basic and they're not going to gain weight in a day. So it, adding kind of stress about it or even quite frankly, staring at them too much. Yeah. Actually really helpful. We do joke about benign neglect. We don't really do that, but we mentally do it, yeah, you have to, because you can make yourself a bit nuts. I have a friend who moved here from the Southwest and obviously. Horse management is so completely different from that part of the country and this part of the country. And, obviously her horse lost some weight and things like that.
And I said, just wait till the grass comes in just hold on. If you can hold on and not panic, he's going to be just fine, lo and behold, if the first, grass came in and. He would, he looked totally normal and she's I just have to relearn how to take care of a horse in this part of the country.
Yeah. Yeah. It can be very different in, different parts of the country. Yeah. Yeah. And coming from Texas for me mostly, and then California, like we don't have the resources there that we have Yeah. Here as much and Sure. And the West coast sources, with San Colic is a really big thing.
Yeah. Because they're usually living in, in, in small paddocks that are. And so we, we don't have that necessarily issue here. And again, I think transitioning the horse from let's say that we're in full training racing. The biggest transition I think is the, they're being stall kept.
I, they would have being literally living in a stall and they get the workouts and so forth. But introducing them to a small pen turnout and then small paddock turnout and then, to paired turnout or small group turnout getting I guess that's what Claire was saying, the expression of getting them back to be horses again.
Yeah. We have an expression when you talk about region is we're so blessed here in Virginia that. Like these Virginia horses, again, from our background, growing up in Southern California, they've got a ton of real estate. They have good grass options of actual grass and depending on, how many acres they have access to, but so we try to get them.
To be pretty, pretty Virginia horses as soon as possible. And And they mostly take to it very well. We've had a few that were difficult to gain had trouble gaining weight. That's really like the marker. Obviously some of them have come with feet that took a lot. We have the greatest fair here.
So we actually give Alex free rein. Like we say, this is what we need the horse to do. And I oftentimes pick up a foot after he's gone. I'm like, Oh, he did something different. Like it's just, he's so good at reading the horse and knowing what we need and certainly we can talk to him about anything, which is.
We know how blessed we are for that too, because that it's a struggle for a lot of people. But yeah it's when you just take a breath and you feed the horse properly, you look at them, I can't tell you exactly, sometimes I read people's feed and it's I don't know, like I look out at our fields right now or not our fields are just mud.
I look at the fields full of horses, take their blankets off and they all look great. And they aren't. very simple feeding regimen. And when they need some help, they get some help with a few weight gain items. We do a liver detox regularly. We learned that was a pretty great. Oh, that's interesting.
It does make sense that you would want them to detox from just, even just the type of nutrition they were having at the track, I'll Niamher forget the last one I bought directly off the backside was 15 to, and he was eating something like, Sixteen quarts of grain. And he wouldn't eat hay.
It's they were like, oh, he doesn't eat hay. I was like he's going to have [00:42:00] to learn how to eat hay. Yeah. No. And we've been sent horses literally from all over the country. So for Alaska, we've been sent horses from California, Colorado, Arizona. Florida, New York, anything on the West Coast, Western Canada, Eastern Canada.
So yeah, they, there is a transition that we'll have to do even if it was just regionally. And I think that's a really good point is I guess the idea is to keep the, keep it low stress. As us, as people and because I think that's the biggest thing about weight gain or weight loss is when it had high, at high intensity and so forth.
Yeah, we had years ago, we had a chiropractor was out for somebody's horse and I was talking to him and I apologize that I don't remember his name, but he was really nice. He's working on this horse and he was asking something about do we do, what do we do when they first come off the track?
Do we give them, the ulcer guard or stuff like that? And I was like, typically no, unless we have a known issue. I was like, we just try to watch the horse and keep, keep the stress low. And he said, I'll butcher it a little bit, but he said, how do you know their stress is low?
And I laughed for a second cause nobody had ever asked the question, but I was looking at the horse who was like, Sleeping with his head and I started laughing. I was like we just, it's, we've lost so much common sense and horsemanship, I think in the world. And he started to laugh when I, cause I just gestured, like I was like, and he started laughing. He was like, that's the best answer. He said, I always ask that question. I've Niamher had anybody answer that way. And I was like, yeah. That's how let the horse tell you it's I think that we do a lot of we were talking last time about all of the learning and evolution of what we know and don't know about taking care of horses and we're in this pursuit of more knowledge all the time, but a lot of times it's just about.
Listening, and just simplifying. And I really think that it's very easy to cloud your brain and to get the opinions of a lot of other people. And obviously like we tread lightly with that as well. Like we have done several disclaimers on our podcast where we're like. Your mileage may vary.
And what we're saying is stuff that's worked for us. We try to talk to people that have a similar viewpoint to us, but only because we want to share those positive messages, but, and not because we don't think that other approaches don't work or anything like that. But I think simplifying the care of horses,
I think when you have too much going on and like you said I just got this horse off the track and my, there's a voice in the back of my head that says, maybe he's a little ulcery. But also he's just a high, strong type that I have seen his emotional regulation over the last six weeks transform and in return, his body has transformed in a really positive way.
So for me, that's an indication of. I'm on the right track. Let's keep it simple for now and see how he develops as his workload increases. And how, when I start asking him for a little bit more demanding in terms of what I'm asking him. So I think another thing too, is for Claire and I, we've seen I guess now to say things like this, but over the decades such extreme Scenarios as well I'm trying to think of one and we've been very blessed because a lot of the owners or syndications that have sent us horses have really cared about their horse and followed up and they, they finance the whole situation of the transition.
For example, there was a horse that was sent from the West Coast. to West Virginia actually to see if he was going to be sound enough to race out of in the state of West Virginia. And he wasn't and so they didn't push it, but that they had heard about us and we're only, about two hours from Charlestown.
They sent the horse to us and long story short, he was going to need to have knee surgery to get chips out of his knee. And he was a four year old and still a colt. And he was very well endowed. Basically, he needed to be under general anesthesia to be castrated. Yeah, this poor horse wakes up and he has two new knees and he has no more testicles, right?
He's what the hell happened? And John wanted to do everything he could for this horse. To retire him correctly and he did everything great. So after, so we took the horse on literally the day he was discharged from the hospital. So obviously that horse probably with the amount of antibiotics he needed to be on for a period of time, post surgically, the horse was going to need to have some some some cultures and so forth for his gut, and And probably stay on a little bit of gastric guard because he was on a lot of high levels of nonsteroidal anti inflammatory for a little while.
Those type of horses again it's pretty obvious that they're going to need some sort of gastric. Help and they're going to need some probiotics and they're going to need a real specific diet. And, we've had horses too, with some jaw issues, and they've had to have basically what we call a soup diet so that their feed was is basically made into almost a liquid.
When you see that many extremes, you want to just try to get the horses. On just as natural, happy, healthy diet as possible. Really simplifying it.
. Yeah.
So we're gonna actually stop the recording here and split this episode into two parts because we got to talking with Claire and Tom and we're having such a good time. I lost track of how long we were chatting with one another Catch up with us next time to find out all about Claire and Tom's unique approach to reselling horses that they've trained and How they set their horses up for [00:48:00] success in their second careers
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