I have a horse up for sale. He’s a very handsome, good, solid four year-old palomino paint gelding I bought earlier this year for a  pack trip. We were short one horse for a trip from Eagar, Arizona to Flagstaff, Arizona, about 200 miles total. Let me tell you a little about him.

When I came across Reno, I was actually looking for a mustang in the $5-800 range, that maybe needed a little  training. They are pretty much a dime-a-dozen around here, because so many folks get caught up in the romance of adopting a mustang and training it themselves, only to find out they are in way over their heads. Then, a couple years down the road they end up selling an unbroke or greenbroke mustang for almost give-away prices. Well, it’s simply a fact, and that’s what I was looking for.

Anyway, back to Reno, I came across an ad for him and really liked the photos they included of him. He was advertised as being about 14 hands and a 3 year-old. The asking price was above what I was looking for, but was still within my range, so I decided to pass by and take a look. He was located in Heber, UT.

I found that he had been raised from a foal by the family who owned him, and that he was very personable, almost a puppy dog personality, but, also like a puppy, he was somewhat disrespectful. Now, a disrespectful puppy is one thing, but a disrespectful horse can hurt you. He wouldn’t let me lift his hooves, cow-kicked when I messed with his belly, and would turn his rump into me when he was annoyed, rather than moving away as a horse should. These things I can work out of a horse with a little training. What I look for is good conformation, good straight legs, good hooves, and a good attitude. With the exception of a quarter-crack in his right rear, he had all these things. He was also a little taller than advertised, coming in at about 14.2 or so, and stout, which I liked.

After a good inspection and a couple weeks of thinking about it I decided the quarter crack was due to lack of hoof care and not to any kind of coronet injury and that it would heal up just fine with some good care. I dickered with the owners and we agreed on a price that was good for both of us.

I have to be careful when buying a horse, because I rarely sell them. I get pretty attached to my animals and once they are mine I tend to keep them, regardless of any shortcomings they may have. I wouldn’t be a very good horse trader. So, two rules I have set for myself when horse shopping are 1) I don’t take my trailer or any money when I look at a horse for the first time (unless I have to drive a couple hours just to see it), 2) I don’t hand over the money until I have the horse in the trailer. Rule #2 is very important, because I generally  buy horses that “need an experienced rider,” which usually means they have little to no training and might not have ever been in a trailer. Once I get a horse into the trailer, I’m good to pay the money.

I forgot that rule with Reno. I bought him, paid the money, then headed out to the trailer. That was a mistake I won’t make again. What a rodeo! It took us more than two hours to get him loaded. He fought, reared, fell over, and pawed. We finally got him into the trailer and headed home. Getting him out of the trailer was just about as fun. He eventually tried to turn around in my 4-horse slant-load and got stuck in the loading door. He reared over backwards and fell out of the trailer onto his back. No harm done, just shook up.

So, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

The first thing I had to take care of was the disrespect. This horse was about as friendly as any horse I have ever owned. In fact, I think he likes people better than horses. Having him in a pasture with four other horses was good for him, because they began right away to teach him the horse etiquette he had never learned, being raised by people with no other horses around.

The cow-kicking and moving away from me were first on my agenda.

Now, from my experience with horses, I have learned that training a horse is not a whole lot different than raising kids. In fact, I often wish I had garnered more horse training experience before my kids came along, but I just didn’t have time for both back then. I find that horses require a gentle, but firm hand and consistency in order for them to progress well from step to step in the training. The one exception to that rule is when something they do can get someone hurt. There are times when swift and severe punishment will cure a bad habit faster and more surely than any other method. The horse learns very quickly that “when I do that, I get hurt.” So, with that in mind I decided to cure the cow-kicking the very first day.

I have a very stout lead rope, made from the shrouds of a heavy military cargo parachute. It is about 3/4″ thick and has a very heavy brass snap hook on the end. With Reno dressed in a stout flat-braid nylon halter and a strong lead rope tied to a solid post, I moved in beside him on the “on-side” with my heavy shroud lead in my hand, dangling the heavy snap hook on about three feet of lead. With my left hand I began to touch and rub Reno’s belly. As soon as his left rear hoof came off the ground in a cow-kick I swung that heavy lead and whopped him hard on the rump with that heavy snap hook. He was quite surprised by that, so he jumped and moved away from me. We did it again. As soon as the hoof came off the ground, I whopped him. The fourth time I rubbed his belly, his hoof stayed on the ground. He has never again attempted a cow-kick as I touch his belly, rub him, brush, or saddle him.

Next up was teaching him to move away from me, rather than showing me his rump. We started that lesson when we worked on the cow-kick, but there was more to do. I found that he would not let me lift his left rear hoof. As I would try to reach for it, he would move into me and warn me off with his rump, threatening a kick (which he never did). We started working on this by me taking something pointed (not sharp) in my hand, such as the handle of a rasp, the handle ends of a pair of nippers, or a hoof pick, and whenever he moved into me I would let him move into that pointed object, so that he would feel it. The harder he pushed, the harder he felt it. He didn’t like that and learned to move away from me. I would not poke him with it, or push him away with it, but let him move into it. That way, as soon as he stepped away, the pressure was gone. Had I followed him with it, he would not have learned how to avoid the pointed object poking his hip by moving away. Now this, being a more gentle (but firm) method of training, it was several sessions before he learned not to move into me. Now, several months later, he moves away with a simple nudge from me with no stubbornness at all.

The third thing we started working on was lifting his hooves. While he was still somewhat disrespectful, he allowed me to lift his fronts and his right rear, but would not allow me to lift his left rear. I don’t know why. There is no apparent injury or scar I can see, but for some reason he’s touchy about the left rear. When I would try to lift it he would  cow-kick and move away from me. He wasn’t really trying to kick me, he just didn’t want me lifting his hoof. To address this, I took my heavy lead rope and looped it around his left rear pastern, under the fetlock. I would lift his hoof with the rope and simply hold it off the ground while he kicked. I would hold both ends of the rope in my right hand, while leaning against the horse with my left, so I could keep my balance as he kicked away. You have to stand back a bit, just to make sure he doesn’t connect with one of those cow-kicks. After a minute or two, he would get tired and stop kicking. As soon as he stopped kicking and let his leg relax, I lowered it to the ground. If he kicked as I was lowering it, it got raised up again until I could lower it all the way to the ground without a struggle. In this way, after a number of sessions, Reno learned that when he was relaxed I quit bothering his leg. He also learned that the kicking did no good and was just wasted energy. Now I can lift all his feet without trouble. In fact, he lifts them for me as I reach for them. He is learning the respect lessons.

I started riding Reno shortly after I brought him home. The owners told me they had given him to a local rancher for the summer, to have him broke and trained. They said they had often seen the rancher’s kids riding him around. At the time I didn’t think too much about that, except to consider him somewhat saddle broke. I found out pretty quickly that Reno was simply greenbroke, meaning I could saddle and ride him, but he didn’t know much else. I took him for a couple rides in the local area and was pleased with him. He learned pretty quickly that I was easy to get along with and we had no real problems on the trail. In fact, my dad and I took Reno along with the rest of the horses on a three-day ride south of Moab, Utah in April, on which I was quite impressed with Reno’s calm demeanor and good head on the trail. We went up and down, and round and round, trail, no trail, bushes, gullies, over fallen trees, and even through a tunnel under a highway. Reno took little convincing and was willing to give anything I asked of him a try. I was very pleased.

I later took Reno on a  day ride as a pack horse. I Loaded a 50# sack of feed in each side of a set of hard-sided, bear-proof paniers, and took him on a trail ride. As far as I know this was his first experience with a pack saddle. At first he was scared by the noise the paniers make, being hard plastic, and we had a little bit of a rodeo for a few minutes. After that, he settled down and did well. It didn’t take him long to learn to keep the paniers away from things like rocks and trees. Once we rounded a narrow trail with a rock face on his left and Reno allowed the left panier to hit the wall. The force knocked him sideways off the trail and down a steep embankment into the shallow river below. Once he got his feet back under him, he simply climbed back up the embankment, let me grab his lead rope, and we went on. By the time we were done for the day, Reno had learned to keep those paniers away from obstacles near the trail. From that day to this he has never rubbed my leg or knee on anything alongside the trail.

In May, Dad and I embarked on our pack trip. We had four horses and a mule. The horses were rotated as pack and saddle animals, to keep them fresh and rested. Reno was everything I hoped on the trip. Never did I have any problem with him.

Well, I did have one problem. When I was leading him as a pack horse, whenever I stopped to rest the horses he would walk up next to my right leg and drop his head to graze. When he would lift his head the lead rope would come up under my stirrup and get wrapped around my leg. When I complained about it out loud, Dad laughed and said it was my own fault. He pointed out that whenever Reno came up next to me, I would reach over and rub his neck and scratch his ears and he liked it! Ah, well, I guess that’s a bad habit I taught him.

You can see a video of me on Reno, crossing Clear Creek on the Arizona Trail, about 70 miles south of Flagstaff, Arizona here:

After we finished the pack trip I decided to continue Reno’s training. There are a few things I like my trail horses to know, such as moving off leg pressure and heel cues to move their fore and hind quarters; there are times on the trail when you need to position a horse in order to cross an obstacle or ascend or descend a particularly difficult place.

I took Reno into a small training arena to start working on his cues, only to find that he became extremely excited in the arena. As calm as he is on the trail, I was quite surprised. He was, in fact, so excitable in the arena that we did very little training at all. I just tried to work on him simply walking around the arena calmly. I found I was having to handle him more aggressively with the snaffle bit than I like, occasionally causing him to get a sore mouth, so I have moved  him to a 3/4″ braided rawhide bosal for this training. He responds much better in the hackamore.

I generally start all my horses on a snaffle bit, then move them to a bosal hackamore for the bulk of their training. When they are easy on the controls I move them to a solid curb bit. Reno had been doing so well in the snaffle, that I had just left  him in that and hadn’t done much hackamore work on him. He’s progressing well now.

The only thing I can guess with Reno is that the former trainer (the rancher) probably had his kids riding him most of the time. I expect that was often out pushing cattle, which would explain is calm demeanor on the trail, however, my guess is that the kids also attempted to try roping off him in an arena. I expect he got spurred a bit in the doing. That is the only explanation that comes to mind and fits the evidence. Regardless, I have been spending my time lately, trying to continue his training and get him over his excitement – fear – inside enclosed areas.

I normally train with spurs on , as I find horses tend to learn quicker with their judicial use and I can give more precise cues with the touch of a spur than with a heel. However, with Reno, I have removed my spurs. He over-reacts to them, I suppose, as a result of being exposed to some undisciplined spur use from his previous “trainers.” With much patience and a gentle hand, I have been slowly getting Reno to recognize what I am asking with my heel cues. He is very willing, but still reacts more out of fear than desire to learn, which makes learning difficult. Fear simply isn’t a good training tool. My job, therefore, is to teach him that my cues don’t hurt and that learning to respond to them calmly brings peace and rest (my, that sounds almost religious!).

Reno gets better each day. I have been trying to ride him more often this winter, when time allows. When I can consistently ride him an hour or two every day or so he improves rapidly.

The problem with that is that every time I ride him I like him more and more and want to sell him less and less!

He’s a good horse.