...I was surprised at the low expectations many people seem to have regarding their Thoroughbred's ground manners. I'm sticking to my upbringing and training mine with the same expectations I had as a child. I believe that's what the majority of people do -- it doesn't make it wrong or right, as long as your horse is happy and healthy. We need to be more tolerant of other horse communities' processes and training.
As someone who got involved with riding and then breeding to race and to my mind the requisite re-careering of those racehorses (both thoroughbreds & QHs) in my middle years; I couldn't agree more that teaching a TB (or Arab/QH or paint) to stand quietly while being mounted and to ground tie or stand tied/cross-tied is a skill that more of us race horse breeders really ought to consider including in the training of our horses - or insist that our trainers do for us. It is the single thing - aside from any manifest injury incurred while racing, even if horse is sound on it - that makes it difficult to find homes for these ex-racers. TBs are usually on the 'tall' side as compared to a lot of other breeds prospective new owners are familiar with and very high energy, at least initially, as compared to those other breeds as well. They can easily intimidate/turnoff a potentially good match by these 'lack of training' actions that could have been easily dealt with when they were young.
It ended with me feeling lucky that no one was seriously injured and I'm now working on ground-tying him outside to do his feet, which he seems to be picking up on very quickly.
