Early Rides

                                                            by Laura Crum

            This is going to be the last in my small series of posts about the way I learned to break and train ranch horses. I had meant to go on and explain the bitting up…etc, but I’ve run into a snag. A mental snag, anyway. I grew up on ranches and with ranch horses and I understand exactly what these methods can achieve when they are applied with skill by a good horseman. But in writing these posts I realized that I cannot impart this experience into words. As I said in the introductory post, none of this will work unless you can read a horse. No method is much good unless you can read a horse. If you respond to a fearful horse thinking he is challenging you, or a rebellious horse thinking he is fearful, you aren’t going to get good results. And so I find myself at a loss to explain how we knew when to push on and when to hold back. We read what the horse was feeling/thinking and responded to that.

These methods are very effective at producing broke horses, if you are a competent rider and you can read a horse. I learned them from competent horsemen who were good at reading horses. Not from a book, not being told a tale, but working beside these men and women, and under their direction. I learned by working with literally hundreds of horses. And this is the way to learn—not by reading my blog posts. Or by reading pearls of wisdom from horse gurus…etc. Someone posted a little quote from a well known horse guru the other day along the lines that you had to change your demeanor in response to a horse’s emotional state. I will admit that I rolled my eyes and thought “Duh.” Can you say “learn to read a horse?” All good horsemen do this, no matter their method of breaking and training.

I’ve become all too aware that I can’t really explain this to people in a way that translates to real life. I’m also aware that among the people that read these posts there is a small subset that have done quite a bit of breaking and training of young horses and have been around it their whole lives. In this group, no matter their specific background, there is real understanding of what I am talking about and how it might work—even if the person in question has used vastly different methods. But by far the majority of readers have not done much if any breaking/training. They may have ridden a green horse or two, and they may have participated in breaking/training maybe one or two colts. Their ideas about training are largely based on how they work with their already-broke-and-trained-by-someone-else horses. And, in fact, their thinking is often all about what was done wrong in said breaking/training such that their poor horse is not trusting. Sometimes they have a good point. And sometimes they are missing the point completely (in my opinion—obviously). But one thing is for sure, they haven’t been the one putting the first rides on a bunch of colts. Like everyone else, these folks are entitled to their own opinions, and I have nothing but respect for them if they are having a happy life with their own horses. But we can’t exactly discuss breaking and training methods on an equal footing. What works in theory is not always (or even usually) what works in practice. And the things I am writing about here are things I learned that work—and know this because I learned them by actually climbing on a bunch of colts and doing the work to set them on the path to being broke horses.

So I sometimes have a hard time with the sort of discussions that come up with people who actually have not climbed on a bunch of colts, but boy do they think they know how it should be done.  Such people have in the past said/implied to me that these traditional methods are harsh and “kinder/gentler” methods work just as well. All I can say to this is that until you have actually done the work of breaking colts and produced some well-trained horses that stay reliable under pressure, you don’t really know what works and what doesn’t. By all means you should work with your own horses as you see fit and I wish you and your horses health and happiness. 

The other thing that bugs me is the fear that someone will try this stuff in their own backyard, never having seen it done by a competent horseman, not knowing how to read a horse, and with no idea how badly things can go wrong. This haunts me. So I’ve decided not to talk about the bitting up and the later training that we did. There is so much potential for it to be abusive and for a real wreck to happen—even if the horseman means well-- but hasn’t had a lot of experience.

So far everything I’ve talked about is pretty straight-forward, though I will stress again that to get good results you have to be able to read a horse and respond appropriately to what he is communicating. This last post will talk about what we tried to get done in the first month of riding.

We rode a horse in the bull pen anywhere from once to half a dozen times, depending on the colt. But we always left the bull pen as soon as we felt reasonably confident that the horse had accepted the notion of being ridden. It is important to keep moving on and doing new things—it does not benefit a young horse to become bored and frustrated with being ridden. Boredom and frustration can be worked through with more tying. Riding should be engaging and interesting for the horse at this stage.

            So rides are kept short—maybe half an hour if in the arena, and an hour at the longest—if we went outside. We went outside as soon as we thought it would work. Usually with an older horse along as a babysitter. Ideally we found a long uphill stretch and if the colt was “up” we trotted (the long trot is the gait of choice for colts) until the young horse really wanted to walk. Trotting a young horse uphill until he wants to walk is a wonderful lesson. The colt gets to stretch his legs, see some country, figure out he CAN relax, and there is no need to fight with him. The hill does the work. Deep sand will work for this, too. But again, not too long. As soon as the young horse was tired and wanted to walk we went back.

            At this point I want to address a couple of common problems. The first one is spooking. Some horses are spooky—they just are. You won’t train this out of them. The way to deal with a spook remains the same from the beginning of a horse’s training until he is 20 years old. You are riding along with light contact and the horse sees something he doesn’t like the look of and spooks sideways. Some give a warning, some don’t. Some spook a lot harder than others. It doesn’t matter. You ride it the same.

            I don’t know how people who ride in English saddles do it, but here is what we did/do. As you feel the horse begin to spook, or think about spooking, you maintain your gentle contact on the reins. You might increase it a touch, in a steadying way, but you darn sure don’t pull on the horse. You keep your legs out of the horse and very loose. You sit deep in the saddle and you grab the horn if you need to. You ride the spook (if you’d like to see what this looks like, watch a cutting run and observe the rider’s posture—you ride a spook exactly the way you ride a cutting horse), and when the horse is done with his jump, you pick up gently on the reins and bump him lightly with your heels and indicate that we’re moving on now. No big deal. You never make a big deal out of a spook. You more or less ride it and ignore it.

            If the colt tries to throw his head in the air after a spook and scatter, you double him. Initially you just double him until you have his attention, as gently as you can, and then ask him to move on, using your broke babysitter horse to give him a lead. But if, as time goes on, the colt repeatedly tries to throw his head and bolt after a spook, you double him much harder and use the spur to make it uncomfortable. The message should be plain. You may spook, but you stay in my hand and you may not—ever—try to run off. Once again, the tying around that you did is critical here.

            About the spurs—we usually rode colts with our spurs on. There were exceptions. A very sensitive horse, we’d take them off. I never wore them on the first few rides because I wasn’t totally confident that I could keep them out of a colt if he scattered, and it is absolutely the worst thing you can do to spur a colt by accident when he jumps because he’s scared. But in general spurs help to make the young horse light and responsive to leg cues. Properly used they are a blessing to both horse and rider. Most people who have trained horses will understand this.

            And this gets us to the second common problem. The horse that is resistant, or “doggy” and doesn’t want to move out. Spurring such a horse doesn’t work very well. It just makes him mad. As I mentioned in the last post, the approach we used was to “over and under” the horse with the long reins—which had a popper on the ends. This caused the colt to jump forward and in the case of a doggy horse, this is what you want—that “forward.” So we would ask the horse to move out, very gently, with a soft touch of the spur, and if he did not do so, he was over and undered. If this is done consistently in the early rides and the rider does not get in the habit of thumping on the horse’s sides to get him to move, it is very much to the horse’s advantage in his future training.

            We also used this “over and undering” on a horse that wanted to sull up and thought about bucking in a resistant way (rather than a fearful way). These horses were usually a bit “doggy” and when we would feel such a horse “balling up” (hunching his back as if he was thinking about bucking, while resisting moving forward) we would over and under that horse quick smart. The typical reaction to this is to jump forward with the head up, and, though it seems a bit counter-intuitive at first—it actually took a horse’s mind off of bucking pretty reliably. It also works well with a horse that wants to balk and thinks of rearing. It’s important to do the over and undering BEFORE the horse is actually bucking or rearing. You do it when you feel the horse ball up in a resistant, balky way. The idea is not to punish the horse, but rather to get him to move forward smartly in response to the leg cue and not to think about resistance.

            There is one more potential problem—but it wasn’t very common in the QH type horses that I worked with. However I did run across it in a couple of horses I trained, so I’ll mention it here. This is the horse that doesn’t spook sideways when alarmed, but rather leaps forward. The forward leap rapidly escalates into a full on bolt. The trick with this sort of horse is to take his head and double him before he gets that first jump in. So if you even felt him think about making that jump, you doubled him.

            Anyway, we rode outside as much as we could. The object was to get the colt to “line out” in a long trot. If at all possible we had the colt follow a broke horse in the early rides and then take turns taking the lead. The goal was to have the colt gain confidence in being ridden and to learn to carry the rider at steady pace. Following a broke horse on a jaunt through the countryside is overall pleasant work for a colt and to begin with, as the colt is getting used to being ridden, it’s important to keep it pleasant.

            Any time a colt would try to bolt or buck, he was doubled. Any time he sulled up or balked, he was over and undered with the reins and made to jump forward. Mostly we just covered country. Again, rides were only about an hour. We did not want these young horses to feel exhausted or overwhelmed.

            Once a young horse would line out easily and seemed pretty confident in being ridden, we would go back to the arena—if we had an arena—and work a bit on getting a “handle” on him. This would usually happen at about the sixty day mark. Again, if I was working on my own horse, I did things as the horse seemed to need them, with no time frame driving me. But when we were starting colts for a ranch or clients, the typical goal was to put 90 days of initial riding on the colt (usually a three year old) and at the end of these 90 days the colt would be “green broke,” and often would be turned out until his 4 year old year.

            Green broke horses were still in the snaffle (or bosal, if that was your way), but definitely still in the two rein stage. They were supposed to be reasonably reliable about not bucking or bolting, though it was accepted that they would be “looky” as befits a youngster. They were supposed to know how to pick up the trot and lope when cued, collect a bit at each gait if asked, take the correct lead, and stop on a cue. Also back up, and turn easily to the right or left. They should understand how to move off the rider’s leg.

            I’m not going to talk about the way we taught these things, for the reasons I explained earlier. Without watching an actual horse respond to cues, my descriptions just won’t tell you that much. And there is much potential for abuse and/or a wreck. Find someone you like and trust and work with/learn from them. Choose a person who produces calm, confident, relaxed, well broke riding horses that seem content and you won’t go far wrong. Hopefully this brief series of posts has given you an idea how we began the process of making ranch horses that were reliable throughout their lives and a pleasure to ride.

Disclaimer

                                                           by Laura Crum

            After I asked what people would like to read about (A Question to Readers), I got some interesting responses. Most of the comments were on facebook, so if you don’t go there, you won’t have seen them. The overall consensus was that I should write about both my horse training ideas and how I developed my horse property. Some people suggested alternating, but the two subjects will both require a series of posts, so I think it will have to be first one and then the other. More people seemed interested in the horse training theme (at least on facebook—blog comments tended to favor the horse property theme), and I have a post already written on this topic, so I’ll start with that. And what I’m really going to start with is a disclaimer.

            I am not a “professional” horse trainer. I worked for half a dozen professional horse trainers as an assistant and helped train well over a hundred colts, but horses that I trained solely by myself from start to finish number roughly twelve. Some of these were my own horses, some belonged to friends/family. I rode them all for at least a couple of years in order to take them from not-broke (or less than thirty days previous riding) to broke saddle horses. Three of these I kept as forever horses, the rest were either sold or not mine. But they all made good reliable horses.

            I learned to train horses from some handy ranch cowboys and the professional trainers that I worked for. All of these trainers/cowboys came from a cowhorse background and shared some thinking in common. Over time I refined the methods I was taught and came up with my own basic protocol. Every horse is different and the protocol got modified to fit each colt. But certain steps always were used—some horses needed them only very briefly—others needed a lot of one thing or another. I always tried to pay attention to the individual horse and what that horse needed.

            I can explain my methods in these posts, but I can’t teach anyone how to read a horse. And it is the ability to read a horse that counts the most. Because you must read a horse accurately to know when it is time to back off or quit, and when you must push on. And so I am the first to say that the methods themselves are not the answer. But they are a start.

            These methods may seem cruel to some of you. And they can be cruel if you don’t know how to read a horse, or if you don’t have any compassion for a horse. I have seen these methods used in very cruel ways.

            But…here’s the flip side. I have seen WAY too many people trying to get along with horses that are not truly broke. Basically any time the ill-broke horse feels that he doesn’t want to obey, he simply bulls through the bridle (or halter) and does what he wants. And this just doesn’t work out. People get hurt or killed or very, very scared.

            Horses are dangerous. The number one goal of horse training should be to produce a horse that is reliably obedient and thus relatively safe. This really needs to be kept in mind.

            In my view the rather unpalatable sounding truth is that what makes a horse reliably obedient is not “feel good” training. It’s teaching him in effective ways that resistance doesn’t work—such that the habit of yielding rather than resisting is ingrained. This kind of training isn’t always pretty. It can’t be. If we stick to what’s pretty, we will never have a horse who obeys when things get tough.

            When do you really NEED a horse to obey the bridle? Moseying down the trail on a calm day? No. In the roping box at the start of a run, or at the start of an endurance ride, or when something has truly scared him? Yes. When the adrenaline comes up and the horse really wants to ignore your signal—that is the moment you most need him to stay broke. So that you stay safe. And this is where my traditional “coercive” methods will really pay off.

            By “coercive,” I do not mean hitting or spurring or punishing the horse. I mean using traditional horsemanship methods such as “checking up” or bitting up” that teach a horse that resisting the pull of the reins is futile. This is done in such a way that when the horse fights the pull by throwing his head he only increases the pressure on himself. If done skillfully, a horse will forever respond to the pull of the reins by “giving” his head—even under difficult circumstances. And thus the rider will always have a good chance of staying in control. Horse and rider will both be safer. And that is the goal of training.

            So I am going to begin a short series of posts describing the way I learned to train horses. It’s fine if you don’t agree with these methods and you are welcome to say so. But please bear in mind that though at times this training is not “fun” for the horse, the ultimate goal of making a consistently obedient horse, even under pressure, is something that I feel is truly valuable. Such horses are both far safer to ride and handle, and also far more likely to find a good forever home than their ill-broke, unreliable (and much more dangerous) fellows.

PS—For those of you who wanted to hear how I developed my horse property, I will do a brief series of horse training posts, and then a much longer series of posts about this property and how it came to be what it is. To be honest, it will take me awhile to both contemplate what I want to say about my home and write the posts. Developing this property has been my life’s work, as much or more than writing my mystery series, so there is a lot that I want to talk about, above and beyond what makes for a good horse set up.

            

Tricks of the Trade

                                               by Laura Crum

            There are things that I do differently from most other horse people I know. These things work for me. Most of them have dual motivation. I either think that they are better for the horses or I think they are easier for me and won’t hurt the horses. Sometimes both. The thing is that I have been doing these things for a long, long time (like twenty years) and I’m pretty sure they are fine choices, however odd or incorrect others may see them as being. So today I am going to share some of my tricks of the trade—in case they might help someone else have a happier life with horses.

            I want to start by saying that I don’t in the least need anyone else to agree with me. If you do things differently (and most people do) that is well and good. Secondly, I find that the labor saving aspect of my program is very important, not just for my benefit, but also for the horses’ benefit. I take care of five horses all by myself in the midst of a life that is very busy with other things. If the horse care was too time intensive, I would not be able to do it. So my five horses continue to have a good life here partly because I have arranged things such that horse care is not an unreasonable burden.

            AND—and this is very important—what I do works for me under my particular circumstances. I have light, sandy ground, and my corrals are very sheltered and laid out on a south facing slope. There is never a time when the horses do not have some not-muddy ground to stand and lie down on. We do not get snow here, or extreme temps—either high or low. Some of what I do probably would not work under other circumstances. So, with that caveat, here are my tricks.

            1) First of all, I don’t use stalls. Like all my rules, there are exceptions to this. When Henry was recovering from colic surgery, he had to live in a stall. When a horse gets an abscess in the wintertime (which has fortunately been very rare for me), said horse needs a dry stall. I have a shed that can be converted into a stall with some temporary panels and I can keep it clean and dry. But no horse that does not need confinement for medical reasons is ever put in a stall.

            I think the confinement of stalls is very bad for a horse’s health, and maintaining a stall in a reasonably clean fashion takes a LOT of time. It is win/win for both me and the horse to eliminate the stalls.

            I keep my horses in large corrals (averaging 40 by 150 feet)—one horse to a corral. They have pasture sheds they can go in and out of as they choose. The horses live there 24/7, free to move about as much as they please. The corrals look like this.

            2) I don’t turn horses out together in my corrals. A lot of people will argue about this. I have heard more silliness than I can shake a stick at along the lines of the idea that horses need to live in a herd situation. I totally disagree with this. Horses are happiest if they can see and touch other horses, yes. Horses do NOT need to be kicked by other horses. I cannot count to you the number of serious injuries/fatalities that I know about in horses that were turned out with other horses. It’s a very common problem.

            In my opinion the absolute WORST is keeping horses confined and separate from other horses during the night and then turning them out together during the day. This is a recipe for injuries, as far as I’m concerned. I only turn horses out together in a group when they are in a big field—several acres, and the horses will be staying together for a long time. As long as there are no super aggressive horses, this can work just fine.

            I have to add that I have kept horses in every way you can think of throughout my life. Turned out with other horses in a big pasture, turned out with other horses in large corrals, in stalls with turnout during the day…etc. I am quite familiar with the upside and downside of all these approaches. For me, my current system works best.

            3) I don’t pick up the manure in my large corrals. I clean it up with a tractor once or twice a year. Some folks will think this is awful. In twenty years I have not had one problem that could be attributed to this habit. It saves me an immense amount of time and work. I grew up on ranches where this was the way things were done, and I guess I just accept it. Works for me.

            4) I don’t pick feet. Lots of people are going to think this is awful. I never pick feet unless I think there is a problem. If I have a horse that appears to have a foot problem, I immediately pick all four feet and look for signs of thrush or a wedged rock or what-have-you. If I see signs of thrush or any other sort of foot problem, the feet are picked a couple of times a day and treated until the problem is gone. But in twenty years of keeping multiple horses here, I have had maybe two cases of thrush, and maybe three abscesses. I always watch carefully when the farrier trims my horses and ask if he sees any signs of a problem. For many, many years now the answer has always been, “No.” I have had virtually no soundness problems related to hoof care.  (Oh and all my horses are very mannerly about having their feet handled.)

            5) I don’t groom except when I ride. Once again, there are exceptions. I groom my horses when they are shedding. I groom my retired horses just to give them attention. But I feel no obligation to groom a horse for the sake of grooming. And again, I have had no problems due to this cause.

            6) I don’t feed grain or supplements. There are exceptions (again). The older horses get equine senior feed when they need it. By the time they are in their thirties they usually need a lot of it. All horses get trace mineral salt blocks. They get plenty of mixed grass alfalfa hay—the amount varies depending on the horse, and I can fine tune this, since I keep the horses in individual corrals. This keeps weight on most of my QHs quite nicely, including the ones that are working hard as team roping horses. They are shiny, healthy and long-lived overall. Again, works for me.

            7) I don’t walk in the corrals to feed. This is a funny one. I have worked on a lot of horse ranches. I have had to walk into a pasture full of young, half-broke horses more times than I can count, and distribute buckets of cubes into individual tubs as the horses vied for the chance to eat. I know how to establish boundaries and get the horses to respect my space and all that crap. I also think it’s a dumb battle to fight. I once had a really gentle reliable bay gelding (Burt) who simply could not help himself when it came to food aggression. Not just me, but a couple of very handy cowboys were unable to train this out of Burt. The solution was simply to feed from outside the fence. It taught me something. When I built my own place I made sure that all the horses were fed from feeders I could access from outside the corrals. No more walking through the mud and/or fighting a pointless battle with those horses who have the food aggression issue. (And by the way, I could ALWAYS drive Burt off his feed if I needed to—and there is no horse on my place that I cannot walk into the pen with as I’m feeding, or catch in the middle of a meal.) It just works better in so many ways if you don’t have to walk into the pen to feed. So much more enjoyable and relaxing for both human and horse. And I like to pick my battles. I don’t like to fight over nothing. Or get mud in my boots for no good reason.

            8) I feed three times a day. This is one thing I do that’s MORE labor intensive, not less. But I am usually able to arrange my schedule so that I can do this, and I think it’s really good for the horses’ overall health and happiness.

            9) I don’t do teeth unless I see a problem. Pretty much everyone is going to disagree with this. But here’s the deal. I have many times in my past had an older horse’s teeth done because the vet said it was needed only to have the horse seem uncomfortable chewing for not just a few weeks but for months afterwards. I began to be very wary about this. One day I asked a vet I really trusted what he thought about doing the teeth on older horses and he said, “If a horse in his teens or twenties seems to be doing well and shows no discomfort, it’s better to leave the teeth alone.” This totally validated my instincts and I have adhered to this principle ever since. When I buy a horse I have the teeth checked and get the vet’s opinion. If he/she says the teeth need work, I usually do it. After that I watch the horse. If all seems well that’s it, as long as the horse is past ten. I have several times noticed a horse seeming uncomfortable chewing and at that point I call the vet—the horse’s teeth inevitably need doing. And when they are done, the horse is better. This approach works well for me.

            10) I don’t do vaccinations on older horses unless I see a problem, such as a disease going around in our area for which there is an effective vaccination. I do/did vaccinate younger horses, especially when they are being hauled. All of my older horses have been vaccinated many times in their life—I think (and my vet agrees) that the downside of vaccination reactions/complications outweighs any potential benefit from giving the vaccines. And yes, there are serious potential problems/complications that can result from vaccines. My vet actually told me that he wished more of his clients with older horses would take my approach. If a horse is injured I give a tetanus booster. The one horse on our property who does get hauled to events (Wally’s Twister) gets yearly vaccinations.

            11) I firmly believe that too much forced exercise--particularly circles, whether lunged or ridden, and particularly loping in circles—is just as detrimental to a horse’s long term soundness and thus his longevity, as not enough exercise. Confined horses need to be exercised, yes. But those constant circles are very hard on horses, both mentally and physically.

            12) All my buildings and fences that the horses interact with are built of metal—as far as the horses can reach. I use pipe panels for fencing and the pasture sheds have metal uprights. This is one of the smartest choices I ever made. It saves an incredible amount of time and money not to be dealing with wooden fences and buildings. Many horses chew wood, and even if you don’t have a wood-chewing horse on your place, wooden fences and buildings deteriorate over the years.

            So there you are—a dozen tricks of the trade that make my life with horses better for both me and my horses. These are practices I’ve come to after forty years of horsekeeping. Again, nobody needs to agree with me, but if any of my little ways helps another horse person, well, that’s a good thing.

            You may ask how I came to these beliefs/way of doing things. The answer is careful observation, and trial and error over a lot of years. For the first twenty years of my horse keeping life I religiously picked feet every time I got a horse out. And then I started keeping my horses together with my friend Wally. Wally never picked feet unless there was an obvious problem. And what do you know? His horses didn’t get thrush or other foot issues. I was getting older and that hoof picking wasn’t my back’s favorite thing. I decided I’d give Wally’s approach a try. If I had started to have thrush issues or any other foot issues, I would have gone back to the hoof picking. But it turns out I never did. Lesson learned.

            Most of my other “rules” came about in a similar way. I once did things the way most horse people that I knew did them. I gave the recommended vaccinations to all my horses, I fed whatever supplements the vets were currently keen on, I loped lots of circles on my horses…etc. It was only after many years of paying attention to what I saw, both in my own horses and in other people’s horses, that I came to these conclusions. So far these practices are working very well for me. I would encourage others not so much to follow my ideas, but rather to think for yourself. Just because people around you do it one way does not mean that this is the best way for you.

            Here is an example of what I mean. When I was in my twenties, all the vets recommended straight alfalfa hay as a “perfect diet” and also recommended we supplement with wheat bran to “prevent colic.” And I faithfully did this, as did most of my horse owning friends. Nowadays almost no one thinks straight alfalfa is a good diet, and wheat bran is said to contribute to stones. See why I don’t jump on whatever feed bandwagon is fashionable at the moment?

           

            I want to add that in my lifetime of owning horses I have never lost a horse who was younger than 20. I realize that this is partly luck. But I have had several horses who made it into their thirties, and I think my track record as a horse-keeper is pretty good. So, though you may not agree with my practices, you might want to recognize that they don’t seem to be doing any harm to the horses I care for. But please feel free to argue with me, or provide some tips of your own in the comments. I’m always open to hearing other points of view, and I learn a lot that way.

            

A Minor Tragedy

                                                by Laura Crum

            So last week I got some bad news. Maybe it wouldn’t seem like such bad news to most people, but I think you other horse people will understand my dismay. My farrier, R, is retiring. Before you point out that there are lots of farriers in the world, consider this: R is the only person who has ever shod or trimmed my horse, Plumber. And Plumber is twenty-five years old. I’ve owned him since he was three. R and I have been together a long time.

            It’s not that I don’t understand. R will be seventy this year. As he says, he wants to retire while he is still (mostly) sound. His knees and back are giving him trouble. He’s right to give the job up. But…

            But he has been doing my horses for over twenty years, and my horses have virtually always stayed sound (knocking on wood—literally—as I type this). I credit R a LOT for the fact that we have not had the ubiquitous “soft tissue” injuries that have been so common in some of my friends’ horses. Nor have we had sore soles or arthritic problems, in general. A good farrier cannot fix everything, but boy it sure helps.

            The thing is, R doesn’t have the reputation of some sort of expert farrier. He’s known as more of a get-er-done cowboy shoer. I’m pretty sure my friends who are really into the barefoot trimming thing, AND my friends who are really into the fancy just-right shoeing thing would both look down on R’s work. R is really your classic ranch cowboy horseshoer.

            He’s also gruff, taciturn and sometimes downright surly. I know a good many boarding stables that refuse to have him on the premises. Lots of horse people react with, “What? You use him?” when I respond to the “Who’s your shoer?” question. In short, he doesn’t have a particularly good reputation overall.

            So why do I like him? Simple. I like things that work.

            I didn’t start out admiring R as a farrier. He was a team roper and I knew him, but I used  much more expensive highly-regarded horseshoers for my fancy horse, Gunner. The thing is, I wasn’t getting the results I hoped for. Gunner had shallow, thin soles and a tendency to get sore and I was having a hard time keeping him sound. I also was having a hard time scheduling farriers a month ahead and having them show up two hours late. In short, I wasn’t very happy with anyone I’d used as a shoer.

            I forget why I fired the farrier previous to R, but I did. And since R was right there at a practice roping and Gunner needed shoes, I asked him if he’d shoe my horse. It was an eye opener.

            At the time I was padding Gunner’s front feet, which was helping him. I asked R if he could do this and he said sure. I explained about Gunner’s thin, shallow soles and his tendency to be low in the heels. R listened, said nothing, and looked at the horse. Then he went to work.

            He shod my horse in literally half the time it had taken the previous “fancy” shoer to do him. He slapped those pads on and squirted silica gel under them, wrapped some duct tape around them and nailed the shoes on and Bob’s your uncle. He did not endlessly fuss and measure, as the previous shoer had done. As I said, it took literally half the time. He also charged me half the price. When he was done I thought the horse’s feet looked about right. And that was that.

            I wasn’t attached to keeping R as a shoer—like most people, I thought his attitude was a little grouchy. But Gunner went well and stayed sound and R was cheap—and hey—he arrived on time, every time. If I called for an appointment he was always available within a few days. And Gunner stayed sound and moved well. Let me repeat that—Gunner stayed sound and moved well.

            This folks, is the bottom line. My horse stayed sound. I kept using R and I put up with his somewhat surly ways.

            In the next year I bought a three-year-old unbroken colt. This was Plumber. When I bought Plumber, he’d been turned out in a pasture with a dozen other young horses. They all looked fine. Plumber could barely walk. His fragile, flare-y, brittle hooves were so broken up that he was sore on all four feet. I bought him for a variety of reasons—I’d known him since he was born—but good feet wasn’t one of them.

            As soon as I bought Plumber I had R shoe him—and hey, presto, the colt was sound. And now I have a confession to make. I kept shoes on Plumber (applied 100% of the time by R) for seventeen years straight—without one break.

            I know, it’s not the accepted way of doing things. Even those of us who don’t believe that shoes are evil and of the devil like to turn our horses out and let them go barefoot for part of the year, anyway. But I was literally afraid to do this with Plumber. When I bought him his feet were a terrible mess—due to being turned out barefoot. And his feet were still the same basic problem. He had a tendency to flare over the shoe and break off and he had to be shod every six weeks precisely. When he was first shod he was a little tender soled—even with shoes on he couldn’t walk comfortably on gravel roads. He just had lousy feet. To be frank, I never thought he would stay sound. I thought he’d end up with navicular or some other foot/hoof based lameness. Anyway, I kept shoes on him 100% of the time.

            And guess what? I broke and trained Plumber and by the time he was eight years old he was a competitive team roping horse. He remained a competition horse until he was twenty, when we retired him. He wore shoes every single day of his working life. He was still sound when we retired him, but he didn’t like to run any more—nor did he like downhill bits on trails.  He trotted perfectly sound on level ground. I had R pull his shoes, and in my hoof-friendly, sandy corrals Plumber has remained a sound, barefoot retired horse for the past five years. So that’s seventeen years of a riding horse life doing a fairly strenuous job, and five years of retirement—completely sound. I think that’s a pretty good success story for a horse with shitty feet. And I believe that I owe a lot of it to R.

            Over time, I learned to trust my instincts more in very many ways when it came to horses. I could look at my own horses’ feet and see that they looked “right” to me—shod or barefoot—and I would look at horses shod or trimmed by other farriers—frequently much more highly regarded farriers—and see that they looked wrong to me. Often I could not explain why they looked wrong, though sometimes I could. The angle would be wrong—too steep or too shallow—the horse would look low in the heels or the toes would look dubbed off or the horse would be too stood up, or the heels looked too pinched in. I am no expert on shoeing/trimming. But I became a bit like that obnoxious guy in the art gallery. I knew what I liked.

            And I also knew that my horses stayed sound. This was not at all true of some of our friends’ horses.

            One guy in particular, who roped at the same practice arena where we roped, had an endless string of inexplicable soft tissue injuries. I never liked the way his horses’ feet looked—pinched in, toe dubbed off—and over time I became convinced that the constant injuries were the result of his farrier’s work.

            There just was no other logical explanation. He was the only guy who roped with us that used that particular shoer, no one else was regularly plagued with these injuries, and the guy in question had literally ten different horses come up lame with soft issue injuries in the legs. The conditions were exactly the same for all of us; the horses that crippled up were not related to each other in any way. The guy didn’t overuse his horses. There simply was no other common denominator.

            Anyway, I became ever more grateful and loyal to R. As Gunner has gotten older his feet have not plagued him, but he began to be very arthritic in the hocks and knees and had trouble holding his hooves up for trimming. R is patient with him, as he was always patient and matter-of-fact with my young horses, when I had them. No horse of mine ever had any issues being trimmed or shod after the first few times. Ron was skillful and strong and worked fast. He didn’t tolerate any crap, but he wasn’t harsh, either. He was always calm and confident. It took the colts very little time to settle down and be trimmed/shod like broke horses.

            For the last few years I have run all my horses barefoot, and Ron trims them all and they stay sound. No, he’s not a “barefoot” trimmer, or whatever the buzz word is, but, again, they stay sound and move well. Henry is going great at 26, Sunny the same at 19 or so, and my two retirees have no foot problems despite the fact they both have lousy feet. How good is that?

            And now R is retiring. I asked him if he’d like to just trim my gentle old horses to keep his hand in. He said no, it was time for him to give it up. And that is that. Just allow me a few minutes to whine and snivel, OK? Because I am really not looking forward to finding/working with another farrier. I’m sure many of you will understand. It’s a sad day.