safety issues

Well, this could develop into a long discussion. Anyone that has worked with animals for any length of time has experienced the extreme side of prey animal fear/flight survival instinct – running away.

I am only a horseman and know nothing about bull whipping. If I live long enough I hope to go where ever Drew Conroy is working and help him, so I may learn.

I’ll start the discussion about equine. The aha moment for me was when I discovered the lever bit. A run away – (despite all the best efforts of any human) – offers the occasion of using the primal instinct of fear to stop the animals as a safe choice. If horses are afraid and run, they will equally be afraid of the serious signals of a level bit. They simply will chose to not run through the pain of the bit when adjusted properly and close attention to their postures. Not that the object is to give them pain, but that going forward is less comfortable than not going forward. The point is to not use the pressure of the leverage for pain, but to have horses that operate with “power steering” versus manual. It is just real nice to have horses that know what whoa means. It comes back to the park gear analogy I make in an earlier post. If they don’t have a park, none of the other gears count, because without it the horse is dangerous to work with.

The lever bit applies three pressures. One on the bar, one on the chin and one on the pole. After thirty years of working hundreds of horses this is the only bit I will work with. Insurance companies have required that people working in public settings use them to get a reduced rate or insurance at all. That is a safety concern, addressed by a perceived remedy, proven by some of the biggest crooks in modern life hedging their bets by requiring a lever bit. (forgive the insurance bash, if you can afford to)

We use a cheap solid brass Military Show Bit, sometimes called an Elbow bit.

Although knowing you can stop horses, doesn’t make it any easier to be a good horseman. One still must have a degree of horse sense and common sense. A unique ability to be present to the situation at hand and be the kind boss horse in the herd, and more…

When we teach at our Biological Woodsmen classes we spend hours discussing the determination of safe side/danger side. This should be a consideration of everything you do on the farm or in the woods. This is a part of the state of the art hand felling (chainsaw) of timber and continues throughout the process of utilizing the ultimate low impact overland extraction technique – animal power. For example – the safe side is uphill, out of the circle of moving objects not aligned straight behind your animals and in the location where you can see the most of what is going on.

Anticipation of the next action and reaction… – knowing what will happen in one situation or another, particularly in complex operations is only acquired through experience.

But being taught to think about it from “safety first” is part of professional training at any dynamic physical job. It is our mantra.

Your work starts with assessing danger and planning your moves out to avoid scary situations when you can. Just as there are proper procedures to harness, hitch, drive and care for your horses, there are culturally important aspects requiring thinking ahead, while being present to what is at hand.

This will be a great thread. If we don’t help new people (= each other) be successful then they will be less likely to stick with it. I think all us elders can still learn something too – maybe work our horses a little longer.

There is nothing more important to learning the skills of doing anything with horses – than safety. Life is dangerous everywhere, but you throw in a couple of tons of fear equals flight biological specimens that store more energy in their muscle cells than anything else on land and you got power enough to kill you, others and themselves.

I look forward to seeing the thread grow. This is a subject that can’t be exhausted or over discussed. Thanks for posting Kristin

Jason – do you mean lever bit or level bit? You use both terms in your post.

Gooserun – I also think that my mare is always about to do something foolish. I mentioned that to a teamster I was working with and she said that I should stop thinking that way and instead assume that nothing bad was going to happen. That way I would be more relaxed and would be able to feel it better if she was about to go goofy on me.

I am looking forward to more posts on this subject. I find as I get older “safety first” brings on a whole new meaning for me.

I did have my first runaway this summer. Lucky for me, I was driving my mom’s brat of a mini. She was able to dump me from the cart. I only hurt my ego.

Great thread Kristin, I have had a few runaways; most of us have, but I like the idea that I don’t expect to have them in the future. This is not exactly the same as saying they will never happen; but more along the lines of, I make a conscious effort to prepare myself, my equipment, my work, and my animals such that these accidents will be avoided. I probably did a poor job of paraphrasing something I read in the work horse hand book.
Having said that, I had a runaway last year, (many years after the last one). I had failed many of the tests I set for my self above. I had a equipment brake down of a manure spreader, and I had a green horse that was not ready for the work. After many years of working successfully it was an eye opening experience to realize that a Lack of accidents for several years was not a guarantee that I was doing everything I could to prevent them.
About the lever bits, I have been slowly useing more of them, but not with the clear understanding that Jason described. I use a variety of bits and line placements in order to allow the different animals to work with the same line pressure. I work everthing from 28 y/o halflingers (any line pressure is to much for these two). Two 12 y/o molly mules which I first tried to take the lever bits away from, and later realized this was a mistake. Two three coming four y/o’s (one mule, one belgian) that I started and so far are pretty light mouthed. One 20 y/o Belgian gelding who is happy with his lever bit down one spot.
For the last year or so I have been trying to retrain my self and my animals to have a new relationship with the lines and line pressure. the idea came from a Steve Bower book. It is simply that every pressure going down the lines should signal something. That means two animals walking straight ahead doing exactly what you want should not feel any pressure. I have not gone so far as to loose contact with the animals, but I really like the idea of working toward a lighter and lighter touch. I think the lever bits could work in a system like this. When I finely returned the proper lever bit to the most afending mule she actually relaxed and started to work better with less line pressure. One question Jason, in your approach to these bits are you using a variety of line placements, or always the bottom, or perhaps just not the direct (or top) placement. I perfer the ones that are not the broken snaffles but the straight bar, although that is just based on instinct.
Well, that is a long post, I apologize for any misplellings, I couldn’t figure out how to make the spell checker work, My wife is out of town, and the horses are all out in the barn, so there is no one to help me. Donn

As far as bit pressure is concerned, I feel that it is my objective to have minimal pressure, but never no pressure. By my guidance the horse will develop an understanding of the energy that she/he has to spend in learning to accept the pressure. In other words, I make it the responsibility of the horse to reduce pressure.

In my experience, it seems counter-intuitive, but when I have a horse that is resisting pressure, I go to an even softer bit. I keep rubber bits for just that purpose. I have come to understand that the horse that fights the bit is fighting pain. With the pain there is limited ability to sense the subtle pressure changes that I am conveying to their mouth. Once the horse begins to understand that the bit is the connection that transmits my guidance that she/he is desiring, then they will be much more inclined to accept pressure from a steel bit.

This all figures into safety because it is one of the foundations of the working relationship, communication. If we can’t maintain effective communication with our animals we can’t safely lead them into working situations. With that said I will have to reiterate some of what I’ve said in other threads, that knowledge of the work to be done is a significant part of communication, and therefore safety.

As we appraise risk, we need to be able to fully understand how we intend to lead our beasts into action. If we are inexperienced in the working situation, then our ability to appraise risk is compromised. This is not to acknowledge the situation such as Donn explains, or my experience where misplaced comfort led to complacency, which allowed for inadequate maintenance, and in my case resulted in a broken line, which although having the same result, is really between teamster and equipment. It is very hard to have expectations of safety from horses involved in situation where equipment breaks or fails, because the resulting stimulus is virtually uncontrollable.

Obviously we need to understand the subtleties of teaming, but as we promote draft animal education, I really believe that we need to stress knowledge of the working situation, for success and safety. This piece is difficult to find, or provide, but as we all look at the products that we produce from our enterprises, one of the most valuable has got to be experience.
Once we understand the plow, or mower, or manure spreader, or forest landscape, then we can have better ability to appraise risk.

At a certain point the ability to interpret, and respond to, the animal’s reaction to the situation also plays into the appraisal. Any thoughts on that?? Carl

GR Farm – of course I had an audience. All of them willing to give me advice on what I did wrong. The worst part of it was my brother-in-law caught her and he does not know the front from the back end of a horse. My mother was not impressed with my lack of control of her sweet little mare, who had never ever tried anything like that with her. I say it was a learning experience for us all.

Back to safety issues – my barn just got a complete makeover. I want to put something on the wood in the spring to protect it. My sister’s WB is a chewer, my draft is not. Should I use stain or paint. I would like to trim out the windows with some kind of metal. What is the safest for the animals?

While the use of lever bits may help, knowing your animals or learning their language is the most important skill. Not everyone will be able to do it unless they aspire to. We have 8 head of horses and have owned a few others and trained a bunch also. Each horse has a unique personality and after using them all for countless hours we know just about what to expect with each one of them in any given situation. We have a black gelding that when he has moods will run in place. He’s nervous but well broke while doing his dance will never get out of line or pinch your fingers when getting hooked or unhooked. We’ve had him 17 years and he hasn’t changed or slowed down he’s a good lead furrow horse in our tandem hitches. I drive him mostly by voice when turning and he’s a good one. Dad says he wouldn’t take a million bucks for him and wouldn’t give 50 cents for one like him. Maggie is 12 and alert. An experienced teamster said last year when we were hitching our 6 to plow, “watch that gray mare , she’s gonna fly”. Not a chance she’s just about bomb proof and has made countless public appearances with her mother Maude. Belle was nearly uncontrollable when we started her but came from a few bad experiences in her life before she came to us including having her foal killed by a car at several weeks old. We stuck with her and now she’s hard to beat on the farm. Responsive, powerfull but still gets rattled at times although nothing serious so she only leaves the farm for work events so far. Anyone else would’ve sent her to the cannery but she’s a picture of a farm Percheron and has nice foals. The rest are all really good but have their days or moods and everyone is sharper the more they get used. If one of them is getting ready to get out of line we usually notice it and correct it before it gets serious.
My 84 year old mentor always watches for body language. He never taught me I learned by watching him. His eyes are constantly focused on his team and a good thing because even at his age he still retrains alot of renegades.
We have had a couple runaways usually because something causes them to spook not because they are runaways. I even owned an explosive runaway horse that I bought in. We worked him hard and he was ok until a bearing broke on the hay rake and when Dad got him stopped his rake was missing 44 teeth.
We haven’t had any trouble in years and I won’t say it couldn’t happen tommorrow but being aware of their signals and body language will help prevent good horses from running. Runaway horses that are known for running are usually a product of poor training or poor handling.
The more time you spend with your animals the better you get to know them and thus you learn what to expect from them.

@Does’ Leap 600 wrote:

Our submisive horse has done wonderfully while the dominant horse, who is completely well behaved and calm in harness, has challanged us directly by trying to kick and even charging. Despite this, he is making great progress and is slowly and grudgingly accepting us directing some basic movements in the round pen.

I have a horse that used to be the dominant one of his team and wanted to be the boss of people too. Sometimes this was a problem, sometimes not. For instance he would kind of half be led, half drag you. He would not tolerate his feet being handled at all–his previous owner just used stocks.

I don’t have stocks, so I decided to try an old-timey trick of tying up his foot. Boy did that not work how I intended. We had him in cross ties and tied up the front foot with a rope looped up over the shoulder and around the opposite leg. The horse threw a fit, rearing and hopping on the front leg (while we stayed the hell out of the way) , and finally fell/rolled over when he couldn’t hop any more. Cross ties wrapped around his windpipe somehow. It was nip and tuck to get him out, a few more seconds and we would have had dead horse, I think. But we got a knot undone and he revived.

I really don’t recommend the above method but now he lifts his feet, leads properly, and generally attends to humans (particularly me) and is never aggressive. I have heard that making a horse fall down (safer way, just tie his feet together) is a good way to show who’s in charge.