Long after my early years of learning horsemanship with Buck, I brought my “bride to be” home from college to meet my family. Of course that included going to see “Mr. Kidwell” our neighbor. Sally and I drove up the driveway and were received at the back door of the house by Lurline the greatest cook and the sweetest lady in the Brazos valley. “Buck’s out behind the barn, Glenn, y’all go one back there” she directed. So we traipsed out to the pens behind the barn where Buck was involved with the intricate affair of trying to “milk out” a bad udder on a big Brahman cow who had just calved, and the calf couldn’t suck the swollen teat. We howdy’d, and visited a spell, then Buck went back to work. He repeatedly pitched a piece of lariat rope under the cow, who was standing in a chute, he was attempting to get it around a back leg so as to immobilize the leg enough to prevent getting kicked while squeezing out the udder. She would kick like lightning as he jerked his hand back, repeatedly failing to get the leg caught in the rope. I remembered a trick using a coat hanger, straightening it out and fashioning a hook in the end to reach through and catch a rope safely avoiding getting kicked. It was called a “chicken catcher”. I suggested this to Buck with the answer (emphatically) “Hell, I don’t need no (epithet deleted) chicken catcher, I’m a COWBOY!”
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Who was The Hacamore Man?
Buck Kidwell was the “go to” man in Welborn, Texas, for cowboys and cattlemen who needed help with a horse. Whether it was to purchase a ranch horse, start a colt, or fix a bronc, buck was the man for the job. Notables such as John Carter, Billy Steele, and Rex Cauble were often found in his barn, a humble,but sturdy structure, on a dirt road between College Station and the Brazos River. Buck was a Hackamore man. I was apprenticed to “Mr. Kidwell” as I knew him, by an agreement between him and one of his friends, my dad. This was along about the early 60s. Texas had just survived the great drought of the 50s and was still plagued with a shortage of grass, too many screwworm flies, and few paved roads. Cattle were still frequently moved by driving them on horseback over dirt roads. Horse shows were pretty primitive affairs. My earliest recollections as a teenager at Buck’s barn were of digging composted horse manure out of dark wooden stalls, hauling it out to a pile in a wheelbarrow, and taking breaks to watch Buck ride colts in the adjacent square pen or in the arena behind the barn. I was in heaven. Horses were everywhere, I loved the smell, the sound, and the look of them. And here was a magician at work making cow-horses! He was my hero and my second father, the Hackamore man!
What is a Hacamore?
I really can’t remember a time when I wasn’t called to the romantic notion of Latin horsemanship. Of course most days I can’t remember what I had for breakfast either. Suffice it to say I’ve long been fascinated by the lore of the horsemanship of the conquistadors as it found its way to our new world shores. In the past two or three decades it has been my privilege to actually meet Spanish and Portuguese Horsemen and to visit those countries. There I was able to see the fantastic horsemanship of Iberia!
Nearly 5 centuries ago, this, or an earlier, similar, equitation was brought to our shores by three-masted sailing ships. Over time, the methods of Spain and Portugal for training and riding horses filtered through the Americas to influence the entire western hemisphere. Here in Texas we inherited a
Modification of Spanish horsemanship from the cattle producing states of Coahuila and Chihuahua, Mexico, while in California the same or similar influence came largely through Sonora and up the coast by ship from South America. Separated by mountains and deserts, the Texan and Californian methods developed distinct differences. However one similarity strikingly survived in both places – the Hackamore. Hence, Vaquero horsemanship developed in both places using a rawhide version of what the Iberians today call the Serreton, a noseband of iron covered with leather. Over the weeks to come I will tell of my own experiences with these devices as I have come to know them, and the methods of horse training that accompany them.
A Sideways Life
Sideways movement of a riding a horse in response to his rider’s leg signals is so important that one French cavalry general requested this inscription to be chiseled on his tombstone, “I spent my life teaching horses to move sideways.” The importance of lateral movement is actually more than simply being able to sidepass to a gate. It is the path to balanced movement, and effective control of a horse beyond merely turning him with the reins. A cutting horse who can pivot 180° on a hind leg can better control a cow than one who has to do a “motorcycle turnaround”. A dressage horse taught to understand shoulders-in can shift his weight to his hind legs in order to trot in place for the Piaffe and stay collected for the floating Passage seen in the Olympic freestyle. The horse is born able to do all these movements; our job is to work out a system of communication that allows us to ask for them when and how we want them.
I needed tools in my toolbox to get this done. I needed to understand how horses move, and more importantly how they think, and how it differs from the way I think. A big breakthrough came in the form of my first attendance at a John Lyons symposium. I sat enthralled for hours on a cold, hard, wooden bench in a drab indoor arena and never noticed a moment of discomfort. My eyes were opened to a two way, effective, method of communication with horses. It was the beginning of a learning process that I continue to add to daily, but that would have been a complete mystery if I hadn’t stumbled upon it. I always say “man has been training the horse for at least 5000 years, far be it for me to reinvent the wheel.”