Category Archives: Training

Training, Western Horsemanship

Young Trooper’s first ride!

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

Training, Western Horsemanship

Getting Started on Missy

What an exciting day!

I have been waiting to get started with Missy’s saddle training for a couple years now. Just had to get some other horses done and sold before I could get to her. I wanted to be able to take some time with her. She doesn’t need just a tune-up. She’s going to need training from the ground up.

Missy is a registered Missouri Fox Trotter mare owned by Derek Habel. Her registered name is Yankee’s Angel Girl (07-94281, blue-papered), born 05/22/2007, making her 13 years old next month. I didn’t know her registered name for a few months after I started working with her, so I started calling her Missy and it stuck. She was a brood mare on a ranch in Idaho for her first ten years. I became acquainted with her in 2017 on a horse pack trip to the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. After that trip, I started her under saddle, but just haven’t been able to get back to her until now. You can read about my previous work with her here.

Missy is a beautiful sorrel and white tobiano pinto with nice markings and a shine like a new copper penny. She has perfect  Fox Trotter conformation, tall, with slim legs and strong hooves. She is absolutely sound, has a good mind, and a calm disposition. She loves people and is easy to catch and halter. Right now she is a bit herd-bound, as she has been running free on a mountainside with about 10-12 other horses for the past three years. That is something we’ll have to work through.

Today’s ride was Missy’s seventh time under saddle. I rode her in a small arena three times in 2017, then the owner tried her under saddle once on a hunt in 2018, where he had her as a pack horse. I have ridden her twice on short training rides last year, and finally got back to her today.

Missy has been used a number of times as a pack horse on extended hunt and pack trips, so she has some excellent trail experience. However, trail experience under pack, following other horses on a lead rope, is vastly different than doing the same thing under saddle in the lead. So, I’ll be starting Missy from scratch as a saddle horse.

Missy will stand to be groomed, have her hooves checked and cleaned, and she stands well for the farrier. She also stands well to be saddled and unsaddled, mounted and dismounted. However, when I put the crupper under her tail, she didn’t like that at all. I decided to work her a little on a longe line in a round pen to let her work through it. She clamped her tail and even tried to buck it out a time or two, but after a few minutes she relaxed and quit worrying about it. I decided, however, to remove the crupper before I got on her back. I wanted to reduce the stress as much as possible and didn’t want that extra distraction.

I started Missy under a braided rawhide bosal with a horse hair mecate and will keep her in it until she has learned to respond reliably to neck reining and leg cues. At that time I’ll transition her over to an appropriate bit for gaited horses.

I mounted up on Missy in the round pen and had Derek ride his horse, Finn, around the round pen with us. It helped Missy relax. I allowed her to wander around the round pen at her own discretion, my only control being to keep her going by gentle nudges with my heels every time she stopped. I was surprised to find she was responding, although minimally, to leg cues, moving away from the pressure.

After a few minutes, I felt comfortable taking her out of the round pen. I had Derek move out ahead of me and urged Missy to follow Finn. She didn’t want to leave the rest of the horse herd, which was wandering around loose, so I had Derek just lead us around the length and width of the yard, where Derek is planning to make a full-sized arena eventually.

After a couple turns around the yard, which included several crossings of a muddy area, we headed out across the road into the Diamond Fork wetlands area, where I do a lot of trail training. Missy went willingly, even gaiting at times. She has a very nice fox trot. We moved out across the fields at a very nice clip in gait. At various intervals we would stop and I would work with Missy on basics, such as backing and moving her hind quarters. She did surprisingly well.

We dropped down into the stream bed to try her at crossing the river. She followed Finn right into the water, never hesitating. I expected this, since Missy has been with me on several horse pack trips as a pack horse, in which we crossed numerous rivers. However, when I asked her to lead out and cross the river, she refused, so we worked at it until she would cross the river in the lead. Once she was comfortable with it, Derek shot this short video:

After crossing the river several times, we continued on down the valley with me working with Missy on reining control and leg cues as we went. After about a mile, however, Missy started acting up a little and acting frustrated. Rather than end on a sour note, I decided to turn around and head back to the barn and call it a good start to her training.

I was very pleased. Missy performed much better than I had anticipated. I fully expect that she will be ready to sell within about two months.

Stay tuned for more updates on Missy.

TH

 

Good trails, Training, Western Horsemanship

A Fifteen Mile training ride on Bandit

Fifteen tough trail miles on Bandit today!

It was such a fine day I decided that Bandit could use a good training ride. I wanted to take him far enough to get him tired, so he would burn off some of his excess energy and find it easier to pay attention to me.

We started up into the foothills east of Salem, Utah to head up the canyon into Loafer Mountain. The first mile of the climb is steep and rocky. Bandit had a very good sweat on by the time we reached the first cellular repeater station. I let him rest there for a few minutes before continuing on up the canyon. We got another mile along, before it became apparent Bandit was getting pretty footsore from the rocky OHV trail, so we turned around and headed back down.

At the cellular tower, however, instead of following the OHV trail back down, we went off-road and made our own trail down the steep hillside. I found Bandit was plenty sure-footed on the steep mountainside, but he knew we were heading homeward and tended to get in a bit of a rush. He wasn’t difficult to hold back, but his attention wasn’t 100% on the trail ahead…which is why we were doing the training!

There is an interesting story about this area. In 1914, a man named John Koyle, who was a bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at the time, claimed he was visited by two heavenly beings, who told him there was a large deposit of gold in these hills that would someday save the entire church. Koyle, his family, and many members of the church invested nearly all they had and created the “Dream Mine”.

The Dream Mine

The mine itself can easily be seen on a nearby hillside. The story is quite interesting and lends a bit of interest to the surrounding hills. Bandit and I passed a small monument, set up in honor of Koyle’s vision, located a little way off the trail. You have to know where it is to find it.

While the mine corporation still exists and one can actually purchase shares in the mine, it is now more of a historic foot-note of the area and a novelty. No gold deposit was ever found and eventually Koyle was excommunicated from the church, because he would not give up the idea that he had received a divine commission to find the gold. The church never officially acknowledged the vision nor encouraged the exploration for the gold.  Koyle, however, maintained that he had seen two heavenly messengers to his dying day.

Once we got down the hill, we headed out on the canal road to work on Bandit’s gait a little. He has smoothed out significantly and his run-walk was very nice. He was very compliant and it was easy to keep him in a very nice gait with just a little tuning. We worked on his run-walk and his walk mostly.

At the apex of our training route, in the bed of the canal, we suddenly came upon water! Turns out today was the day they started the flow in the irrigation canal for the season. We were lucky to be able to reach my end-goal of the training for today: a long, dark tunnel…which now had about 3” of water flowing through it!

With just a little coaxing Bandit went on in and once inside, he kept a steady pace through to the other end, about 50 yards. I took a video as we made our return trip through it. No hesitation at all! Nice!

On the way home we gaited a bit, then walked a bit, then back to a gait. It was an enjoyable ride. Despite his propensity to push, I was able to do most of the ride with either a slack rein or light pressure. He is responding well to consistent training. One thing about Bandit, there is no problem with his steering! He steers with very fine cues on the reins and leg cues. In fact, you have to be a little careful that you don’t inadvertently tell him to turn – he can turn on a dime!

On the last long straight before we got back to the stable, I let Bandit loose a little in his strong, wonderful rack. We reached about 15mph in a smooth even gait. Then I pulled him back to a walk and we finished the ride at a leisurely walk, while Bandit cooled off.

It was a very pleasant ride and we were both pooped at the end. I sure enjoy riding Bandit! He’s a horse that always makes me proud to be on him.

TH

Good Stories, Horse Health, Training

I have a new boy in the herd!

Finally!

My mare, Calypso, a Rocky Mountain Gaited Horse, was a week overdue from the latest possible date I calculated. The best I can calculate, she held the foal for 353 days! Normal gestation is 330-345 days. I was getting pretty concerned! My new boy was born early Saturday morning, April 4, 2020.

I had been going out and checking on her every few hours, because I wanted to be there for the birth. I wanted to be able to do some imprinting training with the foal during that critical two hours right after birth. On Friday night I was exhausted and slept like a rock.

I got a call about 7:30 Saturday morning from the landowner from whom I rent pasture, letting me know I had a new foal. Dangit! I missed it! I arrived about 8am. We think the foal was probably born a little before daybreak. He was already standing when I got there. The three geldings with her in the pasture where curious and wanting to get to know the new arrival, which was causing Calypso to get agitated and protective, so I pulled her out of the pasture and carried the foal to her.

Well, I missed that critical imprinting period, but I was able to spend a lot if time in close contact with him. I spent most of the day caressing, holding, and touching him all over.  Now, two days later, he’s a little wary of people and he prefers his mother, which is the way it should be, but he’s friendly and unafraid of people.

When Chief was born I had the help of a couple other people, who handled him before I was able to get there a couple hours later. The imprinting done with him has made a marked difference in the way he relates to people and to me in particular. I wanted that for this new boy as well, but missed the opportunity.  Still, I think the time I was able to spend with him has had some effect. He will not leave his mother to come to me, the way Chief would do, but he is not afraid.

Last month, my mother told me she had a name for my foal if it turned out to be a colt. She suggested “Trooper” and I liked it. So, the new boy’s name is Trooper. He is half Missouri Fox Trotter (Chief is his sire) and half Rocky Mountain Gaited Horse, so he should be a well-gaited horse.

The pregnancy was accidental, as she was placed in the same corral as Chief and several other horses when Chief was just getting old enough not to be “shooting blanks” at 18 months.  When I realized she was coming into season, I immediately separated them, but when I went out to feed the following morning, Chief had completely destroyed the gate between their corrals and they were standing together in her corral looking very satisfied and content.  Chief is now a gelding.  I look forward to watching Trooper grow and I’m hoping he’ll get to 15 hands. We’ll see.

I had thought Calypso had had foals before, but it didn’t take long to recognize that she was having a hard time figuring out what to do. It is apparent to me now that she was a maiden mare, and at age 15, many of her maternal instincts were vague to her. Initially, she would not allow Trooper to nurse, wanting to keep him directly in front of her. When Trooper would move back to try to nurse, she would move her hindquarters away from him to keep him right in front of her. It took some work to get her to stand still and allow him to nurse. I used treats as a training aid, giving her a treat as soon as the foal began trying to latch onto a teat. That worked well and within a few hours she was standing to let him nurse as long as I was holding her head, but she would not stand still for very long and would start to fidget and lift her leg to get Trooper off the teat. It was obvious Trooper wasn’t getting enough milk, although he was able to get the full load of that all-important colostrum.

Trooper was beginning to weaken and was having a hard time standing by the time we were finally able to get Calypso to stand long enough for him to nurse well. By late afternoon, however, she was beginning to relax. By Saturday evening she was allowing Trooper to nurse without me holding her and his strength and appetite had improved. He began nursing every 15-20 minutes.

Once I saw that Trooper was gaining strength and his appetite was strong, I felt comfortable reintroducing Calypso to the other horses. I pulled the dominant gelding out and put her and Trooper in with Chief and Chocolate. They were curious, but respected Calypso’s defensive posture and they caused no problem. I then brought Bandit back into the pasture. Chocolate immediately took up a protective stallion-like posture between Calypso and Bandit, like he was protecting Calypso and Trooper from an invading Stallion. However, they all returned to normal without any fighting or problems. I was confident that everything would be fine by the time I left them that evening.

When I checked on him early Sunday morning, Trooper was feeling good and starting to test out his long legs. I shot this short video of him:

Sunday afternoon I got a call from the landowner, telling me that somehow Trooper had gotten through the three-rail fence and couldn’t get back into the pasture and Calypso was going crazy! I got there in short order and carried Trooper back around and put him back in the pasture and all was well. I doubt Calypso will let him get near the fence line again!

So, I have a new boy in my herd. He’s almost an exact copy of his mother, all black with a white star on his forehead. He is showing some silver highlights in his coat, but I think that’s just his new foal fur and that once he sheds it off he’ll be black. I hope I’m wrong and he keeps that silver-black smoke-like color. We’ll see.

Every foal is a new adventure. I’m looking forward to this one.

TH

 

Training

Chocolate! The new boy in the neighborhood!

As you may already know, Count, the horse I talked about in my last post, sold before I even got an advertisement up about him. Count was the second horse his new owner has bought through me. I took her out for a nice trail ride on Count and at the end of it she said, “I’ll take him!” She’s going to like him.

So…

Introducing the new boy at my place. This is Chocolate. He’s a registered Missouri Fox Trotter gelding…that is if the owner can find the papers! I believe he’s 9 years old, but he could be as young as 7. We’ll have to wait for the papers to know for sure. He stands 14-3 hands (measured) and has a nicely proportioned build with very nice Fox Trotter conformation. He is well gaited and moves nicely in the pasture. He’s a beautiful chocolate color with white stockings on his rear and a narrow blaze on his face. He’s a very handsome boy!

The story behind Chocolate is that he was owned in Missouri by a woman who loved him like a child. She must have done hundreds of hours of ground training, but was afraid to get on him. So, he has very good halter manners, but doesn’t know much about being a saddle horse. I rode him a couple times nearly two years ago. There was no buck in him, but he was a handful.

This boy follows me around the corral like a puppy dog. Like most horses, he’s a little herd-bound, but when a human is around, I think he prefers the human to the horses. He’s been roaming free with a herd of about 15 horses for almost two years now, so it was surprising to me when he came to me out of the herd. He likes people. I’m guessing somebody did some “imprint training” when he was born.

Just a little story about my first ride on him. I was riding him alone down in Diamond Fork, near Spanish Fork, Utah, where I sometimes do trail training. I was getting a feel for him, just seeing what he would do and wouldn’t do. I tried to get him to descend a steep bank to the creek bed and he wouldn’t do it. He turned sideways to avoid going down the drop, but the bank gave way and we both went over into the soft bottom our our side. Chocolate jumped up, leaving me on the ground, and scrambled back up the bank. I was thinking, “Well, I’m going to have a long walk back to the barn!” To my surprise, Chocolate stood there at the top of the bank, looking at me like, “What happened? You ok?” I crawled up the bank and Chocolate came to me, like he was making sure I was alright, and let me get back into the saddle. We went on with our ride and finished our training session with no further incident.

Now, I have to tell you that for one who spends most of his riding time in the back country, a horse that doesn’t head for the barn when he’s just unloaded his rider in a scary situation is worth his weight in gold!

I’ve been looking forward to working with this guy since that ride. I expect great things from him. He will be for sale soon. I’ll need some time to evaluate him before I get with the owner to discuss a price.

Stay tuned for more posts about Chocolate!

TH

Training

Working With the Count

This week I brought Count, a nine year-old registered Missouri Fox Trotter gelding, to my place for some tune-up training prior to putting him up for sale on the Horses For Sale page on this site.

I first became acquainted with Count almost two years ago, when a friend brought him from Missouri to join his herd of Fox Trotters here in Utah. My friend regularly rotates horses in and out of his herd, as he puts together a crew of elite trail horses for his annual moose hunt in Alaska. It takes a special kind of horse to handle the rigors of that hunt well.  I was privileged to go on the moose hunts in 2018 and 2019. Count was with us as both a saddle and pack horse during the 2018 hunt.

After that hunt, however, Count has been at pasture running free over my friend’s mountainside with his herd of up to 15 other horses. He is being rotated out of the herd, as my friend prefers a taller horse for his Alaska trips. A taller horse seems to do better trudging through the Alaskan tundra and undergrowth.

Count is a registered Missouri Fox Trotter. He is nine years old this year, 2020 (I will verify that and provide the registration number once I have his papers in hand). Count stands 15-1 hands (measured). He has a nice, stout build and is a very strong horse for his size. He has excellent hooves, and large cannon bones, which are indicative of his ability to carry a heavy load. Count has one minor detraction from his otherwise excellent conformation. His front right hoof turns slightly out. It does not affect his soundness, but it would detract from his score if he were shown as a MFT halter class horse.  However, Count is a trail horse, and a good one!  He is brown with two white stockings in the rear and one in front, with a white blaze face. He is beautiful!

I took Count out yesterday for his first ride in well over a year. In some ways it went about as expected, but in other ways I was a little surprised.

As I mentioned, Count has been running free on a mountainside with up to 15 other horses for about a year and a half now, so when I put him in a trailer and hauled him off to a small pasture with three horses that were strange to him, understandably he was quite anxious and feeling a bit insecure. With all that going on, I was very pleased when he came to me in the pasture for help in his insecurity. He is friendly and likes people.

The first thing I learned was that Count loads easily into the trailer, but has not been taught to back out. He only knows how to come out forward. I will teach him to back out of the trailer. A good trail horse should know how to do both.

This morning he was calm and stood to allow me to approach and halter him. That’s when I started to be very pleased with him.

I discovered that Count has excellent halter manners. He follows exactly the way I like a horse to follow, just a bit behind my right shoulder with no tension on the lead rope. As I have explained before, show halter training has the horse’s head next to your right shoulder (for right-handers). That doesn’t work well when you are leading a horse on the trail. On the trail, you want a horse to follow behind you without stepping on your heels. I like their muzzle to be right behind my right shoulder. Count follows exactly right there. Not only that, but he stops when I stop. If I stop and take two steps backward, he will do the same. Perfect!

Despite his anxiety at being without his herd in unfamiliar surroundings, he did nothing that worried me. Once tied to the trailer, where I brush and saddle, he moved around a couple times without taking me into consideration and bumped me aside, but we started taking care of that immediately by applying pressure with a knuckle or elbow in his ribs or hind quarters when he moved toward me. He responded by paying more attention to where I was with regard to his body position before moving. I will teach him that he may not move his hind quarters toward me on the ground unless asked to do so. Count allowed me to handle and clean all four hooves without issue.

Before mounting up, I did a little ground work with him to become acquainted with him and what he knows and to get him a little more into the mindset of paying attention to me, rather than worrying about where his herd might be hiding. As we worked, I discovered that he is familiar with many of the cues I use to train with. I also learned that he is a quick learner and that getting him to pay attention was not difficult. We started working on using the lead rope to cue him to back away from me. He picked it right up. We will continue to work on that and other body movement cues.

After a short session on the ground I saddled up and stepped up into the saddle. At first he wanted to move around while I tried to mount, but, again, once I got his attention focused on me, he stood still while I mounted. We made some rounds around the arena to get further acquainted, while I learned what he knows and doesn’t know. I discovered that he has been taught to side-pass and to move his hind quarters on cue. He didn’t seem to understand my cue to move his fore quarters, though. We’ll work on that. He was trained to back up to a different cue than I normally use, but once I figured that out, I found he backs up easily.

Once I knew Count was not going to do anything unsafe with me on his back, we left the grounds for a short trail ride to get further acquainted. This ride was without spurs, though I have ridden him with spurs in the past. Count immediately showed me his smooth fox trot gait.  He needs a little tune-up to teach him to stay in-gait, but I found that even when he is out-of-gait he is quite comfortable to ride. His tends to be diagonal, which is consistent with his breed. He showed he has a flat-walk, a fox trot, a run-walk, and a nice canter. The fox trot is his nicest gait and he moves right along in it, but, as is normal for a horse that hasn’t had any discipline for awhile, he tends to cross through it and not stay in it reliably for long distances. Still, as I said, he’s pretty smooth even when he gets trotty.

I was quite surprised, and found it humorous, that even after his Alaska ordeal in 2018, he was hyper-sensitive to just about everything around him. I guess that is a result of having been running free on a mountainside with 15 other horses around.  At first, Count kept himself moving straight down the middle of the road in my training route, so he could keep his eyes on everything on both sides! Signs and fence posts and mailboxes had him prancing around them! I just chuckled and we kept going. He’ll get over that quickly. Things like dogs, birds, and deer didn’t seem to bother him at all.

By the time we were on the way back toward the stable, he was much better and was moving along quite confidently, although he still became cautious when we came across things he wasn’t familiar with, like caution barricades and cones in a construction area. A little coaxing got him past these things without much concern on my part.

The last part of our ride was through the edge of a neighborhood on our way back to the stable. I use this area to acquaint horses with things such as decorative fences with dogs barking behind them, lines and steel lids in the road surface, fire hydrants, and vehicles passing close by. With a speed limit of 25 mph, it is a safe place to do this. Needless to say, Count went through this area wide-eyed and with a lot of urging from me. But he made it through obediently, without any slipping on the pavement. I was pleased. I expect that was the first time he had ever seen a neighborhood, much less been ridden through one!

So, I was very pleased with the level of training Count seems to have received in the past, but I was surprised at his anxiety on our training ride. Once I get a few more miles on him, I’m sure that anxiety will go away. He’s going to be a very nice trail partner for somebody.

I’ll ride him again today with approximately the same routine and over approximately the same route and see how he improves. I think I’ll wear spurs today and see if that improves his response to certain cues and helps him learn them a little quicker.

Tomorrow, I plan to take him on a nice trail ride with Jon Tanner, down into the desert near Price, Utah, in the San Rafael Swell area.

Stay tuned for more on Count….and I’ll try to get more photos posted as well.

UPDATE:  Count sold to Nicole Call before I even got his advertisement up! She got a great horse! Hopefully, we’ll get to ride together sometime.

 

Training, Western Trails

Some notes from my training experience with horses

Occasionally, people ask me to do a little training on their horses. My specialty is trail training; I turn good horses into excellent trail horses. My training is a little out of the mainstream, because most of what I do is to give the horse some very solid experience on some pretty tough trails. My thought is that when a rider asks one of my horses to handle an obstacle or tough trail, the horse should be thinking, “I’ve handled worse. This is a piece of cake!” Most riders will never ask of their horses the things I ask of mine on the trail. I expect my horses to handle any obstacle asked of them carefully and without undue hesitation. I expect them to carry their rider to their destination and back, safely, whatever that may entail.

As I have worked with horses over the years, I have learned a few things about horse training and some of the mistakes horse trainers, particularly novices, make (believe, me. I’ve made them all). I thought I’d just outline a few of these things, in hopes they may make sense enough to help the average horse owner as they learn and train their own horses.

I’ll start with a serious training mistake I see made most often by novice trainers, who, with good intentions, teach bad habits to their horses.

I’ll explain.  When a cue is given – say the touch of a heel or spur to ask the horse to move its front quarters – the horse feels the pressure of the cue. While the horse is learning what we want from the cue, he may move against the cue or get confused and reactive. He may not initially understand that we want him to move his front quarters away from the pressure of the cue. The normal reaction of the inexperienced trainer, then, would be to immediately stop giving the cue and try again. In his/her mind, the trainer is thinking, “This isn’t going the way I want it to. I will stop and try again, because I want the horse to stop doing it wrong and learn to do it right.” Sometimes the reaction of the horse to a cue is such that the rider’s thought is more like, “I had better stop this now, because this is not going to end well for me!” This is precisely the reason that most riders who claim to have been “bucked-off” of a horse, actually are guilty of jumping off after the third hop.

Now let’s examine why this training error generally results in the opposite of the desired reaction from the horse. When we give a cue to the horse, while we are thinking as described above, which is natural for a human, the horse is actually thinking along these lines: “How do I get this idiot to stop doing that!” A touch with the spur in the ribs may result in the horse moving away from the cue, which is what we want to happen. If the rider, then, instantaneously stops the cue or removes the pressure on the ribs, the horse learns that if he moves away from the pressure, it goes away! The horse’s thought? “Hey, when I moved this way, my rider stopped poking me in the rib! I’ll remember that!”

The keys to training a horse to cues are to teach the horse in stages and to be consistent in the cue.  During training, when a cue is given, the horse will normally begin to move in an effort to escape the pressure, but may not move as desired at first. The cue should be given and held.  If the horse does not react, increase the pressure until the horse does something.  As soon as the horse makes any move or effort, to any degree, approximating what we want it to do (in this case, to move its front quarters away from the cue) the pressure is released and the horse is praised.  With repetition, the horse will begin to recognize what action on its part causes the cue to go away. With each training session, more should be required of the horse before the cue is released. In time and with patience, the horse will learn to perform the move with the amount of precision that is consistent with the rider’s requirements. In other words, if you are teaching the horse to move its front quarters, it will first learn to move one step, then two. Eventually, the horse will learn to move its front quarters as long as the cue is given, even a complete circle around its hind quarters.

In the same way, if a horse reacts with excitement, or balks, or tosses its head and the rider stops giving the cue, the horse learns instantly that he can make the cue go away with that reaction. The rider has trained his/her horse to do exactly that, although unintentionally.

Now, there are times when a horse under training becomes frustrated or belligerent and refuses to respond to a cue. Sometimes the reaction is to balk, rear, or back, possibly even buck. The normal, although wrong, reaction of the rider/trainer is to release the cue and try to settle the horse. The correct response, one that will not teach the horse to continue that reaction, is to immediately switch to a different cue, one the horse understands, but which may be issued with a punitive value.

For instance, I recently gave a cue to a horse to move its front quarters, by giving a touch with the spur in front of the cinch area behind the horse’s elbow. The horse did not respond, so I increased the pressure. The horse then tensed up its muscles and pushed against the bit as if it was about to do something neither of us was going to enjoy. I immediately switched to a stern cue to tell the horse to move its hind quarters, by giving it a quick jab with the spur in its ribs behind the cinch on the opposite side, while turning its head with the reins. This is often called, “disengaging the hind quarters” by some trainers. This taught the horse that when it does not respond to the first cue given, tensing up and preparing to rear or some other explosive reaction is not acceptable (does not give him a release) and that he will get a stern cue in another direction as a result. That second cue is held until the horse is responding in a submissive way. The horse will begin to recognize that if it wants to make the first cue go away, and not get a more forceful cue in exchange, it is much easier and more agreeable to be compliant.

This leads to one of the little one-liner rules of thumb I once heard from the Parellis: Horses learn from the release of pressure, not from the pressure itself.

I have often read responses to questions on various forums in which I participate online, that decry what is commonly called “pain-compliance” training methods. I had one person respond to one of my posts: “You should NEVER hit a horse!”  Another posted, “A well-trained horse does not need spurs!”  In riding with people who hold similar views with regard to training horses, I have found these are often the same people who have the most trouble with problematic horses. I have seen horses that are pushy with their owners, that nip or bite, that kick, horses that are unruly under saddle when their rider attempts to ride away from a group, among many other things. While I respect differing views on how to train horses, and believe no training method can claim to be the only way things should be done, my experience tells me that the most important aspects of training are, first, firmness (firm, but gentle), and second, consistency. Any horse will learn to respond to any cue, if it is given firmly, gently, and consistently. Having said that, a trainer who subscribes to this as a primary tenet of his/her training methodology, will occasionally find the need to discipline a horse in training with more forceful cues or even punishment. These punitive measures will have the desired effect, coming from one who is consistently firm, but gentle. This leads me to another rule of thumb I subscribe to.

This one I learned from Clinton Anderson, from whose methodology I have learned much. It goes like this: “Ask, Tell, Insist, Enforce.” I think that is self-explanatory.  A horse will learn to respond to the heaviest cue it is trained to. It will also learn to respond to nearly imperceptible cues, if trained to them. Therefore, as a horse learns to respond appropriately to a particular cue, the trainer should ask with a progressively lighter cue, but require compliance all the same, using the above rule. Again, with patience and consistency, the horse will learn to respond as precisely as the rider/trainer requires.

Personally, I like a trail horse to respond to a solid, perceptible cue, rather than a light touch. Let me give an example. On the trail, I am often handling things such as a camera, food, canteen, gloves, etc with my hands. Because of this, I like split reins with a knot to join them (I never cared for roping reins, though). I was once riding along on a mountain trail, handling something with my hands and my horse kept trying to turn off the trail to the right, while I tried to keep him on the trail by steering with leg pressure. When it got to the point that I had to pay attention, it took me a few seconds to see what the problem was: Since I was using both hands, I had let the reins rest on the horse’s neck. The weight of the knot had pulled the reins off to the right side, which effectively gave my faithful steed the neck-reining cue to turn right! My mistake! The lesson here is that a horse may be trained to be as sensitive to the cues as its intended purpose requires.  In the arena, before show judges, one wants the horse to respond to cues that are as light and imperceptible as possible. That level of precision, however, can prove troublesome on the trail.

I have heard trainers state emphatically, that a horse should never enter one’s personal space unless invited. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this. These trainers espouse what I call a “closed-door” policy. The horse is allowed in only when the door is opened by the trainer/rider.  Their reasoning stems from concern for safety. Keeping the horse at a safe distance precludes the trainer being pawed, bitten, or pounced upon unexpectedly by the horse. My personal practice is to have an “open-door” policy in which my horse is free to enter my space unless I close the door.

I enjoy a close physical relationship with my horses, but I do not tolerate misbehavior.  My horses learn, because I am consistent in my treatment of them, what they are allowed to do and what they are not when in my proximity. They also learn how to tell when they have overstepped their bounds. They understand when they have been “spanked.”

Which leads me to another of my personal guides for training. I believe in firm discipline of a horse when it misbehaves, but there are proper methods and improper methods. I will state emphatically, that a horse should never be disciplined by use of the bit! Hands on the bit should be steady and firm. This doesn’t mean constant contact on the bit, but when a cue is given, it should be discernible to the horse. The term “soft hands” is often misunderstood to mean “no contact” on the bit.  However, when there is contact on the bit, it should be done such that if there is firm contact, it is the horse that does it. The hands on the reins should give the cue and hold the cue. If the horse pushes against the cue, the trainer should not respond by pulling back harder, but hold the cue firm. The horse should learn that it is causing the pressure, rather than the trainer’s hands. In fact, the methods described above may be used effectively to teach a horse to be supple and submissive to the bit by putting light pressure on the bit and then releasing immediately when the horse lowers its head and tucks its chin to relieve the pressure. With patience and consistency, the horse will learn to be flexible at the poll and supple to the bit.

I discipline my horses generally by a quick jab with the spurs or my heels. I don’t always ride with spurs, but I normally wear them while training and when I ride backcountry trails. My spurs have a large blunt rowel.  With regard to spurs, the smaller the rowel, the more aggressive the spur. I have seen some spurs with a small blunt ball end that some believe to be a gentle spur, when actually it is a very aggressive design. A large blunt rowel is what I prefer. Mine is shaped sort of like a four-leaf clover.

Kennetrek Cowboy pac boots

I regard spurs as a training tool.  One benefit of the spur, particularly in training, is that a finer, more precise cue may be given with the spur than with the heel of the riding boot. While spurs may be used aggressively when necessary, a light touch with a spur may give a much more precise cue than a broad heel. However, when necessary, the spur may be used aggressively, both punitively or to avert disaster on the trail. I find horses learn quicker and respond more precisely when spurs are involved.

The proper bit is also an effective training device. While it is quite the fashion nowadays to go “bitless,” there is nothing inherently cruel or evil about a bit. An understanding of how bits function is an important element for any horse trainer. I wrote a blog post about the subject a couple years ago that may have useful information for the reader.

As I said earlier, there is no perfect methodology for training a horse. Just as people, some horses respond to one training method better than another. I have learned effective elements of horse training from many horse trainers who espouse widely varied methodologies. My experience in training horses has also improved my understanding of the human psyche. Quite frankly, had I become a horse trainer earlier in life, I might have done some things differently in the raising of my own children!

The final commentary on horse training for this post, and I would not have you believe this post is all-inclusive, is this: Every rider is a trainer and both training and learning are taking place whenever a human comes in contact with a horse. A rider who gently, firmly, and consistently handles a horse, providing consistent cues, will train that horse to respond well and willingly to any desired behavior. A similar thing may also be said of those who handle a horse inconsistently, who are impatient, or who manage discipline with anger. One who handles a horse in this way may find the horse responds inconsistently and makes both itself and its owner unhappy. No amount of excellent training will overcome poor handling by the horse’s owner/rider, but a well-trained horse that is handled properly is a happy horse and a pleasure to be around.

For an excellent relationship between yourself and your horse, learn to be a trainer and not just a rider.

TH

 

Training, Western Trails

Finally got started on Chief!

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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.

Braided rawhide bosal with horsehair mecate

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!

Training

Chief is going to be a fun horse to train!

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!

Calypso

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.

 

Training, Western Horsemanship, Western Trails

Coming Off the Horse…

On a recent trail ride, my horse stumbled and fell over going up a steep incline and I came out of the saddle right at the crest and ended up sitting on a pile of low growing cactus.

Picking cactus out of my posterior

While there was enough humor in the situation to go around the group, I broke one of my cardinal rules for trail safety:

Stay on top of the horse!

In thinking about what happened, I decided that topic might just make a good blog post and that others might benefit from some of my experience and learning. I have heard it said, “When you make a mistake, all is not lost. You can always be used as a bad example.” Well, here is my bad example.

I often hear people tell horrible stories about how they “came off the horse” and were injured. People tell me how they were “bucked off” their horse or how their horse “threw” them. However, when I have watched things happen in real-time, as well as when I have seen unscripted videos from accidents on the trail, I consistently find that what normally happens is the rider dives off the horse during or just after the third buck.  Now, I recognize that there are, indeed, times when a horse really goes to rodeo-ing, such that even a young seasoned rider would have a tough time “sticking” it, but most of the time the rider bails.

There are other times when there is no bucking or misbehavior involved at all, but a horse missteps or stumbles or falls crossing a trail obstacle, such as what happened with me above, and the rider comes off. Many times the fall or stumble is not violent or even dangerous, but the rider, due to age, inexperience, or other factors, may not be able to stay in the saddle…or, again, they may simply bail.

Now, it is an undisputed fact that one is seldom injured by the actual bucking, stumbling, or even falling of the horse, but rather injuries occur when the rider hits the ground after they leave the horse’s back.

It is an instinctual thing with us humans, to try to avoid injury by avoiding the thing that appears to be the danger. The problem with leaving the horse’s back, is that we mistakenly see the horse as the danger, rather than the contact with the ground. Our instinctive thought is something like, “Wow! This horse is bucking! I better get off or I’m going to get hurt!” Or, alternatively, “Oh my! This horse is going to fall, I better jump off, before I get hurt!”

We don’t actually have these thoughts in words, because when something we perceive as dangerous happens, we enter a syndrome called the “Fight or Flight” syndrome. This causes various involuntary things to happen within our body and causes us to act on instinct, rather than rational thought.  We simply act. We can, however, train ourselves to overcome this syndrome through practice, forethought, and a conscious effort to stay in the saddle.

The horse is not nearly as dangerous as hitting the ground. The ground is the danger! In most circumstances, injury could be avoided by the rider staying in the saddle, no matter how bad it gets. Even if the horse falls down and the rider cannot stay in the saddle, the rider is then falling off from ground level, rather than from 6 feet in the air.

The exception to this rule is when the ground is closer than what the horse is about to jump or fall off of! There are definitely times when one should “ride loose in the saddle” in order to unload quickly, should the horse slip or fall off a steep trail, such as the one below:

When I am coaching riders with regard to trail riding safety, however, I teach that one should do everything possible to stay in the saddle and ride the incident through, when steep terrain is not an issue. That is particularly true when the horse may be stumbling with footing through a difficult obstacle. Just stay in the saddle and try not to make matters worse. Stay balanced, so the horse can regain its footing and stand back up. Panic is your enemy, as well as the horse’s. Panic will always make matters worse.

If a horse is misbehaving, the worst thing one can do, training-wise, is to dismount. Horses learn from the release of pressure, rather than from training cues themselves. In other words, when a rider gives a cue to ask the horse to do something, in the horse’s mind, it is simply trying to figure out how to make that particular cue, or pressure, go away. When a horse misbehaves and the rider dismounts, the horse learns how to get the rider off its back. The issue will arise more and more often, will increase in intensity, and it will start to happen under the worst possible circumstances. Undoing that training mistake is sometimes very difficult.

Take a minute to watch this sequence from the movie, Monty Walsh:

Having said all that, there are times when bailing – jumping off – is the right course of action. However, those times are rare. A rider is less likely to end up injured by just staying in the saddle and riding the matter out. I teach my students that their chances of getting hurt are greatly reduced if they will make every effort to stay on top of the horse! I teach them to settle their minds well in advance, that they will make every effort to stay in that saddle, so that when that difficult situation occurs, they can overcome that instinctual temptation to jump off.

Have fun watching this video of some Native American boys having a good time staying in the saddle:

TH