by Cowgirl on September 30, 2015
We have reached another milestone in our horse life: we rode Cletus, our four year old buckskin gelding! If you remember, we bought him as a baby alongside his mother, Penny, in the fall of 2011. Last November, we sent him to the Rosebud Indian Reservation for a crash course in behaving under saddle….the trainer raved about him and said he was the best horse he’s ever trained. So then we brought him home and (due to me being pregnant and my husband being very busy) he stood around in our corral for almost another year. The good news is that we have been riding him this summer!
by Cowgirl on November 26, 2014
As mentioned in a previous post, we recently took our two untrained horses out to South Dakota for training. Due to me being pregnant with our fourth child, the training was going to be postponed for another nine months at least, and we really wanted to see these two colts started as soon as possible. So in October they made the trip out to Mission, SD, to spend at least a month with a horse training family.
by Cowgirl on October 23, 2014
You might be wondering what’s going on with my new mare Bluebird. I got her in April, after my sister in Idaho called and asked if I’d like to have her, and we had her shipped all the way to Iowa. She has fit in well with our other four horses, but summer was busy and she was underweight and I just didn’t find the time to work with her at all. She’s five years old, and still not broke, but I was mostly concerned with putting weight back on her. But I have been feeling bad about letting her go so long without training.
by Cowgirl on September 8, 2014
Fall is my favorite time of year to go horseback riding. I am partial to summer, since I was born in August (my mother has a theory that the season you were born in is the one you like best; for instance, I like being hot, and don’t mind sweating; I hate the cold, and winter is my least favorite season), but summer is often so busy with gardening, vacations, kids’ activities, and things that can only be done in summer. I just never have time to ride in the summer, and so when fall arrives it is such a relief.
Summertime is busy. I love summer, but there is just so much going on, so much garden work to do, so many kids’ activities, so many vacations….nope, I am not complaining! But here it is nearing the end of July, and I finally got my saddle out and dusted it off and discovered that my stirrups were still set long from the last time I rode it…which was back at the first of April when Penny bucked me off! We rode at the end of May in Idaho, but here a month and a half later, my own horses have not been ridden all summer. I am just now finally get back to it!
by Cowgirl on May 30, 2014
We extended our stay in Idaho a couple extra days so that we wouldn’t miss their annual cattle drive where they take their cow and calf herd fifteen miles up into the mountains. It is an all-day event, starting early and ending late, and involves a lot of horseback riding and beautiful scenery. We didn’t want to miss it! All week my sister Karmen and I had been getting horses ready. Karmen put shoes on four horses so that their feet wouldn’t wear out on the rocky trail. I rode Donegal to give her a little refresher so she would be well-adjusted to being ridden again, as my dad was going to ride her on the drive and he is seventy years old and still recuperating from his accident that broke ribs last November. Karmen planned to ride her young mule Garnet, and I was going to take Stormy, the young mare I’d been riding all week.
by Cowgirl on May 28, 2014
I’m on vacation this week. No, not sunning on some beautiful beach somewhere like most people would think of, but in my opinion this is better—I’m visiting my family in Idaho and spending a great percentage of my time horseback. I usually refer to my folks’ place as a “working cattle ranch”, with emphasis on the “working!” I am not used to this much physical exertion, andevery muscle aches, my arms and neck are sunburned, and I am saddle sore. But this is my kind of vacation!
by Cowgirl on May 26, 2014
It’s not often I get to ride three different horses in one day—much less, ride new colts and just-started horses, which is one of my favorite things. I’m in Idaho, visiting my parents and sister, and besides enjoying family time over the Memorial Day weekend and following week, our goal was to put some rides on their colts. They have twenty head in their horse and mule herd, and they are so busy with irrigating their alfalfa fields, putting up hay, and caring for their cattle that training horses gets put off. So I am always anxious to get some horses started or do more riding when we visit
If you’ve trained a lot of horses, you probably already know that when you’re starting a colt, it’s not always a bad thing to let them buck. But I’ve talked to a few trainers who wholeheartedly disagree with me on the subject, and I’ve heard stories about people who have the mindset that letting a colt buck will ruin them and make them predisposed to bucking. My goal for this post is to weigh the pros and cons, explore the nature of the horse, and hopefully educate the reader.
by Cowgirl on July 17, 2013
In June we traveled out to Idaho to visit my folks. It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen them, as we didn’t make it out there for Christmas. So we were really looking forward to the making the trip, getting some fresh mountain air, spending time with family, and going on some adventures.
by Cowgirl on January 18, 2013
I attended a training clinic several years ago, put on by a good friend of mine, Kevin Wescott, a horse trainer from west-central Nebraska. It was a general horsemanship clinic, where local people brought their own horses and asked Kevin to help them through issues they were having, or give advice on their riding, and so on. I was there with my mare Daisy, whose behavior at this clinic you might remember from my previous blog post. But aside from that, I observed something at this clinic that has stuck in my mind ever since.
When you’re just buying a horse, or beginning riding a new horse, it can be really hard to know what type of bit to use. There are two ends of the spectrum, where you don’t want to use a bit that is too severe and risk ruining a horse’s mouth, but you also don’t want to use a bit that the horse doesn’t respect at all and risk getting thrown or run away with. So choosing what bit to use for your horse is a very important decision, and I’ll share some tips that might be a help.
I had our weanling colt on the lead line the other day, working on halter training a little bit more, and I thought it would be a good time to introduce him to the horse trailer. I wasn’t there when my husband went to pick him up, when we first purchased him, but I heard that he was hard to load, and wouldn’t follow his mother into the trailer. They had to use portable corral panels to box him into a small space behind the trailer and then adjust them smaller until he was forced to jump in. So I knew that trailer loading was an area we needed to work on with him.
As you know, we have been working on halter breaking the new stud colt we purchased a month ago. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a horse this young to work with, so I’m trying to remember any tricks on how to train a foal to lead, and am looking back through some old horse training articles I’ve written to see what advice I’ve given to others on this topic. Every horse is different, and with this particular colt, we’ve been able to slide right past some trouble spots that might affect others.
I always enjoy reading horse training articles and stories about amazing horsemen. I am always inspired by the things they have learned from the thousands of horses they’ve handled, and thrilled when they share their knowledge with us. Here are some horse quotes from some of the best horse trainers in the world.
I have always been a non-confrontational person. And believe it or not, it carries over to how I deal with horses, too. It’s not that horses scare me or that I’m afraid to push my luck or take chances around them. I grew up with horses and I’ve never been seriously hurt by a horse, so I’ve never had any fear to overcome. But I have seen horses get hurt in bad situations, and spent subsequent years thinking of what I could have done differently that might have prevented their injury, and it makes me cautious and more respectful when handling them.
by Cowgirl on February 16, 2011
Training a horse can be really hard and really easy. It depends on how well you can communicate to the horse and how well you can read what the horse is thinking. If you can recognize the moment in which the horse is trying to work for you and reward him for it, it creates a trust and a learning progression that will develop a strong foundation in the horse’s training.
I had a reader contact me through my blog awhile back. She said that she and her family had acquired two yearling horses, and were having a little trouble getting them gentled down. These are just a few ideas to help you work through the first steps of gentling and training your horse.
by Cowgirl on November 25, 2010
The prettiest horse on my parent’s ranch in Idaho is a 2 year old buckskin AQHA filly named Docs Honeycomb. She is the 2008 baby out of their big bay mare, Steel Hickory, by their buckskin stallion Docs Cold Cash.
by Cowgirl on November 24, 2010
I was visiting with my dad the other day about horse stories from my childhood. I don’t remember some of the earliest things of course, so my dad was filling me in on some history of horses I remembered but didn’t know a lot about. It is so interesting to hear another viewpoint on things that I only remember from a child’s point of view, and I love thinking back on those old days.
