Colt Starting Competitions



Ah, colt starting competitions!  Do you love them?  Hate them?  Or never seen one?   I'm not sure how I feel about them.  On one hand, I really, really, really want to go to KY and see Road to the Horse.  On the other hand, I feel like starting quality horses takes time and shouldn't be done in such a high stress scenario like a colt starting competition.  This particular competition is really meant to show case the versatile and quality horses which have come from the 6666 Ranch  and is pretty different from competitions like the Extreme Mustang Makeover in that the trainers pick their horses the first day of the competition and have only a couple hours each day to make progress with his or her horse during the competition.  The competition takes place over 2 day; versus the Mustang Makeover where folks have a much longer period of time to work their horses.  You can hear what's happening at the 2016 Road to the Horse competition by listening to the Horses in the Morning Show on the Horse Radio Network. 

I really enjoy the programs available on the Horse Radio Network, which is where I heard about Road to the Horse for the first time a few years ago.  You will find that I have an episode of  Horses in the Morning (my favorite HRN show) running on the side of my blog.  By listening to the show, I did learn about a trainer; whom I'd never heard of: Mary Kitzmiller.  Now that I've been keeping tabs on her work, I'd sure like to get to one of her clinics.  She seems to take an eclectic approach to working horses and I like that.  Mary is helping co-host the live coverage of RTTH this year and was a past competitor.  As I've come to appreciate her work, I'd like to pick her brains on her thoughts about Colt Starting Competitions and whether they're a "good" thing and if there may be some negative implications from them.

There certainly is a camp of folks who believe colt starting competitions are just too much, too soon.  Even the Chronicle of the Horse had quite a healthy debate to the value of these events.  While I'm not entirely sure where I stand on these events, I do know they've shed light on some training practices/ideas I like and others I'm not so fond of.  

For now, I'll keep thinking about it and just keep moving one hoof at a time.


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