[Plowboy]

It’s all by the severity of the situation I guess. If a horse has a small fit about doing a job then we try to work through it. Lately I have been working with a kicker that is owned by a friend of ours. We haven’t found her exact trigger yet. She was a pretty aggressive kicker with both feet last year. I drove her yesterday and she only kicked once with one foot while backing a wagon to turn around. She flicks her tail a lot and that is a potential sign of a kicker. I was apprehensive to put her through her paces knowing her background but by the end of the lesson she was ok so she needs some hard work to make her give up on the kicking habit. I have a hard time letting them get away with not doing something familiar to them. Something new to them if they refuse I might try it from a different angle or let them think about it and let them think it’s their idea.
As far as broke horses they are expected to do whatever I ask within reason and will because they trust me like your Manny does for you. Once my Dad did wagon rides for a big city wide “First Night” celebration that involved fireworks. He agreed to do it only because the fireworks wouldn’t start until an hour after the wagon rides. He dropped off the last load and headed for the trailer and the fireworks started. The mares are great horses and did nothing wrong but they shook from fright all the way back to the trailer. He made up his mind at that point he would never put them in that type of situation again for any amount of money. They did try for several years to get him to come back to no avail.

[Plowboy]

Started tearing down the McCormick binder today after chores and driving horses. That old equipment is amazing the way it comes apart with a little PB Blaster sprayed on the threads the bolts just unscrew. We tore down one side completely in just two hours and that was the difficult side. The gathering chains and drive chains need to be soaked in oil for a few days before reassembly. The new wood kit was available from our local amish repair shop so all I had to do with the new boards was paint them.

[Plowboy]

We started our second horse in an open bridle today. Dan the 22 month old stud colt that we have been driving a few times lately. We got his new open bridle last wednesday from our local harness maker friend. We put it on him with our big gelding and I ground drove him across the icy driveway to the sled in the field. Good thing he didn’t spook or I would have gotten a crash course in Skiijoring barefoot. He hitched quiet and drove around the meadow a couple times with no trouble. My Dad lives on a state road so we headed out along the road going away from traffic. The first truck that came along he made two small lunges. The next few cars he paid alot of attention to but did nothing. The next time around 8 cars went by and he never even looked at them. All in all I think it was a success.

[Plowboy]

I was reading back into the posts and reread #66 by “Manes”. I have to disagree about 15 minutes unless the horse is very young. !5 minutes of driving hardly does anything. I thought 30 minutes was a pretty short lesson. I’m not sure what exactly she thinks we are doing. We are driving 3+4 year old big horses. They are soft but if I thought they couldn’t take at least 30 minutes on a small sleigh or empty wagon they wouldn’t be worth much would they? We are not pulling stumps with them just simply getting them used to line driving. In a couple weeks we will probably be hauling some firewood in the sleigh and maybe spreading some manure or skidding small logs. Some of them sweat a little yes but that is a good thing for an honest worker human or animal. Did there soft muscles feel funny? Maybe but not sore. We had another good day yesterday driving I think 9 youngsters. We drove all the ones from last week plus a couple beginners. All but one were very soft mouthed and hardly tightened the lines but drove pretty evenly with the other horse. Making great progress so we might have a load on sale day!

[Plowboy]

If that solves the problem hang up her blinder bridle and go open! Sounds like a smart mare that wants to see whats going on. I think that would be a problem going from open to blinders. They are used to seeing whats going on and then you block that out and it freaks them out. As long as she works well open and does everything she is supposed to I wouldn’t hesitate. We are in the experimental stages right now with our two youngest horses in open bridles. The 3yr old has been in one for over a year with good results. Our stud colt has been started in a blinder bridle because we only have one open that I picked up at auction for an experiment. Our friend runs a harness shop and he made a copy last week for the stud colt. In a couple hours he will be driven in it and we’ll see how he adapts. I have a good feeling because nothing else bothers him.

[Plowboy]

I hope everyone understood the first sentence of my last post. I was being a bit sarcastic and for that I apologize. Our young horses are handled daily and these two in particular are exceptionally laid back and willing to please. On the first trip around the field I noticed the neighbors clotheseline full of red shirts and blue jeans flopping rapidly in the wind. I tightened my grip on the lines a little and proceeded. As we passed 50 feet from this commotion neither of them paid attention to it and the filly was in an open bridle! I’m glad some folks are getting good info from this thread. The good news is it will be archived here so it can be read by anyone in the future who may come across this sight and reread by anyone that wants to remember what was said here. Thanks Carl and Lisa for having this here. This is by far the most genuine sight I have seen with good information and many excellent contributors with different respective and positive points of view. Gotta go finish chores so we can go drive some colts.

[Plowboy]

I forced my 22 month old stud colt to comply with his three year old sister this afternoon for the first time. They stood quietly to be harnessed and put together. I ground drove them out to the sleigh on a loose line. We had to coax Dixie over the tongue because she hadn’t had to in a while. They stood calmly to be hitched and when I chirped to them they started pretty good but not perfect. They pulled pretty even for the 30 minutes we were out there and parked the sleigh on the rails where they found it. I even had them back up a couple times with no trouble. It was Dan’s 6th double hitch and I’m real proud of him. They will make a great team by next Spring. Next time out Dan gets hooked back with our big gelding so he can try out his new open bridle!
Tomorrow we’re headed back to the scene of great controversy to hitch probably the same colts and if it goes good maybe some more first timers. I’ve never felt fear or anxiety at that place. The owner knows his horses and their limitations as well as personalities so we depend on him for a briefing before we go out with each team. We have never dragged one yet so apparently they are smart enough to learn from our guidance while following the lead of the other horse. The owners approach is so layed back with his non invasive style that the horses don’t get freaked out.
I’m convinced now more than ever that there will never be one way to train every horse. It cannot be simplified there are too many variables to experience. As Erika brought up before I had the chance as I mentioned in the Mentors thread a while back, Natural Horsemanship is not a new thing. It has been pounced on and commercialized by every one with a round pen and a rope that thought they could make a buck by amazing the hobby horse enthusiast into buying there snake oil. These methods cannot be classified by new or old. They do work and so do some others. I haven’t seen every method but I’ve seen many. None terrible but some that made sense for the situation.
Resistance training can be a great tool to bring a problem horse back to practical thinking. Snow can be an advantage. A good friend of ours that retrained alot of spoiled horses that couldn’t be straightened out by just being nice to them. He drove several different teams up stream in the Susquehanna river a ways to take the edge off before he worked them on equipment. It probably seems harsh but if he hadn’t done it they would have been dog food.
Another friend had a Haflinger mare that was nervous and took up kicking. He drove her all one summer with ropes running from her halter to hind ankles. Each time she kicked she would yank her head down and soon gave up kicking.
The majority of young unspoiled horses are willing students and with gentle handling become good gentle workers with very few problems. When something does arise and you make the commitment to train a certain animal you must follow through and not give up unless it is more dangerous than you feel comfortable with. Sometimes training methods have to be changed by individual thus going back to my friends “bag of tricks theory”. Sometimes you have to take a different angle on things.

[Plowboy]

Donn I commend you for trying to gather a curriculum for beginners. Good job with the slide show on getting Connie started. For me it would be hard to break things down into steps. For me it seems simple from the way I was taught by my great mentors. To write it down or say everything that should be said would be very complex and hard to explain. It all comes down to reading horses and that is a hard skill to learn on purpose. I learned from being around hundreds of different horses with different personalities both well trained and rank beginners. I learned from being there. To those that didn’t even know my name I was the “boy”. “Have the “Boy” help you get hitched”. “Have the Boy run and get you a new hame strap”. I was the quiet boy that listened when old men spoke and quietly squirreled away the information in my head to recall later. I guess I just can’t put it all into words myself. I’ve seen some wrecks and helped untangle them and remembered how they happened so I could avoid them. I’m not a professional trainer and never will be but I can get horses to work and they work well for us. I’m proud of each one of them individually and how they work together in multiple hitches. I help whoever I can but there’s no way I would be able to spell out every situation. I can feel or sense things that I know are right or wrong about a horse and the only way you can get that instinct is to spend years with a pair of lines in your hands and have the right mindset to learn from the horses as well as the mentors. The best advice I could give a beginner is to get good safe animals and spend lots of time driving them to learn their moods, Quirks and personalities. I have a mare I raised from birth that will be 13 next month. She appears alert sometimes and more than once while standing or getting hitched someone has warned me. “Watch that dappled mare she’s gonna fly”. Truthfully she probably wouldn’t move a muscle if someone threw firecrackers under her unless you asked her to. We know her so we’re not alarmed when her head comes up and her ears flick. With her it’s just a curiosity thing but for many other’s I would say look out also. Getting to know your animals well is the best thing you can do. What works for one may not work for the next so flexibility of methods is also necessary but not for expectations. If you make the commitment to train one for a certain task I’m bullheaded enough to see it through until it’s achieved even if I have to use different approaches.

[Plowboy]

My Dad is a fulltime dairy farmer and in the winter doesn’t get away more than a couple times a month with feeding, milking, repairs and chores. Sometimes in the dead of winter a trip to the feed store, hardware, grocery store, and barber shop is enough of an outing to break up the monotony. I live nearby and pitch in when I can. When I have time off we go on adventures to locate horsedrawn equipment, parts, the harness shop, visit our Amish friends, and some of our old mentors that don’t get out much in the winter. He enjoys all these things and is glad to get away for a few hours. Most of all he loves these days we spend training horses. I just saw him last night at milking and he still had a big grin on his face. I’m glad we get together with our draft friends even in the off season. It revitalizes the soul a little bit and excites you to find more jobs for your own horses. In other words playing is more fun when you have friends around than when you are by yourself. The events that we hold as a group also help excite others to keep on going, network to share info and look forward to the next gathering. I’m not going to defend any of my methods as I am always open to new info and techniques. Our horses are friendly, happy,and eager to please so thats enough for me. For a little while I thought I had commited some terrible act but most of you actually do the same things we do. Either we’re all wrong or there is some common agreement in the way most of us train and prepare our horses for work. I’m glad this thread is going still and hope that some of the beginners will get some usefull information from the dialogue here. In the meantime I’ll be dashing through the snow every chance I get having fun with friends and getting some horses trained in the process. I haven’t got the grin off my face yet either! TALLY HO!!

[Plowboy]

WOW!! All that from what I thought was an enjoyable afternoon with some capable folks. I had so much fun I might go back this weekend. Thanks to everyone that came to my defense. Our personal training agenda is much like Carl’s and by the time they are old enough we just hitch them up. They already know the program and have probably been to the field with their mother for the first year. They stand to be hitched and walk right off. I don’t even own a whip although I have had to use one in the past to speed up some slow colts.
The folks we are helping are currently feeding 50 head of Percherons and a few must go in the spring. If they are at least green broke to harness they will bring more than the $200 you would get for an unbroke 3yr old. I don’t have the time but I make time for friends and my Dad and I enjoy it as much as they enjoy having the help. By spring we may have some greenbroke teams that someone might be able to get some work done with as long as they know how to continue their training. I have nothing to apologize for or be ashamed of. There will always be dreamers, doers and wannabe’s. I’m a doer and have the greatest respect for anyone else thats out there doing or trying to find out how to do these things. Thanks guys some good info is coming out of this discussion. Keep on Keepin on.

[Plowboy]

Donn you’ve hit a nail on the head although your two catagories are often lumped into one. Many people are so far removed from this craft that when they choose it as a hobby or a lifestyle it all seems so complicated. I was fortunate to have a large support network of mentors as a kid. For many people this is difficult by region or by ability to make the right contacts. In some areas of the country there aren’t teamsters for hundreds of miles. In other parts there may be one a couple miles away that you aren’t aware of. I’m sure it would be frustrating to buy a super sharp well broke team, take them home and they won’t do for you what they did for the previous owner just because you don’t have the knowledge to get it out of them. This is the same reason that we won’t train any outside horses. People want them dead broke in 30 days and then when they lay the lines down and they smash up their new wagon it’s the trainers fault. Reading and understanding horses is learned by doing and no book or video can take the place of practical experience. It takes a good year to train a horse to most every situation and piece of equipment and someone could screw it all up in a few minutes.
All of us need to do our part to informally educate anyone with a strong interest in draft animals so they may have a bit of knowledge about them especially if they are planning to get some. 60 years ago everybody knew something about horses. Some knew they hated them and wanted a tractor others hated to see them go. But most people had some knowledge about horses and how to handle them. Now for some of us it’s a way of life but for others it’s a mystery that they want to solve and the majority of the public could care less about us backward folks.
Sights like this bring the interested folks together with various levels of experience that wasn’t possible a few years ago but this is a hard media to actually communicate well. Maybe through this method the beginners will find mentors nearby so they can become successfull teamsters.
Myself I’m always open to new information and learn new things every day. I’m not bound to any set curriculum for each horse. A mentor once told me “boy if your gonna train horses you’d better have a bag of tricks because each one that comes your way will be a little different than the last one”. That is why I invited manesandtails to give up her training secrets. It’s very possible she might have some bit of information that we can all benefit from. I expected to get some grief from that post anyway but we had fun and I thought some folks would enjoy reading about it. Although I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners.

[Plowboy]

Manesandtails maybe you’d like to talk us through your method it seems many of us would like to know your secrets. I think you misunderstood what we are doing. No matter how much groundwork you do someday sooner or later no matter how much you put it off a draft horse has to be driven to get trained. I’m not sure what you mean by force to comply. I think that has a broad definition. If it means teaching a horse while getting some work done then yes thats what we are doing. I’ve never had a 3 yr old trot up and say Ok I’m ready lets go skid some firewood or let’s go plow the garden. These are tasks that need to be done and if we want to do them with draft animals we have to teach them the job like any person or animal has to learn sklills to be usefull.
As far as effecting their minds this “UNREAL” trainer that you are referring to has generations of teamsters in his family tree. He also has one many hitch classes, obstacle courses and plowing matches. He is an amazing trainer and can take a pair of green colts and put them where many people can’t put an old broke team. Their minds are fine his horses are upheaded and smart and he trains and drives in a non invasive style of give and take that convinces the horses that it’s their idea to do what he wants.
Myself we only raise one or two at a time and mess with them constantly so training them is effortless. We have alot of fun driving these colts and they have had basic groundwork just not extensive Doc Hammil groundwork.

The way you make it sound we ran them in from the range herding them with bullwhips and six guns. Pen them up then rope them one at a time choke em down and geld them put a harness on then let them up and go hitch them to a stagecoach. This isn’t Rawhide. This is good people gettting together to do a big job successfully and as gently as possible and having a blast doing it. If you don’t like it then you are free to train your horse the way you want and I’ll help train my friends horses the way they want.
Disclaimer: No humans or animals were injured in the process of hitching these young willing Percherons.

[Plowboy]

Carl, Good thing you got that one out of the gene pool!

[Plowboy]

Thanks alot Erika. Jen I almost wish you hadn’t brought that up but thanks for the info. Randi I was in no shape to get involved in anything like that. I’ve had a notion to get a good ranch broke horse someday but for now working a full time job, running my business along with some farming I don’t have the time for a saddle horse. It used to be an adrenalin rush to ride a bucking horse and I probably wouldn’t have minded falling off of one. But it really sucks to get 1200#s of hate on top of you. I’m guessing that it wasn’t his first time over and probably the reason he was at the sale! Just a guess!

[Plowboy]

We almost always use them. Carl said it all. It just seems to work better and keeps everything in place and looks neater too!

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