Why I don't ride two year olds....

I often get people trying to convince me to take their two year old into training and who try to argue with me about my policy about not riding them at that age. (Equally though I get people praising me for this policy.) I know that race horses are started that young, as are futurity horses, but that is not my market and I prefer to train for the long term, and follow the principles of classical training which have found that horses train better, and last longer if allowed to mature and develop unencumbered by a rider until 3 or 4 years of age.

My own horses are lightly started at 3 and a half, and then brought into regular work at age 4, but if a customer wants their horse started at 3 I am ok with that, but I do not find that those horses end up any more ahead than the ones started that little bit later by the time they are 4 or 5.

Recently I had someone email me wanting to come to Hillside for lessons to prepare her "mare" for dressage showing this year. Her goal was training level and perhaps some first level in 2010. The age of her horse? Not even 3 years old yet! When I replied that I didn't feel comfortable asking that much of a young horse she came back with "I understand if you don't feel qualified". Yes...that is what I said...

But I digress.

The common justifications are typically: "My vet ok'd its joints" or "race horses are started younger" or "he's big, he can handle my weight".

First off, vets don't take a "when to start young dressage/jumping horses 101 class". In fact, almost all the research North American vets study, and almost all the cases they follow are based on the racing industry! An industry where people are thrilled to have the horse last until 7 years of age!

Some owners just ask the vet if the knees are closed and use that as the test to see if the horse is physically ready to be ridden...but the horse matures from the bottom up, so the knees may be mature, but the upper joints and spine are not....and you sit on the spine/shoulders, so perhaps it makes sense to wait until they are closer to done growing to put weight on them. And if you think about it, the bigger the horse, the more the joints will be "open" so the more risk to them, so the more the taller horses should be held off training until older.

You can read more about how horses mature in this wonderful article:
Dr. Deb Bennett's Article

The excuse that race horses are started younger is another annoying argument. Race trainers need to start their horses young as the money is when the horse is 3 years old...by 4 they are past their prime, and not that many horses race past 5; usually they have either earned a spot in the breeding shed, or have gone on to other careers such as riding horses or dog food.

There was a study funded by the racing industry a little while ago to try to justify the early starts. They looked at a number of horses and looked at when they broke down vs when they started racing...and found that a high percentage of the horses that were racing past age 7 were racing at age 2. Some people took this to mean that racing at 2 was GOOD for them. The problem with this study was that they didn't take 100 random horses and start some of them for the track at 2, and some at 3, they just studied them after the fact, and didn't take into account when their training started, just when it was they first raced. Gee, isn't it possible that the reason most of those horses that didn't race at 2 where still trained to race at 2, but broke down mentally or physically and that is why they didn't race that year?

People can always find facts to justify their position, but I think it is important to question those facts if the position offers them financial gain.

So...why don't I ride 2 year olds, or ask 3 year olds to do 1rst level dressage? Because at that age they are physically not developed enough to support the weight of a rider without tensing their back (gee, maybe this is why I don't have horses buck when I first ride them...). At that age their joints are more prone to injuries and damage to the cartilage. Damage that people often turn a blind eye to as it tends to not affect the horse until its early teens, but it isn't it better to wait a year and have a sound horse an additional decade?

Maybe if people stopped training their riding horses so young, people wouldn't look at a teenage horse as old and we could save money on joint injections.

Karen