It has been awhile since I posted anything. I’m sorry about that, but I just sort of got burned out on social media earlier this year and had a few other things come up as well, as I documented in my last post.

I still need to finish the documentation of my Alaska trip from last year, as well as my Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon pack trip Jeff Palmer and I did in May. I promise I’ll get those done…eventually.

However, I just had a farrier out to shoe Apollo and Calypso, in preparation for a pack/fishing trip into the Wind Rivers in Wyoming in just under a month. My broken rib is mending and I’ll start getting the horses legged-up for that trip. I will be working Apollo extra hard, as he will be going with me to Alaska in September. You will recall I took J Golden last year, but since then, both J and Lizzy of gone to new homes. I truly miss those two horses, but Apollo is coming along well.

l intended to sell Calypso this year. At 15 she’s getting old enough that it’s time to let her retire from the long and difficult pack trips I sometimes take. She’s still plenty strong and healthy and will make somebody a great trail horse for many years to come. However, right now she is pregnant, to none other than Chief!

That was unintended, but after the fact, not unwelcome. I am looking forward to a new foal out of Calypso about mid-March 2020. So, I’ll keep her at least until after the foal is weaned. I expect a black and white tobiano paint. It won’t be registerable, but should be a fine, gaited horse, coming out of a Rocky Mountain Gaited dam and a Missouri Fox Trotter sire.

So,  the Wind Rivers trip may be Calypso’s last pack trip with me. And Chief is now a gelding.

Those of you who have followed me for awhile will recall that on September 14, 2017, my favorite Missouri Fox Trotter mare, Lizzy, bore her first colt. We called him Chief (registered name is Touch The Clouds, after a Sioux war chief of the late 1800s). He is a gold registered Missouri Fox Trotter. I didn’t geld him right away, because I had thoughts of keeping him a stallion. However, the logistics of keeping a stallion are a major consideration and I simply don’t have the facilities to keep one.

When he was just a couple months old, I hauled all my horses to my place in Eagar, Arizona for the winter. After weaning him, I left Chief in Arizona to grow up a little.  When I brought him back to Utah from my place in Arizona last spring, I fully intended to start his ground work and get him ready for saddle training this October. With all that has happened this past couple months, I just haven’t been able to get started on it. I have ponied him on several trail rides, alongside Apollo and Calypso, to get him started. He leads well and has no concerns about wearing a saddle. I will start loading him lightly with a pack in the coming month.

I have handled his hooves regularly and he’s settled down to that. He has no shyness about me handling his head and ears and mouth. It is a simple matter to administer worm medicine orally with him, as I have regularly handled his tongue and had my hand up inside his mouth since he was only days old. He actually enjoys me rubbing the inside of his ears. There is no part of his body he resists me touching and handling.

Chief is a very curious young horse. He follows me around and wants to be in the middle of whatever I do. He is absolutely calm and not prone to spooking at anything. “Sacking-out” training has been quite anti-climactic, even boring. He is calm, curious, confident, and above all, trusting. Whatever I ask him to do, he seems to think must be ok, since it’s me asking him to do it.

I have been working with him loading and unloading into my trailer. He will follow another horse into the trailer, but is hesitant to enter alone. A few more hauling trips should cure that. My trailer is a 4-horse slant-load, but it also has feed bins or mangers on the head side, making the inside width such that a large horse cannot turn around and come out forward. So, I teach all my horses both to back out of trailers and to come out forward. Chief is still practicing backing out of my trailer. Currently, I’m having to use a short training crop to keep him backing by tapping his chest, but he’s getting better each time. He still wants to turn around and come out forward, but in another year or so he will be too big to comfortably do that.

Chief now stands 14-3 hands at two years old. I’m confident he’ll reach 15-2 or maybe 16 hands by the time he stops growing, around age 5-6. As both his dam and sire had good, strong builds and decent height, I’m sure he’ll follow suit.

He has well-formed hooves and a fairly short back, which are traits I desire. He doesn’t show a natural fox trot very often, as he runs around the corral, but he does occasionally show it. His dam has a better run-walk than a fox trot, so I expect that may be the case with Chief. No matter to me. I do not intend to show him and I like a good run-walk just as well as a good fox trot.

This morning, I had a farrier out to shoe Apollo and Calypso. I let Chief out of the corral to hang around while the other two were being shod. While Apollo was being shod, Chief decided to lay down in the sunshine for awhile. I took the opportunity to have Colt Thomas, my farrier, take a short video of me messing with Chief on the ground. This was not the first time Chief has let me do this. He has absolutely no fear or concerns about me. He trusts me implicitly. It’s going to be fun training him.

So, the game plan for Chief, from here, is that for the coming month I will continue to pony Chief along with the other horses and I will start saddling him with a lightly loaded pack saddle, just to get him used to all the rigging. I will also do some more ground training on him.

I have decided that, among other things, I will train Chief to lay down on command. I expect Chief to be my primary horse until it’s time for me to hang up my spurs. There may come a time when I have difficulty throwing my leg over the saddle. I want to be able to ask him to lay down while I mount and dismount. In that way, I may be able to extend my riding years into my eighties!

When I get back from Alaska, around the end of September, I will start Chief under saddle. I will ride him lightly and continue his training throughout 2020 and will begin using him on my shorter rides and pack trips after he turns three. By the time he turns four he will be ready for the more difficult pack trips and trail rides.

I am really looking forward to this! I’ll keep you posted.

Enjoy the gallery of some of my favorite photos of Chief as he has grown. You can also see some videos of him as a foal on facebook: Western Trail Rider, as well as on my Western Trail Rider Youtube channel.