BAD BEHAVIOR.....DOES YOUR OFF TRACK THOROUGHBRED HAVE ANY?

Once you consider all of the elements that a race horse is exposed to during its career, be it long or short, you may then be able to understand and hopefully find a solution to some ill behaviors that may be perplexing to figure out.  The stalls vices a race horse develops is due to the boredom experienced during the continuous confinement they are expected to endure.  The inability to release the energy they experience from being totally ft and wired to run, and not a means to do that unless scheduled to do so.  These vices are like  bad habits such as smoking to a human and must be dealt with delicately to make it possible to overcome or tune the vice down to a reasonable level.  Trying to force a horse to stop its acquired habits is not going to be successful and will hinder the retraining process.  You must try to switch the horse's attention to something else with compassion and kindness while trying to establish trust.  I once had a "weaver" that was so determined to weave that his newly shod shoes would turn into tin foil within a few weeks.  This behavior burned tremendous amounts of fuel, put his legs at a deteriorating risk and was also frustrating to work around in the shedrow.  I came up with this idea and I gave him a rubber ball that had a string attached to it  at the door of his stall where he would stand and weave.  I would bounce that around and he showed an interest to it and before long he was twirling that ball in his mouth, instead of weaving...it was much more comical to watch than that obsessive weaving..but the bad part of the this was that I had to buy him a new one when he made it clear that he was finished with the one he had.   But the point of all of this is that...you can deter and possibly cease some habits if you are willing to be creative and understanding.