Global Horse Culture

New book!

I am thrilled to have been a part of a new book, just launched today. The Better Deal: Practical Horsemanship Training for You and Your Horse was co-written with horsewoman Margaret Beeman. We spent a year working on this project, setting out Margaret's approach to horsemanship. Margaret focuses on the the need to understand the nature of the horse and the herd rules, and then offers a detailed look at what the person needs to learn about their own body language and emotions in order to communicate effectively with the horse. The second part of the book offers a series of ten exercises on the ground which can be used to evaluate and work through problems at all levels, including problems under saddle. She has used her approach to help students who are regional, national and international competitors, as well as helping pleasure riders and drivers. The book is thoroughly illustrated with  photos.

I spent four years training with Margaret, and it made a huge difference in my horsemanship, allowing me to get over my anxieties and try new things I never would have dared before, from hunter pacing and fox hunting to starting my own young horse.

Read more about the book and find out how to order here.

Virtual horse shows: no travel, low cost, but with real judges and prizes!

Rod Miller was raised with horses. He's worked with Reiners for nearly 20 years, including spending 6 years as a judge at competitions all over the US.

Judging opened his eyes to something he hadn't really noticed before. "I found that each year when I went back somewhere to judge many of the beginners from the years before were not there. I started to think about why and didn't like the answers I was getting, for example: 'It was to expensive,' 'I can't compete against people who can pay the best trainers, and buy the best horses,' and 'my horse isn't good enough for the new level I have to show at and I can't afford a new horse.'"  When he talked to people who were successful in the sport about the problem, they shrugged. "It's an expensive game," they said. "Not everyone can afford it."

Rod started thinking about a way to solve that problem, and came up with the idea of a Performance Horse Development program. The program would focus on the process of training that leads to a  competitive Reining horse, but would award the process along the way. As a standard, he defined what it means for a horse to be really "broke." A "broke" horse, by PHD definition, will "wait for its rider's cue, then willingly accept and follow that cue." Simple, no?

Liberty Work

Here's a neat example of liberty work, in this case performed by Rex Peterson and one of his horses, Tuff, who is used in a lot of movies. Rex uses whips to cue the horse, because on film sets he often needs to be at some distance from the horse, out of sight of the cameras. Tuff, and other movie horses, are trained in particular to go to and stand on certain "marks" (in this case a raised box, but it can be something small on the ground, too), and then go from one mark to another, or from the mark to the trainer. In a movie that would make it look like the horse was standing somewhere by himself and then came running towards the camera. Or, if the actor cannot ride well, the same technique can be used to make it look like the rider is galloping down the road under control of the rider, when in fact the trainer called the horse to come to him and the actor just hangs on and smiles!

You can read more about Rex's work training movie horses at this site. He's recently come out with some trick training videos, which yours truly was involved in producing.

Yin, Yang and Horses

I am a bit proud to have won a guest blogging competition on another horse blog! My winning article is now posted there - it's about a unique horsewoman who uses elements of Tai Chi to work with horses and people in creative ways. Check it out at Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch.

Movie Review: The Path of the Horse

This new DVD follows the quest of a competitive rider and trainer who is frustrated with how being in the adult competitive horse world has taken away the fun and relationship to the horse she remembers from childhood: the simple love of a little girl for her pony. She goes on a world-wide quest to meet horse people who have tried to change the relationship between horses and people into something more spiritual, more egalitarian, more balanced, or more sensitive.

On the most practical side she visits noted Western trainer Mark Rashid, who is one of the few people she meets who still uses the horse as a work animal, though he approaches training and riding with a profound sensitivity and awareness of the horse's needs and how the horse understands.

Some of the other horse people she visits, including Carolyn Reznick, Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling, and Alexander Nevzerov, are all people who dance with their horses, eschewing riding for the most part, and in the case of Nevzerov, proclaiming the bit and bridle pure cruelty. For some of these trainers, the relationship with the horse has become something of an art form, and riding or traditional "use" of the horse is an anachronism best abandoned.

The skill of the horse people (not all would call themselves 'trainers', and one is a painter) covered in the movie is remarkable, and the work they do with horses quite impressive. I do wish the video had put the narrator's quest into some context, perhaps touching a little more on the history and varieties of horsemanship and horse-human relationships.

The DVD will clearly appeal most to those with a spiritual or romantic inclination, rather than 'meat and potatoes' types. It is beautifully shot and produced, and full of beautiful horses and some impressive scenes. Just keep a hanky nearby for the more sentimental bits.

For the time being, "The Path of the Horse" can be ordered from the producer at Stormy May Productions.

Working Cowgirl

I met Julia Slater years ago, and caught up with her again recently. She is one of a handful of women who works on horseback in the feedyards of the central and western USA, a job she has done since the 1980s. 

Feedyards, or feedlots, are the places where cattle are brought for fattening before being sent to market. Thousands of cattle are held in acres of pens, and working horses are still an important asset. The riders' working days start at 6 am, when they feed and saddle their horses. An hour later they mount up and head out. Julia explains one of the basic daily tasks, "riding the pens" to check the health of the cows.

"We have to get each cow to his or her feet, and they have to move out a bit so we can check them over. In a day I typically look at 5,000 head, on the weekends it'll be 10,000. My horses learn that each and every cow has to get up, and they actively cooperate getting the job done. If the calves are little and spooky, we will try to calm them down by the way that we walk thru the pen. If they are fat and lazy, we'll trot thru the pen, to stir up energy, which transfers to the cattle."

Several days a week cattle that are ready for slaughter are moved to shipping pens. Julia explains how this is done:

"Sometimes it'll just be 2 or 3 pens, and sometimes we have 6 or 7 to ship. How long shipping takes doesn't actually depend on how many pens we have to ship, but where they are located in the yard. If they are at all 4 corners of the yard, then it'll take longer than if we have 6 in the same alley.

"We have to take them out of the pens. Now at this yard it is fairly easy, cause we actually spend time training our cattle to respond to being moved by our horses. It typically takes us 2 minutes to shoot 300 head out of a pen and into the alley.

"These cows are fat... so moving the cows down the alley towards the shipping pens is a tricky business. We don't wanna run them or stress them, cause it heats the fat cattle up too much, and when they get butchered, the meat will have a bad flavor and sometimes even a darker appearance. So we try to move them towards the shipping pens as calmly and easily as possible."

And there are more complex tasks, too:

"Vaccinating, for example, is one of those situations where it gets tuff. The cattle are in a holding alley, and we'll count off 7-10 at a time to put them into a tub. From there they have to go into a snake, a single space alley that leads up to the chute. At the chute, they'll get squeezed so they can't move for a few seconds. The cowboy gives them a couple of shots, then turns them loose into a holding pen. When all 250 head are done, we take them back to their home pen.

"We all work together pretty good, each at the spot where we are the best. I'm often in the spot to push cattle into the tub, using my horse. I'll use a stick with a plastic bag on the end to spook the cattle into motion. If you handle that plastic bag just right, you can usually get the cows to file into the snake fairly easy. It don't take the horses long to figure out that the plastic bag makes their job easier. Even tho it's flying by their head all the time."

Another complex task is managing the gates - the pens and alleys can all be interlinked by opening and shutting different gates, to move the cattle easily from one area to another. Check out this fascinating short video to see the delicate "dance" required to work the gates.

All this talk about Julia's work led me think more about the type of horse that works best in this kind of environment, and how she trains her (and clients') horses:

GHC: What skills or attitude on the part of the horse really help you get your job done?

JS: Nothing helps more than athletic ability and brains. Today's Quarter Horses have what I'm looking for, but there are others that compensate by sheer grit and intelligence. I'm riding a pony right now, about 14hh, who is the tuffest, most ambitious little critter I've ever ridden. She'll literally out-work and out-cow any other horse on the yard, including my super well bred Quarter Horse. She's not built to get her hindend underneath her, and I have to help her out a lot when the work involves a lot of rocking back and rebalancing. But if it comes to getting the job done, she just won't quit. She grunts, huffs and puffs, get's hot and mad, but she's gonna be the winner.
Down side of that is that I don't see her being suitable for kids in the near future. And of course, that is her destiny in life. Course, keeping her in the yard don't really help. She's proud of her skills, and loves to show them off. I'm hoping that if I send her home to a boring family horse life, she might settle and learn that her job is taking care of riders. You never know, she might just do it.

GHC: What problems are the most difficult to deal with, or make a horse not worth the effort to use?

JS: For me... hands down... that would be a bucking horse. I don't ride a bucking horse very well. Oh, yeah, if they try me every once in a while, that's no problem. But a horse that I can count on to sell me down the road when things get tuff, is a horse that is too much for me. I don't ride them as aggressively as I need to. Course, that just makes the problem worse.
The horse market being what it is, those kind of horses are just not worth the effort and risk. It takes a certain amount of time and effort to develop a good horse. You might as well put that time and effort into a horse whose predisposition sets him up for success.

GHC: How often would you say you end up using a horse that needs a fair amount of training, versus one that already knows the job?

JS: I always ride colts. I don't like riding broke horses. The horses I own, who are broke, I usually borrow out to folks who need them. Say a friend's horse goes lame, or is sick or other wise unusable, and he needs a horse. I'll borrow my broke horse to him, so he can do the job. I might ride him afterwards to make sure my training is still there, and my friend's mistakes don't stay. But generally I enjoy riding the young ones and sweet talking them into becoming experienced, seasoned horses. I like them, they like me, everybody is happy.

GHC: How long does it take a horse to learn the job?

JS: No set time on that, seeing as every horse gets developed for each individual owner. I rode a sorrel mare, whose owner wanted to improve his riding skills. So I rode her very correct. When he rides his horse now, he has to ride her correct, so that she will do things correct.
Another mare belongs to a lady that just wants a nice trail horse. So that mare got rode with the goal of accepting all things, riding sideways, backwards, halter, no bridle, bareback. I also rode her to forgive little mistakes. For example the cue for lope often comes with an "ohmygosh-we're-going-so-fast" reaction with those types of riders. So every time I loped the mare, I gave her a check. "Please lope--check".
For each and every owner there's a different solution. That might take different amount of time on each horse. I'd love to have the pony I'm riding right now for another 3 months, so I can teach her to control herself, not to rely on me. But I don't think that is gonna happen. Folks run out of money.

GHC: What are the hardest parts of working in the feedyards?

JS: The mud. It takes a lot of strength for a horse to keep 4 feet underneath himself when he's sloshing thru 3 inches of mud. Course, we only have so much time to get the pens rode, so we don't allow them to take their time. It is very hard on a horse. We will be at a walk all day long, and my horses will be blowing hard.

GHC: Are there other women riding in the yards?

JS: There are other women working in the yards, but most of the time they will be doing other jobs, like driving feed trucks, processing, or doctoring. I only know of 4 other women who, like me, ride all day. I imagine the ratio is something like 50-1. Feedyard jobs are good jobs for women. They pay good, you have regular hours, so you can go home to the kids at a set time everyday. But riding all day is hard. The weather, the physical wear and tear, the potential for getting hurt. Over the years I've figured out how to make up for things I don't do well (like jumping into a tight space with lots of big cows) with other things I can do well (like using my horse to maneuver that same tight space). I also laugh at myself a lot, giving the men freedom to laugh at me too, when my being a woman is an obvious drawback. I'm not as gutsy, not as fast and not as strong. And it shows up sometimes. But I really know my job, and I'm very good at helping someone else's job go easier.

Thanks, Julia!!

PS - Julia's website is full of interesting and funny cowgirl (and cowboy) stories. There are practical training tips, photos, and videos, too. 

Photos provided by Julia Slater.

Learn to Ride

Ah, no more suffering school ponies teaching kids how to post the trot! A mechanical horse is just what we needed!

This device, pictured in a 1916 issue of Popular Science Monthly, was being used to train British cavalry men. The caption says: "English cavalryman Astride 'Back Ache.' " I haven't heard of any recent use of such things - except mechanical bulls for training bull riders. But perhaps there are other mechanical horses still in use somewhere.

Image: New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Mysterious Horse Trainers

Back in the 18th & 19th & early 20th centuries, the UK was home to several odd horse training guilds that mixed mystical rites and secrets with horse training skill and a dash of trickery. One of these, the Horseman's Word, was a guild of horse trainers in Scotland who claimed to have secret words to whisper in a horse's ear to charm him into gentleness. Membership was via initiation; along the lines of various secret societies of the time the ceremonies included midnight meetings, parodies of church ceremonies, secret handshakes, pagan and folkloric elements and so on. Wikipedia has a quite thorough article on this group, and points out how the secrets worked:

Until the initiation ceremony...the horsemen who were not members of the society but potential candidates would have trouble with horses. This would often be caused by older ploughmen who were members of the society tampering with their horses. They would put things like tacks under the horse's collar to cause it to behave irrationally. .... Foul substances placed in front of the horse or on the animal itself would cause it to refuse to move forward. This technique is known as jading and is still used by horse trainers today. There were also pleasant smelling things that were used to make a horse move forward or calm down. If the substance was an oil it could be wiped on the trainer's forehead, they would then stand in front of the animal and the smell would draw it towards them. .... There were also pleasant smelling and inviting materials, such as sweets, that the horseman could keep in their pocket in order to calm, attract, and subdue a crazed horse. (link)

Even more fascinating, this article points to the author of "The Horse Whisperer," Nicholas Evans, being influenced by his own research into the Horseman's Word when writing his famous book. It says:

Evans [said] he first heard about the phenomenon from a blacksmith in Devon. "I had always wanted to write a book about an ancient subject set in the contemporary word [sic] and this seemed perfect," he said.

"My research took me to Scotland where I read academic papers from Stirling University about a secret Scottish sect called the Horseman’s Word.

"It was such a fascinating subject, and I got more and more obsessed with it."

Evans discovered some of the key phrases used by members of the Horseman’s Word to control their horses, such as "Two as one". The phrase was said to hold magic qualities but was also meant to sum up the idea that horse and man worked together as a unit rather than as master and beast. (link, originally from the publication Scotland on Sunday, December 29, 2002)

The article goes on to  discuss an interview with the last known living member of the Horseman's Word, Billy Rennie, who describes many things he was taught as a child and how he was initiated.

Conditioning the Chariot Horse

The Kikkuli text is one of two surviving ancient texts about horse care and training (the other being Xenephon's "On Horsemanship" from 350 BC). The Kikkuli text is a Hittite text from around 1400 BC that describes the proper care and conditioning of chariot horses. Wikipedia has a description of the book and it's significance, saying:

The Kikkuli Text addresses solely the conditioning, not education, of the horse. The Mitannians were acknowledged leaders in horse training and as a result of the horse training techniques learned from Kikkuli, Hittite charioteers forged an empire of the area which is now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Northern Iraq. Surprisingly, the regime used 'interval training' techniques similar to those used so successfully by Three Day Eventers, Endurance riders and others today and whose principles have only been studied by equine sports medicine researchers in the past 30 years. (link)

There does not appear to be a translation available online anywhere, although there is a partial translation on the Kentucky Horse Park's site, here. Reportedly several people have followed this method as an experiment, and had great success. Thus various folks now offer translations for sale, suggesting this ancient system of interval training might be just the thing for today's eventing, endurance and race horses.

Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling

Hempfling is a rather interesting trainer (based in Denmark) who practices a unique style of training, although it is not entirely different from Natural Horsemanship. In his videos of ground work you can see his extensive use of body language - far more than most trainers use - such that he appears to "dance" with the horse.

He has an extensive collection of books and videos available, although I find the videos are not particularly methodical, in a way which might allow others to learn his methods simply. Rather they are intuitive, free-flowing, and beautiful, and thus quite a pleasure to watch. Here is one where you can really see how Hempfling uses his body to direct the horse while free-lunging.