At the beginning of my senior year here at Towson, I began working at Summerfield Stables, and was granted the opportunity to ride for no cost and experience many different things. My trainer/boss enjoys restarting retired off-the-track thoroughbred horses (OTTBs) so when I came to Summerfield she allowed me to be involved in this process.
At the start of the month of December, we brought in an average sized bay horse who needed to be restarted. He came us with no name (aside from his racing name), and was very skittish and scared of many things like sudden movements and loud sounds. I had already been drafting names and was unsure of which one to choose but after meeting him, I knew that the name Q would be perfect for him and the name stuck.
We spent the next few months, from December to March exact, working with Q to help him learn basic skills as a horse under saddle, so that he could be sold to someone hopefully as a lesson horse. During this time I worked with him almost everyday, and I saw real progress with him. He became much less scared of everything, and also picked up skills and movements under saddle very quickly. I knew that he was very smart for his age (only 4 years old!) but he continued to surprise me each and every day. As I worked with him during these months, we also were lucky enough to trailer to different barns to try different disciplines. We went to one place on several occasions to do cross country clinics, and another for some dressage lessons. We even showed together in a low stakes non-rated show, and we got fifth place in two classes (very impressive for a baby horse going to a barn they’ve never been to before to show)!
