My youngster, Trooper, is finally coming of age!

For those new to my blog, Trooper is the son of Chief, my registered Missouri Fox Trotter (now a gelding) and Calypso, a grade Rocky Mountain mare I used to own.

During 2017, I had taken Chief down to my parents’ place in Eagar, Arizona and left him. That was my means of weaning him as a 6-month old colt. He lived there while he began to mature, with my mother spoiling him with apples all the while.

During the spring of 2019, I sold a black Rocky Mountain mare I had, Calypso, to a friend in Arizona, however, things didn’t work out and Calypso was returned to my parents’ place in Eagar, Arizona . When Calypso was delivered,  she was put into the same corral with Chief and a gelding. We simply weren’t thinking of Chief as a stallion yet, as he was only about 18 months old and he and Calypso had been corralled together before, when he was just a little thing. It just didn’t click with us. Well, as things played out, Chief was apparently “of age” and a breeding occurred. Oh well.

I headed down  about a month later for a visit to my folks. I intended to bring both Calypso and Chief back to Utah with me, to get ready to start Chief’s training.  The evening I arrived, I looked out Mom’s kitchen window out to the corral and saw Calypso acting like she was in-season and Chief showing interest! I was pretty excited and relieved to see that, because I had assumed she was already settled and in-foal. I really didn’t want her pregnant, because I had her up for sale and had a couple of interested parties! I immediately rushed out and put Calypso into a separate, but adjoining, corral, feeling much relieved at my luck. I planned to move her to a different location in the morning.

Well, imagine my surprise when I got up the next morning, looked out the kitchen window, and found them together in the same corral. They both looked very pleased with themselves and quite relaxed. I went down to the corral to discover that during the night Chief had completely destroyed the 12-foot steel gate panel that separated the corrals and had simply gone over it! That gate panel was beyond repair!  Luckily, there was no damage to either horse.

After a short stay at my folks’ place, I loaded my horses up, including both Calypso and Chief, and returned to Salem, Utah.  The following month I took all my horses in to see the vet for spring shots and Coggins tests. I also took the opportunity to have Calypso pregnancy tested and make an appointment for the following week to have Chief gelded. I explained the situation with Calypso to the vet and hoped that she had not settled, but, with a wry smile, the vet reported she was about 6 weeks in-foal. Oh well.

So, now I have a new life-lesson story for the young men of my acquaintance: An accidental pregnancy…and now he’s a gelding!

Well, as things turned out, I’m glad she was pregnant. It occurred to me that it would be great to see what kind of colt Chief would throw.

I am pretty sure Trooper was Calypso’s first foal, though she was about 15 years old, I think, when he was born. We had a hard time getting her to let him suckle that first day.  Sometimes in an older mare those motherly instincts get a little hazy. She knew she was supposed to do something, but wasn’t sure what it was. She wanted to keep him right in front of her all the time, where she could see him. When he would try to suckle, she would turn her hindquarters away from him, so she could see him.  After watching him try for several hours and seeing that he was beginning to get weak, I finally employed a couple helpers to hold Calypso in place, while I helped Trooper get to the teets and start to suckle. As soon as he started to suckle, those motherly instincts in Calypso kicked right in and she became an excellent mother.

I kept Calypso until after Trooper (named by my mother) was weaned at about four months. I then moved her on to another owner, which was the plan all along. He was raised by me from nearly the moment he was born and I became his “mother.”  To this day I think he prefers my company even to that of the other horses he has been raised with. He is always the first to greet me at the gate and will leave the other to come see me whenever I show up at the pasture. Trying to get things done around the place is difficult, because Trooper is always trying to “help.”

Trooper has turned out to be just as quiet and calm as his father, Chief.  I have been taking him along on trail rides since he was about four months old, so he is already an experienced trail horse.  He allows me to trim his hooves without trouble and I have started his hobble training.  The last time I had him out, I was doing some trail training on a client’s horse and just had him trail along. I saddled him with a pack saddle with no panniers or load, just to get him used to moving with a saddle on.  On one occasion, during the ride, Trooper stepped into some downed fence wire. My riding partner alerted me that Trooper was in trouble. I looked back to see Trooper standing like a statue with one hind leg held off the ground. I could see he was tangled pretty well in the barbed wire!  I immediately dismounted and headed back to get him untangled before he hurt himself (wire cuts are a major fear of all horsemen).

As it turned out, my worries were unfounded. Trooper stood as still as could be until I had extricated his hoof from the wire tangle and assured him he was fine. I was impressed by his calmness during this affair. I was even more impressed a couple hours later, when he again ran across a fence wire that was buried in a steep sidehill we descended. It wasn’t visible until we were right on it and there was no way to avoid it. Trooper came bounding carelessly down the sidehill, as youngsters are wont to do, and found himself again with a wire around his hind legs.  Once again, he stopped dead and stood stock-still until I came over and moved each hind hoof over and out of the wire. Then he went on about his merry way.  Teaching a horse to stop and not fight wire entangled around its feet is difficult, but this boy does it by instinct!

I have stopped taking him along on group trail rides recently, because Trooper is a bit of a brat. He just loves to get behind other horses and bite them on the back of their rear legs to tease them. Then he will stop and graze until he’s a couple hundred yards behind the group, then run past us all like his tail is on fire, bucking and farting all the while. His behavior…or misbehavior, I should say, has caused a few issues on the trail with other riders, so I don’t take him anymore.

 

All-in-all, Trooper acts more like a young puppy than a horse. But, he’s starting to mature physically and is a little big for rough-housing with other horses while people are riding them.

Well, Trooper turned two years old on April 4, 2022 and it’s time to start his saddle training.  I have done little training with him, other than just handling his hooves and getting him used to having things on his back. I have even saddled him and put my grandkids on his back and led them around the pasture. He is as calm as a summer morning with them.

Last week I decided it was time to see what he would do if I mounted him in the training ring. I really didn’t expect much, but you never know until you give it a try.  I saddled him up, put him in the round pen, and worked him a little, to get him used to paying attention to me and taking commands. He did well. Then I brought Chief into the round pen with a young lady riding him, as sort of a moral support for Trooper.  I mounted Trooper and just let him wander around the round pen, following Chief.  As he did so, I started giving him cues to associate with his actions, such as pulling his head to the side to ask him to turn (he was in a halter), touching or bumping his sides with the spurs to ask him to move forward, pulling back on the reins and leaning back to ask him to stop or back. He took all these things in stride and learned quickly.  I worked like that for about 45 minutes, then dismounted and let him rest and sort of soak it all in.

About a half-hour later I went back into the training ring, this time without Chief’s assistance, and mounted again. He responded very well (for his first time) to my cues. He was learning to move his hind-quarters to my heel cues, to move forward, turn left and right, and to stop and back-up.  He learns very quickly and offers almost no resistance.

Here’s a YouTube video of Trooper’s first training session.

I have to say I was very pleased.  I am sure there will be times when he will test me and see if his will is as strong as mine, but for now, he is happy learning what I’m teaching. He has not offered to buck or run-away and he is learning quickly to respond well to my foot/heel cues and the reins.

On his second ride, I put a snaffle in his mouth fitted with a German Martingale. He gummed and tongued it for awhile, but eventually settled down and began to understand how to give to the pressure.  The martingale is useful in helping him understand how to flex at the poll to relieve bit pressure.  I will ride him a few more times with the snaffle/martingale combination, then will switch to a 3/4″ braided rawhide bosal hackamore for the majority of his training.  The bosal is not particularly gentle, but it allows me to teach him to give to pressure and learn neck reining without having to work on his tender mouth with a bit. The hackamore in the photo below is adjusted for Chief, so it needs to be adjusted to fit Trooper before I start him in it.

 

The bosal works by pressure and bumping on the bridge of the nose and the lower jaws. My hackamore is fitted with a “fiador” (sometimes called a “Theodore”), which keeps the bosal hanging in the correct position. It also allows the horse to be led by the “get-down rope”, which acts as a lead rope, without allowing the bosal to pull up under the horse’s chin and off over its nose. It is also fitted with a 22′ horse-hair “mecate” (sometimes called a “McCarty”), which acts as reins and a lead rope. The mecate is useful in teaching neck-reining, as the horse feels the prickly mecate rein on his neck and learns to associate that with the pull in his nose from the opposite rein. Eventually, the horse learns that if he immediately responds to the touch of the rein on his neck, there will be no pull or bump on the nose. When the horse no longer requires a bump on the nose to ask it to perform a turn or stop, it is ready to be transitioned to a bit.

As I said before, this is just the beginning of a long period of learning for Trooper. He is already proving himself a willing pupil and I look forward to his becoming a worthy trail partner. We will start slow and increase his saddle time and mileage very gradually, building his strength and conditioning as his body matures. He won’t start getting hard miles until he is at least 3-1/2 years old and even then it will be limited. By the time he is five he will be carrying a full load and getting full mileage, alongside his sire, Chief.

I expect these two horses will be my trail partners until I have to hang my spurs on the wall and call it a good long ride.

TH