by Alabama » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:51 am
Maxing a conformation horse will change its score, that's why the big winners are trained. (Most of them started with scores in the 30's.) Whether training hurts or helps depends on how you train it. It's different for every horse. Rolling a stat may be good or bad, depending on which stat rolls, how much and when.
Conformation training is different from any other event. You can't max them like normal, there isn't even a way to write a guide because each and every horse is different and every breed is different. You have to reach a set score with horses that start with different scores in each stat. It's not like other events where you essentially need to get the highest actuals possible in certain stats. Actuals play almost no part in conformation, maxing is a side affect of the training.
I trained most of those big winners. It takes me about 5 hours to train just one (that's after training better than 50 of them) and after about a half an hour setting up the training schedule and planning when to train what. But it takes days of breeding ahead of time to get a single one born with stats that are possible to be trained. The first ones I trained, ones that aren't very good or that I screwed up, took me more than 12 hours to train. It's tedious and nerve wracking and one mistake can ruin the horse's score. I don't train them often for this reason. It's never the same, you have to be constantly thinking and paying attention to every single stat and when you get close to finishing, it gets even harder and easier to make a catastrophic mistake.
Of the handful of people I've tried to teach how, only one actually understood and she about had a heart attack before her first horse was done. It took us 3 or 4 days working together to get it trained. I don't know if she's tried training more or not LOL