Leading 3 horses

Bradley:

I lead 4 horses all on my right side. I believe they should be able to lead in any position and walk at my pace. Every spring when it is time to go back out to pasture, we go back to school. I get a long, light branch that can reach the nose of the far horse. My expectation is that all horses follow my lead – no one stepping ahead or lagging behind. This is enforced with the branch. If the far horse starts stepping ahead to fast he gets a swoosh in front of the nose. If he doesn’t respect that, he gets a bump. If one of the middle horses slows down, I reach over their hind quarters and s/he gets a tap. Every time I correct a horse, they hear their name. If the horse nearest to me slows down, I reach around my back with the branch in my left and tap her but while giving a pull on her halter.

We gee, haw, slow down, speed up etc, etc. I stop every so often and rub and scratch the horses with the stick. They should not fear the stick, just respect it. Pretty soon they get it. Sounds complected with 4 leads and a stick, but it is not bad. The trick is applying just enough pressure to get the desired result. If you decided to give it a try, you can experiment with one or two. Since my horses know the routine, I generally use the stick on the first day and then it gets tossed. I then will use my longest lead rope (in hand) for any corrections (when needed). In the case of the far horse, I will have to step ahead and in front of the horses to reach the space in front of his nose – swoosh as a warning and a whack if need be.

All of this said, if I have to go more than 300 or 400 ft, I will ride one horse and “pony” the rest (1 on one side, 2 on the other). With the horse I am riding, I clip the lead rope on one side of the halter and tie it into the other side. Ditto the expectations above – all horses should be able to be ridden and “ponied” in any position. I have found that for longer distances, riding is easier, faster, and more fun.

George

PS Did my guitar tuner ever show up after the logging workshop last fall?

I am doing pretty much the same, but I have a few wrinkles I like. I regularly lead six, four horses a mule, and a donkey. At his level I feel it is important to distinguish between perfect, and good. I seldom stop where I am going to correct an animal. Perhaps if they tangle me all up I will but typically I just go where I am going. I use two lead ropes, each with three snaps about 2′ or a little more apart. One lead rope has short tail with a knot. I can use this to “touch” the chest of the second or third horse if need be. I lead three in front of three, so the back lead rope has a long tail. The lead ropes with three snaps work great. In order to lead all six this way you have to accept that it is a little bit of a circus trick. Part of the circus trick is figuring out where to put each of your animals, but this is the same thing you do in a hitch. The thing is people expect to hook all these animals together and work them and drive them, leading them is a good practice.

I try to put the boss hoss closest to me where it is easy to micro-manage her. The subordinate animals will generally keep their position relative to her with little effort on my part. Anyone who doesn’t live up to my expectations gets more one-on-one work with ground manners. If I have team-mates, I try to pair them up. Sometimes I will feed an outside horse’s lead through the halter of a horse closer to me. This works particularly well with team-mates. I don’t tie them to each other, but it kind of keeps things up out of the way and seems to help a more remedial horse keep his place when he’s further from reach. I have actually had more problems with less-confident animals trying to lag behind, rather than horses forging ahead. The boss hoss is kind of a tyrant in the pasture, though. Horses that have not had as many hours in harness are less able to put aside their pasture rankings and work like a good soldier.

I wanted to help an old friend and mentor of mine one time when I was in highschool, by leading his 4 mules to the river for a drink when we’d finished unharnessing. I’d seen him do it a bunch of times and they were always well mannered, so I volunteered, and he readily accepted. Everything went fine all the way to the riverbank. I said “Whoa” and nobody listened…… and out in the river we went, me in the middle, with 2 mules on each side! They must’ve been really thirsty and hot, as they waded in way over their chests… me bobbing along, still hanging on to the leads, and swearing up a blue streak! Finally they decided they’d had enough and waded back to the shore, where George was standing, smiling from ear to ear. I was fit to be tied and was letting him know about it, and about why I really didn’t like his mules anymore, and he just looked at me, grinned, and said, “well….you could’ve just let go!” I guess that really hadn’t occured to me at the time, between the very cold water and the disbelief of what was happening. We chuckled about that for years.
John