Those of you who have followed my blog and facebook page, Western Trail Rider, will remember my beaut of a colt, Chief. He’s a gold-registered Missouri Fox Trotter out of my mare (well, she was my mare at the time) Danney’s Hot Tin Lizzy V and the fine stallion, DM’s Cherokee Witch Doctor C.

Chief, whose registered name is Touch the Clouds, after a Sioux war chief of the late 19th century, is now two years old…25 months to be exact, and it’s time to get him started.

Now I know some folks out there are going to be dismayed that I would  start a horse so young. I have stated my opinions and position on that matter in a previous post. Suffice it to say that I start my horses at age two (by actual age) and ride them lightly for the first year. At age three I start putting mileage on them. At age four I put them to full use. Keep in mind, they are trail horses. I do no competitive riding of any kind, no shows, no roping, no jumping. I do trail riding and horse pack trips and that’s what my horses are trained for.

So, getting past that, as I said, it is time to get Chief started under saddle.

Chief has been hand-raised since birth, with a lot of human contact as well as socialization in more than one group of horses. He interacts very well with horses, understands horse etiquette and behavior, and is well adjusted among them. He also interacts well with humans. While he, at this point, is more like a puppy than a horse, he is not pushy nor is he disrespectful in any way that presents a danger to people. While I treat my horses like friends, I am as well a disciplinarian not afraid of “getting after” a horse that misbehaves. For that reason, my horses tend to like to be around me, yet they are careful not to cross boundaries I have set.

I must confess that I have spent far too little time in ground training with Chief. He was halter broke within his first two weeks and taught to lead. I have spent a number of hours with him over the past two years giving him some basic training, teaching him to respond to pressure cues, lift his hooves, etc, but far less than I would have liked. Still, he learns quickly and has shown no propensity to getting excited or panic. I have saddled him several times and ponied him on trail rides. I have allowed him to follow loose on trail rides, teaching him to cross streams and handle difficult obstacles on his own. He shows great promise as a top-notch trail horse.

He is easy to train and I expect him to progress quickly. In fact, I have a training ride scheduled for next week in which I will ride Chief on a trail ride with a friend who has a young filly in training.

When I start a horse, I generally start them in an egg-butt ring or D-ring snaffle bit until the horse is reliably responding to a few basic cues: Go, stop, turn left, turn right, and backup. Once that is accomplished, usually within a few hours of training, I usually go to a 3/4″ braided rawhide bosal with a 5/8″ horsehair mecate. I will keep him in that for as much as a year.

The bosal allows me to refine his response to the bridle without working on his mouth, while the horsehair mecate is especially effective for teaching a horse to respond to neck-reining cues. Once the horse responds lightly to the bosal and reins, I will transition to a bit specifically designed for gaited horses, which I have used for several years with good results. As I said, this may take up to a year before I transition to the bit.

I have discovered in the past several years, however, in working with gaited horses, that Missouri Fox Trotters have so much head motion in their gait, that the bosal sometimes wears a sore on the nose under the noseband. In such cases I transition to the bit early and just work on the fine-tuning with the bit.

One thing I decided several months ago that I wanted to teach Chief, since he seems so eager to learn and is so easy to train, is to lay down and stand on command. I have seen horses and mules trained to lay down to allow their rider to mount and dismount from the ground. I have reviewed various sources for good training helps toward this end, but have been disappointed in what I found. I have been working on it by simply urging him to approximate the motion of preparing to lay down and rewarding him with release of pressure and gentle rubs as he does so. I haven’t yet gotten him to actually lay down on command, but I have lain him down several times and he is figuring it out. I expect that he will begin to lay down on command very soon. Then I’ll have to figure out how to train him to stand up on command. That should be the easy part.

So, today I went out to mount up on Chief for the first time. I asked my wife to come along to video the whole affair, as I really wanted to be able to keep that for posterity, not to mention my blog. She did well in capturing about ten minutes of the end of the training session, which was the most important part.

To start the session, I worked a little on leading, pressure cues, and laying down. Then I saddled him up, led him around a little, lifted his hooves, worked on lowering his head on cue, and a number of other minor things, just to get his mind working. Then I started putting weight on the stirrups, one side, then the other, to get him used to it. Not that I thought he would react to it, but I just did not want to startle him.

After a few minutes I stood up in the stirrup on the on-side, putting my full weight in the stirrup and leaning over his back. When I did, Chief started moving a little, so I put pressure on the reins and gave him the cue to back up. When I did, he apparently decided that was a cue to lay down and he simply stretched out and plopped down on his side as I stepped off. It was quite humorous.

Chief lay there looking at me as if he were going to take a nap. I took the opportunity to sit on his side for a few minutes, rubbing and patting him in various places. He obviously was not bothered at all by my sitting on him while he lay there (I had done that before bareback). I got off him and urged him to stand, whereupon he simply moved into an upright laying position, rather than on his side. I got back on him in hopes he would stand up with me on his back, short-cutting my training to that end. No such luck. He seemed very pleased and comfortable just to lay there. I finally decided I might need to pick up my training crop and give him a little more incentive to stand, but as I turned to pick up the crop, he stood up.

At that point, I decided there was more chance that he would lay down again than buck, so I went ahead and mounted for the first time. His reaction was to simply stand there. No excitement, no concern. After a minute or two I was able to urge him to move a little, so we started working on moving his hind quarters off the pressure of my heels and to turn to the pressure of the reins, and eventually to stop. By the end of the session, Chief was accepting the cue to move forward, was turning to the rein pressure and my heel pressure, and coming to a stop to the rein pressure. That was all I asked of him today.

Here’s the video Linda shot for me. Have fun watching.

Tomorrow, I’ll adjust the bosal to fit him and start him in a snaffle bit. I’m looking forward to it.

I think Chief and I are going to pass a lot of happy miles together!