Saddlery, Tack and Gear

Maybe it’s time for a new saddle

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I noticed  a couple weeks ago that the fleece on my old Utahn Saddlery ranch saddle is worn out. I bought that saddle well-used in the spring of 2015 and have put a lot of miles on it since then. I’ve replaced all the saddle strings and many of the conchos, but now the fleece needs to be replaced. That got me to considering that I should build myself a new saddle.

Over the past 10 years or so, I have accrued the necessary basic tools for saddle making and have done minor and major repairs to a number of saddles. I have learned all of the various skills necessary to complete a saddle, but just haven’t yet made one from start to finish. That’s something I have aspired to and I think it’s time.

So, the first step is to decide what kind of saddle I want to build. It seems to be something deeply rooted in my soul to have a love of traditional…even old…ways and things. I absolutely love the 1870s style western stock saddles. The half-seats in particular. So, my first saddle will be a half-seat, similar to this one, built by Kevin Sonmor.

He has a wonderful video of him building this beautiful saddle on his YouTube channel, Agar France:

I plan to use a tree from Timberline Saddle Trees, their Old Style Visalia model, with a 15-1/2″ seat length.

I doubt I’ll make it as beautifully carved as Kevin’s saddle, because my leather carving skills aren’t quite as well developed as his, but I’m going to make it a very nice saddle, one I can be proud of.

Recently, I have had a lot of association with horse folks in my own age group and older. I have found that many of them struggle to lift the traditionally heavy saddles onto the backs of their horses. My own Utahn saddle weighs in at around 45 pounds. It seems to be quite common for us older folks to have trouble with our shoulders and I am no exception. Some people have had to resort to some of the very low-end saddles on the market, which are made with plastic trees and inferior materials in order to find a saddle they can comfortably lift. These saddles might be comfortable for short rides, but over the duration of a long, strenuous trail ride, they can not only become uncomfortable for the rider, but also for the horse. And, due to the inferior quality of the materials from which they are made, they don’t last very long, either.

It occurred to me that I might be able to design a saddle that was light, yet built on a high-quality tree, with just enough leather to make it comfortable for both horse and rider, and useful for trail riding.

This would be a saddle that would be durable, comfortable to ride on long trail rides, and be comfortable and safe for the horse, while being light enough for anyone to lift onto the back of their horse. My goal would be to make this saddle come in under 30 pounds, hopefully in the  22-25 pound range.

It might look something like an 1830s Santa Fe style saddle, such as the one below.

Or, it might be a little more elaborate, yet simple, such as this one by Out West Saddlery (I’m leaning more toward this design).

The goal, again, being to build a comfortable, durable, yet light saddle, made of high-quality materials.

The tree I have been considering for this lightweight saddle build, is another one from Timberline. It is the Timberline Wade, again in 15-1/2″ seat length.

Both of the trees I am considering are bullhide-covered wood trees, built to my specifications, very strong and very high quality.

I will be ordering leather and other supplies from Montana Leather, from whom I have bought leather in the past. I have been very satisfied with their leather, their prices, and their service. Other parts and hardware will come from various other places. The total price tag for the supplies alone for the saddle to be built on the Visalia-style tree will be over $1,000. The cost for the lightweight saddle will be a little less, as there is less leather involved.

Once I get these saddles built, I plan to allow some of my riding friends to use them for a ride or two to let me know how they ride and make suggestions for improvements. That’s one of the benefits of making my own saddles: I can rework the design to suit my needs and desires perfectly.

And who knows? I might just find a niche market for the lightweight saddles! We’ll see what happens.

TH

P.S.

Don’t worry, I plan to re-fleece my old Utahn saddle and it will continue to get a lot of miles put on it. It’s a very well-built and comfortable saddle.

Saddlery, Tack and Gear

Another saddle to repair

After the successful repair of my buddy’s old youth saddle,

I decided to pull another old saddle out of my “to-do” bin and take a look at it.

It needed the same kind of repair as my buddy’s saddle: the front of the left side saddle tree bar had broken off from the stresses imposed by the cinch rigging. The last repair went so well, I decided it was time to get this saddle out of the bin, repaired, and get it sold to someone who could use it.

So, I started taking it apart. Here’s what I found:

This is a very cheaply made off-the-shelf saddle.  Some previous repairs were evident: conchos and saddle strings had been replaced and everything reattached with screws. The seat was made in several pieces of leather, rather than one piece of high-quality firm leather. The ground seat is padded with upholstery padding, the skirts are made of several pieces of tooled leather stitched onto a heavier backing piece, to which is glued and stitched fake fleece on cloth backing (which is also in very poor condition). The machine stitching on the skirts has cut clean through the skirt backing leather, so that the backing leather must be replaced.

The tree was made to appear to be a high-quality bullhide-wrapped wood tree, but in fact, the tree was only partially wrapped in paper-thin rawhide, which was then tacked, rather than stitched, to the tree. The tree itself not only has the front of the left bar broken off, but the right bar is split through most of its length. This tree would have to be glued back together, then wrapped in fiberglass to be considered “repaired.”

This is a saddle that was made as fast and cost-effectively as possible, to then be sold as an inexpensive saddle. It was not intended to be an heirloom. It is dressed up like a good trail saddle, but it simply was not made to last. This is the kind of craftsmanship one should expect in the $500-$800 price range for today’s western saddles. In fact, the plastic trees this price-range of saddle is normally made on is superior to the tree this one was made on. Do not interpret that to mean those plastic trees are good saddle trees, just better than this one.

In the final analysis, I could put 8-10 hours into repairing the tree and replacing various leather parts, repairing the skirts, re-fleecing the skirts with real fleece, making a new horn and wrap, making a new ground seat, and re-installing all the outer leather, a total of around $4-500 in materials and labor…and the saddle would still be a cheap old saddle.

I guess sometimes you just have to say it’s not worth it.

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

 

Saddlery, Tack and Gear, Western Trails

Another old, beat up, unusable saddle brought back to life

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A couple weeks ago, I saw an old saddle in my buddy’s tack room. It was obviously an older saddle, probably from around the 1940s or so, with small sweat leathers and the stirrup leathers exposed on the outside of the sweat leathers. It was a small saddle, measuring 14-1/2″ on the seat, and built like a youth saddle. The leather was dry and cracked and in need of a good cleaning and oiling. As I looked closer, I saw that on the left side (on-side), the front of the tree bar, to which the left side of the cinch rigging had been attached, was broken. The bar had split and departed. The rigging attachment was missing altogether and the rigging ring was held in place by a couple leather boot laces tied around the pommel and through the hand-hole – obviously a “just-get-me-back-home” kind of repair.

My buddy has several grandkids he likes to get out on horses every chance he gets, so I asked if he would like to have that saddle repaired. Looking rather doubtful, he said, “Sure, if it’s worth saving!” I told him I’d give it a shot.

The following week, I tore the saddle apart to see what I could do. I was immediately sorry I had forgotten to take a “before” photograph. Oh well, you can see from the photos of the repair process what needed to be done.

The first thing was to remove enough of the leather to assess whether the tree was, in fact, repairable. I was disappointed in what I found. The tree was not rawhide covered, but was made as cheaper saddles were made “back in the day.” The wood tree was covered with a cloth mesh, not unlike what we call “cheese cloth” and that was painted with a thick glue-like varnish to seal the tree. The cloth mesh adds little or no strength to the tree, but helps in the adhesion of the glues used to attach the leather to the tree. I found the tree itself to be loose at all the joints. In other words, it was not in very good shape.

I decided that I could repair the broken tree bar by gluing and screwing a piece of pine in place of the missing piece, then milling it to match the other side – not a difficult thing, since the tree was not covered with rawhide. I have both the tools and the skills as a woodworker to do that repair easily. In a couple hours I had the repair done and was pleased with it. I further strengthened the tree by drilling pilot holes and driving in 2″ screws through the bars and into the cantle and pommel. It is now quite firm and all the joints are tight.

I reinforced the repaired bar with a single layer of fiberglass bi-directional cloth over the length of the bar. It didn’t go on very well, as you can see, but it will be strong enough for its purpose. I also painted a layer of resin over the rest of the tree to seal and strengthen it. The resin doesn’t have much strength in itself, but it tends to soak into the surface layers of the wood and adds some strength there and it would also add a little reinforcement to the cloth mesh and varnish already on the tree. Regardless, it would be stronger than it was when it was made.

The next step was to sand the whole tree smooth, since the fiberglass resin made every little string and sliver hard and prickly. Once smoothed, it was time to start replacing all the saddle leather.

I started with the gullet leather. It went on easily.

The ground seat was next.  Most saddlers use a tin “strainer” as the foundation for a ground seat, while some higher-end saddlers make a ground seat entirely of leather. This saddle originally had a tin strainer, so I reused it.  All the old nails had loosened, so I reattached it with zinc-coated roofing nails, which should hold it much better than before over the long-haul.

After the strainer was in place, the ground seat was completed with the same leather as before. I wanted to re-use all the leather that came on the saddle, as far as possible, so that I wouldn’t have trouble with the outer leather not fitting back on the saddle properly.

Next was the saddle horn. The old one was worn out and loose. The leather was stretched and the stitching was coming loose. The original horn was quite small, but it looked right in proportion to the saddle, so I made a new horn and wrap pretty much as it was made originally…at least size-wise. I used better leather than was used originally. I think it came out pretty well.

Next came the rigging. I decided to go with a Stohlman-style 3/4 rigging, which would be immeasurably stronger and more durable than what came on the saddle and would be less likely to put undue stress on the tree bars and break the repaired area again. I made paper patterns, based on patterns provided in The Stohlman Encyclopedia of Saddle Making, Volume One. The original rigging was pretty close to a “full-rigging”, but I moved it back, so that it would allow the cinch to ride a little farther back for my friend’s Fox Trotter horses.  I attached the rigging with three 1″ screws, front and rear each side. This rigging will still be strong when all the rest of the leather on the saddle has rotted away and is useless.

Once the rigging was in place, it was time to start replacing the outer leather. I started with the pommel cover, which is standard operating procedure. Next came the seat leather. Since this is an old-style saddle, it has a total of 16 leather conchos (sometimes also referred to as conchas) and 8 saddle strings. This is sometimes called an “8-string” saddle. More modern saddle designs are 6-string, because they combine the front jockeys with the seat leather as one piece. Personally, I like the 8-string design. It imparts a traditional look, I think.

I cut and prepared the 16 conchos, 8 at 1-3/4″ and 8 at 1-1/2″.  I applied neatsfoot oil and Fiebings Chocolate colored stain to them to make them look a little closer to the color of the original leather.

Here is where I changed things a little. I hope the changes are stronger and yet invisible to the casual observer. When I repair a saddle, I try to make improvements where possible without detracting from the original design and patina of the old saddle. If I know a repair is there, but I can’t see it, I feel like I have done well.

The original saddle skirts were attached to the tree bars with a few nails here and there, but mostly with saddle strings that passed through the tree bars in various places, then through the saddle leather, and were finished with a bleed-knot. You only see them as saddle strings on the outside. This is the traditional method for attaching saddle skirts to the tree bars. It has worked well for a couple hundred years.

More modern saddles, particularly show saddles no longer have any need for saddle strings and some prefer not to have them at all. On these saddles, the skirts are attached with screws and nails only, with a few leather tags to hold the ends of the skirts tight to the bars. Saddle strings passing through the tree bars are entirely eliminated. This obviates the need to drill holes through the saddle leather and through the tree bars. Some feel these holes weaken the tree bars, but I have seen little evidence of that when care is taken to make sure all the holes are drilled properly in the right places.

For this saddle, however, I decided the best method was to use screws. Not all the holes in the original tree bars were drilled in the right places and putting everything back as original would have been a mistake in my estimation. The saddle skirts originally had leather patches sewn to them on both ends, which was pulled up over the front and rear of the bar and attached with nails. This was to keep the ends of the skirts tight to the bars. Only one of the leather patches remained. It was on the rear of the left skirt. I made a similar patch from scrap leather and used my industrial sewing machine to stitch it to the rear of the right skirt.

With the new rigging in place, this method would no longer work on the front of the saddle skirts, so in the front of each skirt I punched 1/4″ holes and installed two leather thongs on each side. These I pulled tight over the front of the bars and fixed them with nails through the rigging leather and into the wood of the bars. I then put nails and screws in all the appropriate places to ensure the skirts never move and provide another few years of good service before they need to be re-fleeced.

This being a trail saddle, however, means it should have saddle strings. So, on the upper side of the saddle, I strung the saddle strings through existing holes in the saddle leather, then slid the large concho into place. I then used an awl to make a pilot hole in the concho, through the saddle leather, and through the center of the saddle string. I then set a #10 X 1-1/4″ wood screw through all that and into the saddle tree wood. This method firmly fixes the saddle leather to the tree and creates a very strong substrate to give strength for the saddle string. The small concho is then set in place over the large concho, covering the screw head. The saddle strings are then finished with the traditional bleed knot.

Some saddlers attach the conchos and saddle leather to the tree in this method, but use a small D-ring to attach the saddle strings. I prefer the traditional look of the bleed knots and no D-ring.

As I reassembled the saddle, I oiled each piece of leather with a heavy coat of 100% neatsfoot oil, which it absorbed thirstily, and then went over each piece with Fiebings leather stain in Chocolate color, to blend the new and the old as much as possible. You can see the difference in the following photos:

Speaking of D-rings, I forgot to mention that I added D-rings to the front rigging for a breast strap attachment point. I also added a D-ring to the left rear, under the concho at the cantle, for the attachment of a rifle scabbard strap or anything else one might wish to attach there.  On that D-ring, I made an attachment from tin and slid it up under the rear jockey leather, to make it as unobtrusive as possible. The screw that holds the saddle leather and concho in place passes through it as well, so it will be a very strong attachment point for a rifle scabbard.  After installing it, I decided to go back and attach a similar D-ring on the other side as well, so one has a choice of which side to carry the rifle scabbard. I’ll get to that tomorrow.

I still need to make a new rope strap that attaches to the pommel and a stirrup keeper strap, as well.

There are few things in life that bring me more pleasure than taking something old and broken and making it work again.

This still an old saddle, but it is now ready for another 20 or so years of riding service for my buddy’s grandkids!

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

 

Other

Covid 19

As I sit in my home, trying my best to keep the suggestions and advice from the CDC, FDA, and other US Governmental agencies regarding social distancing, in order to do my part in trying to slow the spread of Covid 19, I have been wondering if there’s something more I can do.

As I wondered, I realized that I have a number of followers who get my posts regularly.  Recognizing that us “horse people” tend to be quite suspicious and skeptical of news and political reporting nowadays, I decided that I would compose a short post with the best information I have at my disposal regarding this scary and dangerous pandemic infection. I realize I have only a small following, but if even one person is benefitted, it is more than worth my time.

Covid 19 is a new virus. It is a mutation of a virus that is common among certain animal species, which has mutated and become infectious to humans. As it is a new or novel virus, no human alive has any immunity or antibodies to address it, prior to infection. There is no vaccination for it. It originated in the Wuhan Province in China in December 2019. It became an epidemic in Wuhan so swiftly that the world was taken by surprise. The world learned of it in January, 2020. Since that time more than 200,000 infections worldwide have been reported, with nearly 8,000 fatalities, as of today, March 18, 2020. In the US, as of yesterday, there were more than 6,000 reported cases, with 108 fatalities. This viral infection has now been reported in every continent except Antarctica.

The number of reported infections increases by double every 3-6 days, depending on location and actions taken by local governments.

Common symptoms of Covid 19 are headache, fever, dry cough, and occasionally diarrhea. The virus is a respiratory infection and is particularly harmful to those who have underlying health concerns, such as asthma, diabetes, COPD, etc.

The mortality rate of Covid 19 varies widely, depending on the victim’s age and any underlying health concerns. For healthy individuals with no underlying health concerns under the age of 50, the mortality rate is well under 1%, similar to the common flu, with some victims experiencing no symptoms or very light symptoms. For healthy individuals between 50 and 59 years of age, the rate rises to 1.3%. For those between 60 and 70 years of age the mortality rate goes up markedly to 3.6%. From 70-80 years, it rises further to 8%, and 80 and above to nearly 15%. For those with underlying health issues, the risk in each category increases dramatically.

Men seem to be more susceptible to mortality than women.

The US government, as well as state and local governments have instituted some unprecedented and very stringent measures to promote “social distancing” in order to slow the spread of the virus in the US. The problem here is that if the virus spreads as it did in Italy, Iran, and a number of other countries, our healthcare system would very quickly be overcome, resulting in much higher mortality rates than might occur if the spread were slowed and the peak infection rate never reached an actual peak, graphically speaking.

It is estimated by various information outlets that 60 to 80% of the world’s population will eventually become infected. While development of a vaccination for Covid 19 is under development in the US and other countries, production of such is still more than one year away.

Many people are still resisting or entirely ignoring the measures imposed by the governments and other concerned organizations to slow the spread of the virus. I am still reading many facebook comments that clearly show many people are still considering this whole thing to be a gross over-reaction by the press and politicians.

Let me give you a for-instance as to why everybody should be concerned and why everyone should be doing their part to slow the spread of this virus. In my family, my parents are in their mid-eighties. High risk. I have a son who is Type-1 Diabetic. High Risk. My wife is asthmatic. High Risk. I have two other close relatives with other serious auto-immune illnesses. High Risk. I am in my sixties. High Risk. While we are all in apparent great health, many members of my family fall into high-risk categories for this virus. I don’t think my family is an unusual case.

While you may not be concerned at all about your own health with regard to this viral pandemic, consider those around you. By the time this pandemic is a memory in our past and there is a vaccination that renders it no more of a threat than the common flu, it is likely everyone you know will know someone who died.

Folks, this is real. For your own health and safety, and particularly for that of those around you, please take this seriously and do your part. If you haven’t been doing so, start today. We don’t know how long these measures will be necessary, but this is not the end of the world. Water supplies will not be interrupted. Toilet paper will be available as soon as people quit hoarding it. Food is not going to be an issue. You will still be able to go to the grocery store when necessary. Just be careful and implement the measures prescribed for your personal hygiene and care.

This will pass. Most of us will come through it quite well and life will resume and return to normal, but for many this will be long remembered as a terrible and difficult time in the history of the world, of our country, and for them personally.

I am very grateful for the quick actions taken by the federal, state, and local government organizations. I am hopeful that when my turn comes to be sick with Covid 19 (and I consider that to be inevitable), that our wonderful healthcare system will be in control and working effectively.

As I said, we horse people are a pretty hearty breed, sometimes given to ignoring things that are of great concern to the common folk. Let not this be one of them.

TH

P.S.

And then we had an earthquake this morning in Utah! It scored 5.7 on the Richter and the epicenter was Magna, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. We felt it way down here in Salem, Utah. I still haven’t heard of any serious damage, but some folks lost power and some dishes were broken. A pretty good shaker, for Utah anyway.

 

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.

 

Good Stories, Western Trails

Time (well past, actually) For Another Alaska Moose Hunt Post

It’s been awhile since my last post about my 2019 Alaska moose hunt. Time to sit down and get another one done.

As it turns out, in reviewing my journal entries of the hunt, I discovered that my memory was a bit rusty when I made the last post. I completely passed right over nearly a whole week! So, this post will cover that missed time and get the chronology straightened out.

So, when we left off, Derek and I had arrived at camp, got ourselves and horses squared away, our other hunting buddies had flown in and we had hauled them up into the foothills to start their Dall sheep hunt. That’s where I got things mixed up. That was Wednesday, September 11, 2019.

You will recall that Apollo had a bruised hoof and was pretty sore, so I let him rest a few days.

On Thursday, Derek and I took a very long and tough ride across the foothills and valley to the west of camp, looking for new routes to take us to farther ranges and hunting areas. The area Derek has hunted for several years didn’t show any promise for decent moose bulls last year (2018), due to the presence of a pack of more than 24 timber wolves.

I saddled up Moose for this ride. She is a Missouri Fox Trotter mare, about 15-2 hands tall, with a strong build. She is about 9 years old. Moose plows through the tundra like a bulldozer. She can carry a 300 pound pack all day and drag the other pack horses along behind. If she has one shortcoming at all, it is that as a pack horse she doesn’t like to track behind the lead horse.

She has had her heels clipped a time or two by the horse behind, which is quite painful, so she likes to walk to the side of the string and ends up trying to get alongside of the lead saddle horse.  She sometimes gets on the wrong side of trees and causes problems. On our trip in to the hunt camp, Moose was the cause of our most serious wreck, because she doesn’t like to stay in line. Still, as a saddle horse on any kind of trail, she is hard to beat, utterly fearless and strong. This was her third trip to Alaska and she knew the drill.

Derek was riding Finn again, his tall, lanky, strong, Tennessee Walker. This was his second trip to Alaska and he was a different horse this time. Last year Finn didn’t have the strength necessary to carry Derek through the Alaskan terrain. He tired quickly, stumbled a lot and didn’t hold his weight well. This year it was a different story. Finn was up to the task and proved himself a very good horse for this difficult job. He was amazing.

We decided to find a reliable way to cross a large valley to the west of our hunt camp, that would give us a faster route to Cottonwood Creek and beyond. The way across the flat in the bottom was tough on the horses. The stunted Alberta pines grow so close together in places a horse can barely fit between them, much less a horse with a pack. Then there are the marshes and tundra that the horses had to struggle through. In the long run, we were able to find and mark a pretty good route. We will still need to clear paths through a couple Alder thickets in the future, but it’s a much quicker travel route and easier on the horses than making our way across the foothills.

After we reached Cottonwood Creek, which is mostly a dry gravel and shale wash, we headed south toward the area we wanted to take a look at. About a mile down the wash, we came upon the camp of the local outfitter. They use the wash as a runway to fly their hunters in by bush plane. We happened upon one of their guides and a pilot there. They were none too happy with us and leveled some veiled threats at us for invading their hunt area. We ignored those and just went about our business. It was sufficient for Derek that they knew we could reach their camp with little effort, should anything untoward happen at our camp.

By the time we started back toward home camp, it was getting on toward evening. We returned by way of the foothills, which we both knew very well.  Moose and Finn knew they were heading back toward camp, so they put it into high gear and we made our way over the hills at a pretty quick clip in the gait these horses are known for.  We found ourselves busting down the tundra covered hills as fast as 10 miles per hour!

We arrived back at camp just after full dark. We were lucky the horses knew the way, because we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces! We logged 19 miles that day. By the time we arrived back at camp,   both our horses and ourselves were absolutely tuckered-out.

Made for a sound night’s sleep.

The only game we saw through all our travels that day were several Dall sheep way up in the peaks and a lone boar Black bear. That was quite disappointing, even though we didn’t consider it a hunting day.  I commented in my journal that the way the Dall sheep can hang on sheer cliff faces amazes me. That is really something to see. I wished our two buddies hunting them lots of luck!

The next two days were rainy, so we stayed in camp and lazed around and relaxed. It was a good rest period for the horses as well. We had  brought some good old Louis L’Amour western novels and we went through a couple each. Late in the day on Saturday we heard wolves howling on both sides of camp, but some distance away. We never saw any, though.

The weather was still fairly warm, so the bugs were horrible. The horses, despite our keeping fly wipe and spray on them, were covered with welts from gnat and mosquito bites. We hoped and prayed for frost to kill off the insects. That came only a few days later, to the great relief of all. Meanwhile, we kept a smoking fire going, which helped greatly.

After our experience a few days earlier, in which four of our horses headed back toward the trailhead on their own, we kept a sharp eye on the horses as we allowed them to graze. We found it was pretty safe to allow two at a time out of the corral. We rotated them every several hours, so that all 6 had at least two hours of grazing time. We also supplemented their grazing with alfalfa pellets we hauled in with us, but, being restricted by the weight we could haul in on the horses, we realized the bagged feed wasn’t going to last long. The plan was for me head out with three pack horses and bring several hundred pounds of feed back in from the trailer. That took place a few days later and is documented in the previous post.

On Sunday, we took another ride over west, through the valley and the flats again. We decided to make this a hunt day as well as an exploration day, so we took two pack horses along, with gear to sustain us in case we got a moose and had to make camp for the night.  This time we crossed through the flats in the valley and made a loop over to Anaconda Creek, named for its winding path, then farther west to Cottonwood Creek, then on over another ridge to Carden Creek. The travel was tough, but the horses handled it in stride.

On this day I rode Ginger, a Missouri Fox Trotter mare about 15.2 hands, almost a duplicate of Moose. She had made this same hunt trip at least four times before. She is an amazing horse, one I would trust with my life under any circumstances. Ginger has a Fox Trot that is amazing. She plows through anything without hesitation, never stumbles, and hops up into her fox trot at every possible place in the trail...if there is a trail at all! She really doesn’t need one.

After crossing Anaconda Creek and climbing to the crest of a ridge between Anaconda and Cottonwood Creek, we stopped for lunch and spent some time scoping the valley below. We spotted two bull moose that were legal size (50 inch spread minimum or four tines on one brow), but they were too far away and moving too fast to even consider trying for them.

We made our way farther west, crossing Cottonwood to Carden Creek, which was the farthest west Derek had been on his previous hunts. We saw no further moose the rest of the day.

By the time we turned back toward camp, once again taking the high route through the foothills because we were familiar with the route, the daylight was fading. While the evening sunshine on the mountain peaks was beautiful, we didn’t take much time to look. We were pushing hard to make it back to camp. We were concerned about finding the trail in the dark.

We were still about three-and-a-half miles from camp when we heard a dog yelp. We looked around and couldn’t find Lucky and Ruger anywhere! We stopped and called, searching in the fading light, but couldn’t find them. Then, a few minutes later, both dogs slowly made their way up to the horses.  What we saw was one of the worst sights I have ever seen on any of my pack trips or hunts.

The dogs had apparently come upon a porcupine and had torn into it. Ruger, the pup, was the luckier of the two. He had a dozen or so quills stuck in the side of his face. Lucky, on the other hand (despite his name) had literally hundreds of quills in his face, inside his mouth, and even on his sides.  There were quills sticking through his ears and through his tongue! He had so many stuck inside his mouth that he could not close it! My heart sank.

Derek and I parked the horses, tied them to a couple stunted pines, and went to work on the dogs with our multi-tools. I went to Ruger first, while Derek started on Lucky. Ruger sat there submissively, while I plucked the few quills out of the side of his face. He winced a bit and gave a muffled cry a time or two, but within a couple minutes I had removed all the quills I could find and he was feeling much better.

Then I turned to help Derek with poor Lucky. He was in such pain that it was difficult to hold him down. We turned him on his back and one of us would sit on him and hold his face still while the other pulled quills. At first Lucky was tough and just whimpered a little, but after the first fifty or so quills were pulled, he started snapping at us and yelping out loud. It must have been terrible for him, yet he never bit down on us, despite getting our hands in his mouth several times.

While all this was going on, Derek and I kept in the back of our minds the thought that we were out in the middle of nowhere, in Grizzly bear country, with wolves all around, in the dark, with a yelping dog! Luckily, we were not disturbed!

Eventually Lucky just couldn’t take any more, so we let him alone. At least he could close his mouth now. We got back in the saddle and made the last few miles to camp with two wounded dogs and tired horses, through bear and wolf country, in the dark. The horses, always reliable, knew the way and took us home at a good Fox Trot. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Ginger, for bringing us safely to camp that night, hours after dark. She comes into play again, pulling my weight through a tough day later in the trip as well.

We made 23 very tough miles that day. We were pretty happy to find our camp undisturbed, with the other horses calling to us and ready for some feed.

Another good night’s sleep.

The next day I left with three pack horses to make the 20 miles back to the trailhead to bring horse feed back to camp.

P.S.

Just so nobody worries too much, both Ruger and Lucky survived the trip. Lucky’s face swelled and we were pulling quills out of him for days. After we arrived back home at Spanish Fork, Utah, Derek took him in to see the vet, who sedated Lucky and pulled another 20 or so quills out of his mouth and face. He is fully recovered now, a much wiser pup than before.

TH

 

 

 

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