[Carl Russell]

I gave attached 3 photos of my mare that I am working now. these pictures were taken in the fall of 2007, which was about a year after I started working her. Although they don’t tell the whole story, they show some of the same communication that I pointed out in Donn’s pics.

I trained this horse to work by hitching her with an older mare. I spent time handling her before, leading, harnessing, doing a couple of single driving exercises, but most of her experience has been in the execution of working tasks.

She has her moments, as do I, but I think you can see that that training has not left her a behavioral mess.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I wasn’t referring to his skill, or talent, of which he obviously has a lot, nor did say that he shouldn’t get recognition. I see a very careful and thoughtful man engaged with his animals in an amazing feat.

What is twisted is the glitz and commercial enterprise that is obviously making huge amounts of money off of him. What is twisted, is that his skill is being wasted, in my mind, on show-biz.

The reason I mentioned the other examples is because those people, and many others of us, are hidden from view in the mundane and seemingly bland experiences of trying to make livelihoods while employing our animals in working situations.

I find those examples more appealing, that’s all.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I’ve been holding my tongue, and letting it sink in, but it takes all kinds. Unfortunately this kind of display gets the attention of SO many people that it can only foster a twisted view of working with animals.

Jim Ostergard working in the woods with a single horse in the Boreal forest of northern Maine, or J-L feeding cattle with horses and mules on wind-swept fields in Wyoming, or Matt Stacy moving hay bales with a pair of calves in the hills of Vermont are equally amazing to me.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Go light and go often. They should learn to pull comfortably before having to learn to work at it. If you work up gradually, they will never know the difference. If you pin then down right away, they may never give you what you want when they should. No one who knows anything is going to ridicule you for pulling a few branches first just to see how they are put together.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Nice Aaron, keep up the good work.

p.s. Without getting too personal, I want to fill in a little background.

Although Aaron’s life changed yesterday, he has been an enthusiastic student for all of the 3 1/2 years I have known him(and for a long while before that), watching, asking, reading, asking, and learning a lot about the fundamentals, and the work behind the animal, like chainsaw safety, and woods work. Aaron has struck me from early on as some one on a successful trajectory to be working with horses.

Although once hand meets leather, life is never the same, success is dependent on patient and purposeful accumulation of appropriate experience.

Keep us up to date on the progress Aaron,
Carl

[Carl Russell]

Several years ago I decided that after driving some one else’s sleigh ride horses that I was only going to use my horses for working purposes. I realize many people truly enjoy getting out and interfacing with the public with their animals. It clearly wasn’t for me.

That being said, I have driven them to town to the grain store etc. For a couple of years I did drive them in the fourth of July parade to promote some local agricultural initiatives. I always felt weird, because I had already decided that that sort of thing was not for me. They always performed perfectly, but I was always on guard, trying to balance my conscious uncertainty, with the need to be a calm and confident leader. The last year, as I was entering down town Randolph, looking out at a sea of hundreds of people standing ten deep between the store fronts and the street, it really sank in, “This is so unfair to these horses”. I had ultimate confidence in my relationship with the animals, but I had absolutely no control over any one of those people, and I had no back-out, no way to protect the working relationship. Everything about that situation was to meet the expectations of some one else.

We finished the parade, and I haven’t taken them off the farm except to go to a log job since. I do however take them from time to time to participate in work days, and educational workshops, where we are doing meaningful work, which i can buy into, and I can set expectations on the people involved, in stead of the other way around.

Just my experience, Carl

[Carl Russell]

jenjudkins;5803 wrote:

Dave, I was told by a great mentor some years ago….’Concentrate on what’s working and not on what isn’t’. Sounds like you have alot of good stuff working with Duke. I wouldn’t concentrate too much on the other stuff. Sounds like you handled the situation just right.

Why would you need another response?

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I see no reason to keep a horse in any type of stall. I have tie stalls for when I bring my horses in to feed before harnessing. As Donn described they are an efficient way to use the space. I have had a box stall, but turned it into two tie stalls for my oxen. I used the box stall for calvings in poor weather, and for an infirmed horse. Either way my horses are out except for one of two nights a month during winter, in case of freezing rain.

Tie stalls with feed lane in front, feed trough, alley way for harnessing and manure handling behind, with harnesses hung conveniently, with a box stall for emergency is my preference.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I have attached some photos from Donn’s thread of working with Connie. I think they are very important as an example of what is working behind the scenes when training horses to work.

In every picture Donn is working on different aspects of Connie’s early training, bridle, collar, skidding logs, driving. These are all of the individual steps that so many people want to know how to do.

What I see is a very relaxed Donn, presenting himself in a comforting way to his horse. The two animals are sharing the same posture in practically every picture, especially the 3 I attached.

The reason I think this is important is that my opinion is that it doesn’t matter how long the horse stands there with the collar on, if you haven’t secured an understanding with the animal.

I don’t know what the first encounter was between these two, but it is obvious to me that as soon as Donn saw the desired posture from Connie, he rewarded her with a similar posture of his own. In one photo of him driving the horse, you can see him intent on the horse, as if he were holding her in this attitude, while at the same time letting her do what she’s doing. She knows he is intent on her, and he had made it clear through body language that he is pleased with what she is doing.

The reason I point this out is because it relates to my earlier posts about having continual communication as a basis for the working relationship, not conditional exposure. The smoothness of Donn’s progress has less to do with the particulars of the steps he’s taken than it does with the fact that these steps reinforce the communication that he started to develop when he first encountered the horse.

In an earlier post J-L pointed out that he went through basically exactly the same steps, over a 2 day period with a mule that he needed to work, before putting her on the sled. For some that seems short, IF you think time has anything to do with it. But for J-L it was all he needed to know that he and the mule were ready to move on to lessons she would only be able to learn in the working setting.

This is what I learned from my mentors. When I asked about specifics training techniques, they rarely answered with straight answers, because they knew that I would either figure it out, or I wouldn’t. Their answers were either “If you want to log with horses, then buy a horse and go logging”, or “I’m not going to hold your hand”. At the time, I was not appreciative, but they always let me spend time with them, and it was then that I could see the way the focused on their horses, the postures they struck when they wanted something, or when they got what they wanted.

These are not easy things to learn in a book, and many people are completely unaware of how their body language is affecting their success, or failure. I thought that by pointing this out here, it might give some others a little more insight into the subtleties of “Training them old school”.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

There are good days and bad days, but I have to do just what you did. I can’t go riding through the streets pf old Quebec City, but I have to find that place inside me that is the same as that. Even though I might have to get the job done, I also have to come back tomorrow, and into the future, so I have to measure the horse, which is usually a reflection of me. I
find that I can turn a bad day around if I remember to breath, and find that place of peace.

To put it in terms of logging. It’s better to unload half the sled and come back for a second trip, and preserve the working relationship, than it is to get hung up on what you thought you were going to get done.

This is what I referred to in the other thread as managing expectations. Have high expectations of the horse, but be willing to see when you’re being selfish.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Well done, Rod:)

Thanx, Carl

[Carl Russell]

I know you guys, I was insensitive to his background, but the point wasn’t that he was scared of the bull once he started chasing him, it was that he wasn’t afraid of them when he decided to go into the pasture to shoot his gun.

I know it was my fault that I didn’t realize that “walking in the pasture” was code for “shooting my gun in the pasture”. I would have gotten up and ran too, ’cause that steer was probably pretty excited by the gunfire.

I realize that he had no context from which to understand why his idea made no sense. I actually like the guy, and I’m really glad he was fast enough, but I really have to laugh at the image.

You know it’s like the lawyer who wanted to be a dairy farmer. He had to hire someone else to call in his cows because they didn’t believe him.

The same thing can mean different things to different people.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Oh, I know I said I only had one more thing to say, but the problem with morning chores is that my mind often gets working!!!

In fact one of the main reasons I hitch a young/inexperienced horse with one more experienced is to reinforce the individual connection. Of all the behaviors that they can learn from each other, the acceptance of me as leader is reinforced in every movement they make. For the inexperienced horse, working in harness with another horse can be just as distracting as having a chainsaw running under their nose. They learn to focus through the distraction on me.

And unfortunately another thought:

Anne is completely right. In fact I’m sorry I didn’t see this earlier. I am completely serious. The best solution would definitely be to have farms in every region where working horses could get started by the best methods, and then be available at an affordable rate. The problem is that it ain’t happenin’, and I’m not sure that the affordability issue can be addressed, nor that it would be truly sustainable (you know giving a person a fish versus teaching them to fish).

What we have is people who want to farm and log (also many other objectives) with horses (and cattle, mules), who have limited understanding about farming, logging, or forestry, limited understanding of equipment, and limited understanding of animals, and even less understanding of how to put it all together. We also have many many horses that have not had an adequate start.

The fact is we cannot afford to go out and buy it all in a package. Most of us have to multi-task our way into the future we hope will be there.

I think conversations like this one that don’t break down into petty disagreements and name calling are extremely important to solving the problem. We all come to this from different experiences and capabilities, and I think the underlying purpose for having this discussion is in fact to arrive at an understanding of what makes sense, and can really work.

I’m done:eek:

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Anne, I’ve agreed with so much of what you have to say, just disapprove of the accusatory and intolerant tone(For example: A horse that is being dragged is not being trained, similarly neither is one that purely mimics its team-mate. These are excellent points, but the assumption that we don’t realize that is misplaced. I work with all my animals individually, so that even in a team I have direct individual interaction. They pay more attention to me than each other. This is absolutely critical. A good point, a poor assumption). This last post was by far your most valuable contribution so far. Thanks for hanging in there:).

I never hitch up a horse until they stand. I get the question time and time again, “How do you hook up a log if your horse won’t stand?” I don’t!!!

I have posted a lot in this thread and I am pleased to see it becoming a constructive discussion, I just have one more thing to say.

Yes I was fortunate to have exposure to good mentors (like Anne said is very important), but nobody handed me the keys. Even if you get an in depth training, or go at it alone (with mentors) it will take many years. I figure it took me a good ten years of never giving up, day after day trying, and testing, and asking, and thinking, and watching, and trying some more before I felt “fluent”. Fluent, not an expert, but aware of enough of the fundamentals to function adequately, and I am still refining that understanding.

A good mentor will help you realize that the process is on-going even after 60 years like mine did. There will be moments where you’ll be flooded with realization, like five streams coming together all at once into a main branch of a river. Then there will be moments when you wonder where all the water went.

Anne is right that we all should be aware of how inexperience and misguided selfish attempts can ruin a horse, but I am in no way endorsing that either. The reality is it doesn’t come out of a can. You can get a recipe, which is a good place to start, but at some point your going to have to add your own flavor.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Welcome Doug, glad to see you found us. I hope we’ll keep you interested.
Carl

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