[Wes Gustafson]

Carl, you’ve missed the point that I’m making. Bear with me for a bit.

My point is that trust is a two-way street. As we know, by consistency and good training, the horse, or team, learns to trust the teamster as their leader and protector. Likewise, as the teamster grows accustomed to his team, which includes learning about their unique characteristics and personality, the teamster learns to trust his team. All this is the same whether you utilize blinders or don’t utilize blinders. By staying calm through stressful and explosive situations, the teamster maintains control of his team, and helps to prevent an escalation of anxiety; once again the use of blinders is not the issue.

My point is that allowing the horse to have more visual freedom, by means of not using blinders, is a decision on the teamster’s part to entrust his team with the freedom to respond to stimuli that are beyond the control of the teamster to correct in a timely manner.

I gave specific examples, which you seemed to have dismissed as being unimportant. For example, when you said:

I have no problem with the dog acting like this. It was kind of amusing. She was basically good- natured, and was having fun. I find it a good exercise for the horses to have this kind of distraction and stimulus. My biggest problem was Kevin yelling at his dog with a loud and domineering tone. This made the horse more nervous than the dog.

Oh. I see. A harmless, good-natured dog was just having a little fun. Got it. In your way of thinking, all external stimuli is under your control, and never cause serious harm to you, your team or any bystanders, because you are quiet, calm and in control. Only uninformed humans, like Kevin, who don’t share your calmness and control, cause problems. Unfortunately, we can’t always have a controlled environment wherein our horses are working.

Let’s say a teamster is reading this who happens to live in northern B.C. Let’s replace the good-natured, harmless dog with a 250 lb. northern wolf, soundlessly approaching the team’s hind legs on powdered snow. Hmmm. The teamster is off to one side of a bobsled, loading firewood onto the sleigh. Because he is on the other side of the sled, he doesn’t happen to see the wolf approaching. I’m sure that the wolf is basically good-natured, and just having a little fun with the horse. Hamstringing is such fun. During this fun time, the teamster, in a calm and cool voice, is instructing the horse to stay calm.
The same team without blinders at least has the option to defend itself until the teamster can quickly attempt to gain control of the situation in whatever way he can, with calmness and steadiness. Such was the case with John’s team. That dog was not just having fun with John’s horses. It was a malicious attack.

Let’s take another example:

Brush-hogging this fall with my DR tow-behind mower, a six- inch piece of wood shot up and bounced off my mare’s rear. She never saw it coming because of the blinders. She jumped, and high-stepped for about 20 feet. When I told her to take it easy, she calmed right down into working walk.

Okay, fair enough. She only high-stepped for about 20 feet before calming down after you told her to take it easy.

Let’s modify your experience just a bit. Your team is in the identical situation, but for some reason, your mare’s blinders weren’t on that day. As the six-inch piece of wood gets shot up, the mare sees the piece of wood just the tiniest fraction of a second before it hits her in the rear. The input to the horse’s brain from its eye-gate is assimilated way before you as the teamster can exert any calming influence. The result: maybe 10 high-steps before you get her calmed down, and possibly the difference between a tragedy and just another bit of excitement for that day.

In both cases, a horse allowed to have more visual information at the earliest instant, can provide for a safer result for you, your team and those around you.

I think that you are assuming that the idea of not using blinders is a ‘fix’ for a lack of good, basic training for a horse. It’s not. But it is a way to extend more trust towards your horse, which depends upon you for leadership and help.

Hopefully, conversations like this are always pointed towards learning more about the fine art of using horses in harness, not about who is right and who is wrong. Sometimes it’s good to keep pursuing the idea, because no matter how we end up deciding how we will train and use our horses, and what kind of harness we choose to employ, exploring different ways of doing so expand our knowledge of how our horses think and partner with us.

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

The situation that prompted my post was one where a dog was behind the horse and began to attack the horse’s hind leg. In that situation, the horse is ‘blind’ to the whereabouts of the dog’s teeth during the attack. Using his ears, the horse could make a guess as to where the dog might be before it actually bites, but it would be just a guess. In your viewpoint, the horse must stand in a disciplined manner while the dog attacks its foot. In my viewpoint, the horse without blinders in the same situation, could monitor the dog during the same attack, and make a decision when to apply his hoof to the dog’s face with a bit of force if things got out of hand, which they did in the case we’re talking about. Remind yourself that there were 20 people in the wagon who were trusting the teamster to work it out. Thus, I say we have a safer horse, not because it had more training, or better training, but because the teamster gave the horse the latitude to use its eyes for self-protection. Or you could say that the teamster trusted the horse to allow for self-defense.

Here are some more examples that come to mind:

1. Let’s say that a team is being driven, with blinders, on some type of wagon at a teamster’s get together, or even a parade. This team is very well trained and has a responsible, thoughtful and experienced driver, and have developed a good trust in the teamster through consistency and good handling Let’s also say that both horses that make up this team have always been driven with blinders. All is well until a leather piece on a bridle breaks, and the horse shucks the bridle. Having never actually seen the wagon following them, step for step, the horse moves away from this strange thing a little faster, and the wagon picks up speed in turn. Now the horse has to deal with two unknowns at the same time, and process them in its brain. My contention is that the horse trained without blinders would have already dealt with the scary experience of having a wagon chase after it.
2. Let’s say that you are logging in the woods and you are backing your team up to a log. One of your horses steps on a 3 to 4 foot loose branch or stick laying flat on the ground. The stick is stepped on in such a way that it pokes the horse in the belly. In the horses’ mind, what is it? Was it a bobcat, ready to tear out it’s belly, or a stick? Without blinders, the horse already had it figured out, and dismissed it.
3. Let’s say that you are driving your team down a public county road, and cars and trucks are coming up from behind you at various speeds and loudness levels. A truckful of young teenage boys drives by, and one of them tosses some projectile out at your team as they come from behind. Before the projectile ever hits the ground, the team without blinders is already aware that something is about to hit, and is prepared for something.

My understanding, having talked with a number of other teamsters, is that blinders were used primarily as a training tool to allow horses in harness to become accustomed to having an implement following them around. It probably does take longer, in the beginning, to train a horse to pull an implement without blinders, but I think that that is a problem that is easily overcome in a round pen or similar enclosed area. Some horses might not ever accept being driven without blinders, but maybe those aren’t the horses that we should use anyway.

Hopefully, this type of forum would be one that promotes a give and take on different viewpoints and ideas.

Carl, when you said: “I’m done”, does that mean that the discussion is over?

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

Big John,

Here’s a perfect example of why I took the blinders off of my horses bridles. It’s a testament to the amazing amount of trust that your horse has in you to come back from that dog attack and still trust that you are watching out for them.
If your team had been in that same situation, but without blinders, your horse would have been able to anticipate that stupid dog’s attack before it happened, and launched the dog into the next county. As it was, your horse was ‘blind’ to the dog’s approach, and had no chance to react in time.

A horse, or team, trained to work without blinders, is a far safer horse, and you are doing your horses a favor by giving them every advantage to respond to the unknown occurrence.

Some years back, I was driving my team down our county road, and a yellow lab came racing out from the neighbor’s house, barking it’s head off. The dog got between my team (under the tongue) and proceeded to snap and try to bite the horses’ legs. The horses (without blinders) were monitoring the situation and continued walking at the same pace down the road without a faltering step. Apparently, the dog’s teeth got a little too close to the horses’ feet, because I heard a yelp, and the dog took off.

The dog’s owner’s had come out from the house and were yelling out their apologies. I waved to them and we kept going down the road. The funny thing was, the horses never changed their stride or even shied to one side during the whole time. I attribute that completely to my team, who, without those stupid blinders cutting off 75% of their vision, had been monitoring the dog attack the whole time.

Blinders are just a tradition here in the U.S. Most of the European countries use their working horses without blinders, and seem to do just fine.

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

This is a great discussion. It’s easy to just ‘listen’ sometimes to the discussion without jumping in. So I guess it’s jumping in time.
I’ve got a bunch of ideas for a horse logging ‘newsletter’, whether it’s a hard copy or online. My preference has always been for the furthering of skills, ideas, and especially focusing on the details of horse logging that can make all the difference in our enjoyment and success in logging with our horses.

My vote is for a hard copy newsletter. Something that you can hold in your hand, turn actual pages, look at photographs without waiting for a computer to load an image, read while your waiting, read while your in the bathroom (probably the best place).

My vote is for non-incorporation. When you incorporate, the state owns the corporation legally. Ouch. Let’s not willingly put ourselves in that noose.

The more detail that can be woven into the newsletter about logging with our horses, the better. For example: How did I get my team trained to forestry work? What kind of horse do I look for when considering a logging horse? What ways have I found work best to get logs from the logging site to their final destination? How can I add value to the logs that I pull out of the woods, so that I can sell a finished product, and make enough money to live on?
Glenn French always featured a ‘tip’ in the NAHMLA newsletter, that had some great, detailed ideas that really work. For example, one newsletter featured the bullhook. I’ve made a couple of them over the years, and don’t think that I have ever logged without a bullhook since using one.
Gregg Caudell’s walking beam log arch. Jim Bower’s multi-wheeled log forwarder. These and many other plans and ideas get lost, forgotten or not known at all to some folks. hard copy newletters can be compiled in a folder or binder for easy reference.

On to another, sort-of related idea:

At the 1994 Small Farmer’s Journal spring auction in Redmond, Oregon, horse logging was featured in a big way. Glenn French and NAHMLA had a booth, Gregg Caudell and the International Horselogger’s Newsletter had a booth next to Glenn. Horseloggers brought teams, log arches, logs, chain saws and peaveys. There was an afternoon logging demo with various styles of arches pulling logs around. It was great. There was a NAHMLA meeting one of the nights where business was discussed and presentations were made.
At the latest (2009) SFJ auction, Greg Lange and I talked about having another Horseloggers Get-Together as part of, or concurrent with, next year’s SFJ auction. It would be a great time for those of us who go to the auction anyway, to have something tangible to look forward to that would feature constructive, detailed ideas and skills to share with each other.
It could even become a regular yearly event. All the information, along with pictures of the event could be compiled and become the content for a newsletter. Those of you on the east coast probably couldn’t make it, but you could read about it in a newsletter.

One idea for the newsletter is that maybe it should be event-driven, rather than monthly or quarterly. In other words, if a horselogging event takes place, the event could be photographed and written about, then compiled into a newsletter and sent out to those who want it. It would be possible to have the newsletter basically completed by the time the event is over.

If a horselogger wants to photograph and describe a logging job that he is involved in, that job, or series of jobs could become a newsletter.

Doing it that way would take the burden off of one or two guys spending all their time putting a newsletter together.

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

Hi Jason,

Greg and I have already worked about 4 or 5 horse logging jobs together. His new team is doing really well: very quiet and steady workers. I usually talk to him on the phone, so I’m not sure of his e-mail address.

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

This has been an interesting topic to read and follow along. My horses are all worked in open bridles. Since they are worked in the woods full-time, I want my team to have as much visual awareness of there surroundings as possible. When I’m hooking up a log behind them, they can see where I am, or a helper is: no surprises. If they step on a stick or branch that snaps up and pokes them in the belly, they can see right away that it’s not a mountain lion, or who knows what, about to tear out there belly, just a stick. Turning around the team in the woods, especially on narrow skid trails, I think that the horses have a better chance of avoiding getting poked in the eye by branches or staubs, since they can see what’s coming before it hits them.

It might be that blinders are more a product of tradition and cultural practices that have been handed down: In some European countries, it’s customary to use blinders, in others it’s not; but the horses all seem to adapt to whatever gear that we throw on them.

I think that allowing our horses to see their surroundings gives them an advantage when the unknown happens. On one thinning job I did some time ago, there was a herd of about 30 elk that regularly bedded down on the owners pasture every night. Since I was keeping my team on-site in the owner’s corral that was adjacent to the pasture, that first evening was exciting for my team. The owners showed me the digital picture of my team staring at the herd that first evening. Tails straight up in the air, ears perked, noses flared. The subsequent days as we worked in the woods, I’m sure that my team had in the back of their minds that the elk were out there somewhere in the woods… but what else? There was also a neighboring property that had horse trails that ran through the woods where we were working. As we worked, then, any crashing sounds in the woods could be other horses, elk, mountain lions, deer, etc. Without blinders, my team could instantly determine what the threat level was.

Just some added thoughts to the topic.

Wes

[Wes Gustafson]

Steve,

There are a few of us here in northwestern Washington that are logging full time with horses. Let me know if you need some help locating horses, harness, logging equipment, etc. There are some local guys that can fabricate some excellent horse-drawn logging equipment.

There are a few of us over here on the western side of the Cascades that join forces, as we are able, and work together on thinning jobs using our teams. It almost always seems to be more enjoyable and beneficial (and safer) when we work together on a job, and we usually trade ideas and tips that really help out.

In my case, I prefer to log smaller, privately-owned timber stands, with an eye towards using the logs myself, since I have a sawmill, kilns and planer. The sawmill could keep me busy full-time, but I would rather log with the horses, so ideally, I try to log enough to keep the log deck full for the sawmill. With the economy faltering now, and with the big mills slowing down or shutting down, a horselogger with a sawmill can fill an important niche in the local economy for those wanting rough-sawn lumber for barns, outbuildings, fencing, homes, etc. We do sell alder and cedar to some of the local mills from time to time. The other timber species around here have tanked for prices.

Wes

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