Tag Archives: gait

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.

 

Tack and Gear, Training

Another Step Forward with J Golden…

I’ve had my new horse, J, out a couple times over the past week, for both pleasure and training.

Last week, my wife and I took Lizzy and J out to Santaquin, Utah for a short ride. Due to inclement weather, the ride turned out shorter than expected, but it was still a nice ride. Both Lizzy and J performed to expectations and the ride put some more miles on J, which is what he really needs right now.

The area we went to is also frequented by shooters for a target range. There were several families out enjoying their firearms when we arrived, so J and Lizzy got a little exposure to the sounds of gunfire while we saddled up. Shortly after we arrived, though, the wind came up and it rained for a short spell, driving all the shooters back to the shelter of their homes. Once the rain let up, Linda and I headed up the trail.

During that ride, J showed me that he has that smooth running walk the Tennessee Walker is known for, but I had a hard time keeping him in it on the rough terrain we were riding in. We were going either up or down all the time, which is not optimum for working on gaits. What he needed was some mileage on a long straight, level trail, where we could fine-tune his gait and teach him what we were looking for.

So, this morning I had some time.  I headed out to do a little work with J.

Today’s training goal was to transition J from the D-ring snaffle bit to a bosal hackamore. I like to do most of my horse training in a bosal, because I feel like I am able to teach them to be more sensitive to bridle and rein cues without working on their mouth. Once I get a horse to the point at which I am comfortable with their neck reining and responsiveness to bridle cues with the bosal, I transition them to a curb bit. I may ride the horse in a bosal for a year before going to the solid bit.

A couple days ago, I tied my 5/8″ rawhide braided bosal over a wooden form, to set its shape. This morning I tied my new 5/8″ horse hair mecate to it and adjusted it to my liking. When I put it on J’s head this morning, he couldn’t quite figure it out for a few minutes, but adjusted to it quickly.

I spent about twenty minutes riding J around the pasture, getting him accustomed to the bosal and teaching him basic signals, which he quickly interpolated from his earlier training in the snaffle bit. I worked on flexing his neck both directions, pressure-release method, to teach him how to relieve the pressure on his nose by giving to the pressure. He already stops to my verbal and seat cue, so the ever important “whoa” command was a piece of cake.

We had to work on his directional signals a bit, though. After a few figure-eights with a few sharp bumps on the nose, he began to understand that he needed to lead with his head, rather than turning while looking off in the other direction. I feel this is more effectively taught with a bosal than with a snaffle bit, since the snaffle tries to pull through the mouth when plow-reined. The bosal is used to bump the horse on the nose, teaching him to look away from the pressure and toward the direction of intended travel. Very quickly the horse begins to respond to light pressure on the nose, rather than waiting for the bump.

On J, I decided to try something I have read about, but hadn’t yet tried. I bought a 5/8″ 6-strand horse hair (mane hair) 24′ mecate to use with my rawhide bosal (Click here to link to similar mecates on Amazon.com). I have read the prickly feel of the horse hair mecate is more effective than a smooth rope for training the horse to neck rein. As the trainer plow reins with one side, he lays the opposite rein against the horse’s neck. It feels the prickly mecate on its neck and more easily associates that touch with the turn in the other direction.  The transition from the bosal/mecate to a bit and smooth leather reins is then a simple matter.

Once the horse handles with light cues on the reins under all conditions, and I no longer need to “bump” the bosal, I feel like the horse is ready to transition to the curb bit. Again, I do not train for shows and am not a reining expert. I ride trails and do pack trips. I train for all-around good, reliable trail horses.

After a few minutes of getting-acquainted-with-the-bosal time, I decided J was ready for a ride outside our arena and pasture. I was looking forward to getting him outside and onto some long, straight roads to see what we could do with his gait.

I was pleased to find that J was easy to handle riding away from his herd and our home base. He did so with no argument and kept his mind on what was ahead of him. He decided that he preferred to step-out in his natural gait, which I have been told is a “stepping-pace,” so I let him have his head. The stepping-pace is not an unpleasant gait, however, with more speed it evolves into a full pace, which is very uncomfortable for a rider. I have been hoping I might be able to work with him and find that smooth running walk in him the Tennessee Walker is famous for. Regardless, the reason I bought him was to get a horse whose walk could keep up with Lizzy’s on the trail. J definitely has that box checked.

As we got onto a long paved road with little traffic, I used the reins and spurs to be able to get J coaxed into a good running walk. It was a little slow, but it was definitely a running walk. When he wanted to go faster, he slipped into the pace, so I kept his head in, flexed at the poll, to check his speed. When I did this he slowed and got back into the running walk. I let him hold that for a bit, then slowed to a flat walk for a while. We kept speeding up and slowing down without allowing him to get into his pace. Before long, he was speeding up his running walk. I found that a light touch with the spurs, while keeping him flexed at the poll, collected him just enough to produce a good running walk with good comfortable speed. I was feeling pretty good about things.

We rode around some low hills for a while, working on things like crossing logs and looking for witches and spooks. I also worked on J’s canter. He simply does not know how to do it with weight on his back. I finally got him to canter up a hill, but he didn’t like it. He prefers to gait. I’m ok with that, since I will be using him for trail riding and pack trips, however, I have always felt a well-rounded horse should perform well at a canter.  We’ll continue to work on that.

After a little over an hour, we headed back toward home. I was quite pleased when J settled into a nice running walk and, since we were headed toward home, even picked up his speed a bit. I was able to keep him dialed-in to his running walk, rather than slipping into his pace, by light cues on the reins and a touch or two with the spurs. I estimate we were moving along very smoothly at about 8-10 mph.

That will match up very well with Lizzy’s Fox Trot.

Back at the pasture, J had a very nice light sweat on him. We finished up with a good brushing and hoof cleaning, before I turned him back out with his pasture buddies. After a good roll in the dust, he was off with his friends.

I like this fellow more every time I ride him.

P.S.

I felt Lizzy’s baby move today! Looking forward to a beautiful spotted Fox Trotter foal sometime about late September.