I grew up in a Hackamore tradition. It wasn’t the California one, it was the Texas one. However, since a horse is a horse, there is very little difference. We used snaffles too, and grazing bits, but colts were started in a hackamore. I got Ed Connell’s book The Hackamore Reinsman as a teenager, and I still go back to it for reference… and reverence!

For those who think they want to learn to use the Hackamore, i’d advise you to plan on taking lots of time, And finding a mentor. There are important rules to its use. My mentor summed them up back years ago by saying “Don’t hang on their head!” Others emphasize the rule “Only use one rein at a time, never both.” Another rule is “Never pull a steady pull on the reins, only pull and slack.” Pulling is really only done for the double, or the bending of the neck to turn a horse around when it gets too fast. As soon as possible using only the lightest vibration of a rein you “ask” for the horse to yield its “face” to you. This vibration or light bumping of the rein should become the signal. The technique bears many similarities to the modern concept of the “one rein stop.”

Lightness is the goal of Hackamore training, not contact. The only contact in a Hackamore horse is through the rider’s body, not his hands. The secret of a Hackamore horse is the use of the rider’s pelvis and seat bones to communicate with his mount. The rein cues are only an early pathway to developing a communication between the body of the horse and the body of the rider that is invisible. A concrete example of the psychology of hackamore training is the teaching of the neck rein signal. If you are turning right, you lightly rub the left rein on the neck of the horse while you turn your body to the right and emphasize your right seat bone. Then you bump the right rein, a slight pulling and releasing, like “set and release” several times, until he steps over to the right. After several repetitions of this, the next time you lay the rein on his left neck he will “hunt” the turn before you bump him. That’s when you quit for the day, to let him know “Yeah, you got it!”

Along the lines of colt breaking or “gentling” as my mentor, Buck, called it, are the stories he told me of his youth in the early twentieth century. He learned colt starting literally at his father’s knee. His dad would saddle an older horse to use as a “pony Horse,” then when a colt was saddled and adequately prepared with groundwork, the young horse’s lead rope was dallied around the saddle horn of the older horse and off they went. Buck was literally at his father’s knee as he sat on the colt. He recounted how often his own knee was banged against the side of the older horse.

In those days, the early 20th century, the way cattle were transported from Clifton to Waco to the rail yards, was by walking. Buck’s dad would make up a herd of steers, and a group of unstarted colts, and head down the road. On the way, they would pick up neighbors herds and add to theirs. It was an annual affair. Each day, Buck would be mounted on a different colt, ponied beside his father at the beginning, then riding along beside, guiding a tired cayuse by the hackamore. By the time they arrived at Waco, they had a group of “broke” colts (and bruised knees.) Returning to Clifton they stopped off at neighbors ranches to deliver the proceeds from the sales of steers. I don’t doubt that often a colt or two was sold as well.

If you’ve been around a herd of cows for very long, you probably have noticed that they practice a form of daycare, or Mother’s Day Out. I’m not sure why they do this but it’s pretty consistent that during part of the day, several cows will park their babies in a safe place, usually in the shade, and under the care of one of the other cows.

Because our cows have numbered ear tags, and because I keep records, I’ve noticed a strange thing. Not always is the babysitter one of the baby’s mothers. Sometimes she’s not even got a calf of her own!

But the strangest of all was the day when I rode up on a nursery full of baby calves all spread out in the shade of a mesquite tree at the top of a hill.  One of the bulls was lying on his elbows, guarding his charges! It looked like a Spanish fighting bull teaching a kindergarten class. I almost fell off my horse laughing. I really didn’t know that bovines practiced women’s lib!