Category Archives: Training Horses

The Old Tire Carcass Trick

Training Horses

I remember watching John Lyons work with a young horse at a symposium in San Antonio. He placed an old tire carcass on the ground and had the colt step in it with his front feet. When the colt got quiet, John moved his own leg backward along the colt’s side and bumped him softly. After a while the colt took a step away from John’s leg with only a back leg, because his front legs were confined by the tire.

Nowadays we don’t use the tire so much, although it might be a good idea on some colts. I recommend sitting slightly forward in the saddle, using the reins to keep The head, shoulders, and front legs in position, slide your leg on one side backward. Do not kick, but lightly squeeze, we want the position to mean something not the pressure. Now, as you were doing from the ground, tap just behind your leg with the stick. This already has meaning to the colt. Sooner or later he will step over with a hind leg. Reward him a with a rub of your hand. Now go to the other side. This “one step over, each way” begins the process. When it gets easy, take two steps. Then three. Sooner or later you will be able to turn him completely around without his front legs leaving their position. This is called a turn on the forehand, or indirect pirouette. You have established a communication with your horse that says “when I change my leg position backward, you move your haunches and back legs away from it.” This should be part of every day’s work, but only for a short period of time, not enough to give him or you sore muscles. I don’t mean to come across as the oracle. I’ve struggled with these training problems long enough that wish for others to have an easier path. I’m glad horse’s can’t talk, otherwise I’d have to hire the KGB to guard my string, lest they give you their version!

Two Tracking Two

Equitation, Training Horses

Back to the subject of “two tracking”, or lateral movement of a horse. I’ve discovered that people and horses both tend to avoid performing lateral movements of the horse’s hindquarters. The horses don’t like it because it’s hard to do, and they would rather do things easily and efficiently, rather than elegantly and athletically. People have a similar problem, because using the legs to signal a horse is difficult, but also because we seem to have a penchant for using our hands (even though most of us don’t spend a lot of time hanging from limbs anymore).

Watch a youngster or beginner try to open and close a gate horseback and you’ll see what I mean. First the horse won’t “parallel park” next to the gate to allow the person to reach the latch. Then, the horse wants to push the gate open with its nose.

Moving the hindquarters starts from the ground. When you are working with the horse at halter, stand near his shoulder, and with a stick or light dressage whip, softly tickle his ribs near where your leg would be if you slid it back from its normal resting position. If he doesn’t step over, get a little more insistent with the stick until he takes a step away from you. At that point stop asking him immediately, and stroke his neck with your hand. Now go around to the other side and repeat the procedure. Do this on both sides until he moves away from the touch of the whip as light as a fly landing on his hair. Every day when working with the colt do the exercise until it is so routine that all you have to do is touch his rib cage to move his hindquarters over as much or as little as you need. This is the flexion of the haunch, and is an important building block for collection, either in a cow horse or a dressage or dancing horse.

Soaking Your Horse

Training Horses

“Let ‘em soak a while”,was what Buck would tell me. Sometimes that meant that when we’d been riding a colt for a month or two, he would turn them out to pasture for a few months before bringing them back in to work again. Also, early on, it meant to allow the colt time to accept the confinement of saddle, bridle and tie ring.

After some “sacking out ” he’d saddle the colt, fit him with “a pair o’bits” referring to a snaffle, and tie him from a limb of an oak tree and leave him for an hour or two. (We’d ride off on other horses to check cattle.) When the colt stopped pawing, swishing his tail, whinnying and tossing his head, Buck would untie him and begin working him on the end of the rope in circles in the small pen.When the colt softened in his attitude, and was moving in a smooth and relaxed way, Buck would quit the work, unsaddle him, and turn him out. After a few days of this, the colt would be pretty accustomed to being saddled and bridled. At that point we’d go on and “pony” him, dallied to the saddle horn of an older horse. Of course the “sack of potatoes” on the colt’s back, to get him used to carrying weight, was me.

The soaking time is important because the horse needs to be in a learning frame of mind in order to be taught or trained. If he is irritated or distracted or scared or angry, the teaching doesn’t seem to “stick”. When he reaches a point of acceptance, his eye will have a softer look, his ears will be up and moving, his nostrils will be relaxed, not wrinkled up, his tail will be quiet, and he will lick and chew with his mouth. Usually he will also have lowered his head and neck. All this without any active work – just time. Learning patience from those patient old oak trees.

Considering the Pedigree 

Equitation, Philosophy, Training Horses

OK, I’ll admit it, I get a little irritated with some of the ideas I hear and read about horse breeding. It seems that often decisions about what stallion or which mare should be used to produce the next generation are not based on useful information. As a rider and trainer, in fact a trainer frequently of last resort whose work might make the difference between a horse finding a useful life or work versus being shipped off to become “dog Tucker” as they say down under, I feel that my words need to be heard.

First I ask, what is a horse to be used for. If all we want is a pasture ornament, then you can stop reading here. However if you are a rider, or a driver, someone who puts his or her pink (or brown or black or yellow) body in the middle of their back or God forbid in a wheeled vehicle dragging behind them, I submit that you will find that there are a constellation of traits that need to be considered in breeding horses. 

Simply put a horse needs to be sound, that means sound of mind as well as sound of body. Additionally a riding horse needs to be smooth, whether a diagonally gaited horse or a laterally based gaited horse, no rider truly wants to be banged around and made uncomfortable. Unfortunately a horse can be made to look smooth by the way he is ridden. And horse shows can be misleading as a breeding selection criterion. Judges only have a short time to sort out a class of horses. Breeding decisions should be made slowly and deliberately, taking in all the available information, not just breeding to the “in vogue” national champion. 

Sound of mind also means trainable. Horses need to be friendly and willing to use all their wonderful power and speed to help us not to hurt us. Fear is a natural trait in a prey animal, but a saddle horse, and particularly a driving horse, needs to have self-control. Everything else is details.