Horses standing

[Ronnie Tucker]

this is way to deep for me.southern workstock must be easier brake.i will keep trying to follow along.

[Plowboy]

Don’t feel bad Ronnie. This is probably stuff we all do without thinking. It is hard to explain via the written word so that is probably why it is so long winded. I learned from old timers with a non invasive training style of give and take and after a few drives we have them doing most of what we want so we can get some work done. Some are more difficult to train than others!

[Carl Russell]

@Ronnie Tucker 40578 wrote:

this is way to deep for me.southern workstock must be easier brake.i will keep trying to follow along.

It really isn’t complicated….. I have watched you with your mules Ronnie. You lead with clarity, not complex shades of grey. You know what you expect, and you know how to get the mules to respond accordingly. I also learned from men who grew up doing this. They knew that to honor horses means to understand them as the animals they are. They are not complex intellectual beasts, and that is not a bad thing, it just is.

The complicated aspect comes from modern interpretation, thinking that once horses learn a task then they can accomplish it from then on without guidance. The teamsters art is active, momentary, and perpetual. It requires a lot of responsibility, humility, and awareness. It is not a casual endeavor, where once the horse is trained the teamster can relax and no longer needs to read the landscape and direct the enterprise. These are complex concepts that tend to be brought by modern interpretation.

What I am describing is simple and direct, but gets complicated to explain in the midst of modern assumptions.:eek:

Carl

[Donn Hewes]

I would say that the horses and mules are relatively simple. Not necessarily easy, as I have failed with a few; but as Carl say’s they are just horses. The best or worst is just reacting as a horse would in a certain situation. What I think can be tricky, and is more interesting to me is how we can teach the leadership skills needed to be a teamster to green teamsters. I would like folks I help to have the best chance at a safe and effective start with farming with horses. Training people is really what I am focusing on. This is why I think finding words to describe what we are doing is useful to me. As Dennis suggested learning from the older timers didn’t always include a lot of words. What they did was teach by example and as we know; horses respond very well with out much verbal input from us. The old timers talked to the rest of the world the same way they did to horses; say a few key things, usually quietly, and stand in such a way to convey the rest of the message.

For folks raised around agriculture and animals (or someone that is really determined or especially observant) this method can provide good results. Many motivated or interested young folks I meet need something more basic as a starting point. That is where I bring in the loose horse. To teach them their relationship with the animals. Folks may mistakenly think they understand the loose horse because they have been cleaning the barn or feeding them; but in reality they have been subtly moving around the animals without realizing it. Have them try to trim a horse while it is not tied up. This is not for the horse; horses don’t care if they are tied or not to get their feet trimmed. A beginning teamster can learn a ton by making a horse stand still while they trim it’s hind feet.

[Ronnie Tucker]

i do appreciate you fellows efforts to explain these things.i could never get it on paper.

[Carl Russell]

@Donn Hewes 40588 wrote:

…. horses and mules are relatively simple. Not necessarily easy, …… Training people is really what I am focusing on. …… The old timers talked to the rest of the world the same way they did to horses; say a few key things, usually quietly, and stand in such a way to convey the rest of the message.

…… Many motivated or interested young folks I meet need something more basic as a starting point. ……

These comments speak directly to the point I started making, to describe that while it may make sense to a person that Whoa is different than stand, it is more complicated than is necessary for a horse, and really is a human concept trying to be applied to a horse.

Horses are very intelligent, and capable, but they are not intellectually complex. That doesn’t make them EASY to work with, especially given the innate complexity of the human thought process.

As Donn says this is not a problem for the horse, but really a problem for us.

Ronnie Tucker wrote:

i do appreciate you fellows efforts to explain these things.i could never get it on paper.

I have tried to explain that my comments are based on my own rationale. I have also tried to describe “What I do with my horses”. While I may make some language slips which make it seem like I am lecturing, my approaches are a result of an intuitive process of working with my own horses. I have had no formal training, and carry no credentials, but over the years I have upgraded my knowledge with information from others in the field who do have more widely-recognized authority. I have found some insights from them, but in large degree found more of a validation for what I have learned to do on my own.

My goal is to try to explain what I do, and why I do it, not so much to get others to mimic me, but, I hope, to share some insights and a sense of validation for what you already do.

Carl

[Donn Hewes]

In thinking about Carl’s post in the member diaries, and being inside with a head cold; I thought I would write a little about how I approach teaching a horse to stand. First I need to be clear about what it is I want. (Of course after I wrote all this I realized there already was a great thread that covered most of it. I must really be sick!)

For the green untrained horse it is to stand still while I move around it. The important thing in this case is that I am focusing all my attention on the animal and keeping its attention on me by touching it, and watching for the first sign that it can’t stand much longer. This is when you ask it to move and it has stood still successfully for the first time. Standing like this is usually a pretty easy thing to achieve. You start by asking a horse to move around you. There is more to it of course but pretty soon they are happy to change places and stand still while you walk around them. I follow this by teaching a horse to brush, pick up its feet, trim their feet and be harnessed all while standing untied. For my purposes I fee this is preparing them for what will come next. So far all the standing has been accomplished by me focusing a huge amount of attention on them. What will make them move? How long can they stand for? When to bring on the next piece.

Once I start driving this horse it is time for the next level of learning to stand. This is where I introduce standing while I pay varying amounts of attention to the animal and they learn to stand for longer and longer periods on their own dime. Some folks suggest that they taught a horse to stand in basic training and it has stood anywhere, anytime, ever since. That has not been my experience. I find that I need to gradually build their ability to stand independently and my expectations of them over time to ensure success and safety. Initially I create situations where it only appears to the horse that I am not paying attention, but actually I still have complete control. Get off the cart and hang up the lines, but stand some where in front and to the side, so you can reach the horse’s head easily. Talk to some one for a minute while the horse waits. Or get off the cart and leave the lines in you hands with lots of slack, facing half away from the horse while talking to someone or fiddle with something, but also never taking your eye off of them. Gradually you can figure out what their limits are. Filling a manure spreader by hand while the horses face away from the barn is a relatively easy thing to teach. Start by being aware of where the lines are and stay close enough to reach them easily.

At this point it is good to learn to use your voice, usually a little tsk, tsk or something, to correct a horse that has moved it feet or tried to think about eating or rubbing. While I know I do it, I don’t like to repeat the word whoa, I have already given the command to stop. But once one of these green horses starts to walk away, you must be in a position to recover the lines. Saying whoa to a horse that has started to walk away with out the lines to reinforce the command, will often result in the horse speeding up.

Standing unaided is an incredibly useful tool and safety feature on the farm, but what is it really for? and what are the limits? I have met horses that never learned to stand well, and it usually was because no one ever asked them to. I have always considered these horses a little unsafe because even if you are in the habit of tying your horses for every thing you do; unintended situations will still require a horse to stand quietly while you work something out. The most important function of horses that stand well is standing for hitching and unhitching.

There are also many simple farm tasks that can be accomplished while horses stand. Loading a spreader, unloading a hay wagon. But these tasks could also be arraigned so that horses could be tied up. This is where the skill and knowledge of the teamster must come into play. I like to ere on the side of caution. I will fill a spreader by hand with pitch forks. Any of my drafts are capable of this task right now, but when I bring home a new animal I will be very careful to make sure they pass other tests before I use them in this way. I will not fill a spreader with a tractor with unrestrained horses, by myself. I always have some one to head them up while I dump bucket loads into the spreader. It would be too easy to hit the spreader with the bucket and make a horse or mule move. I would be in no position to stop them.

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