Training Them Old School

[Plowboy]

We have some good friends that have a large herd of Percherons. Years ago we bought our first horses from their farm and they helped us train our first colts there. We caught the training bug while hanging out with these folks. Each winter when cabin or in our case farm bound fever set in we could always go help hitch some colts on the nicer days. For a few years we didn’t get up there much but three years ago they asked us to help them hitch a couple renegades that they picked up from nearby. We promptly agreed and now we go over there like clockwork to help start new horses driving every winter. Most of there horses are handled, lead well and are kept in a stall barn in the winter and worked around alot. Many of you do much more ground work and that is fine if you have the time but these folks work and farm so time is short given the volume of horses that they keep.
Yesterday our friend and his son had a group of horses harnessed when we got there. I partnered with the Son and my Dad with the Father. We hitched up the beginers with experienced horses and set out in seperate directions. When we got back our experienced horse was tired from having the winter off. Our fathers came back and we asked what he wanted us to use. He scratched his head. His best broke mares were all heavy with foal. He pointed to a three year old filly. I drove her 3 or 4 times and she’s alright. “Use her if you want. I’m not scared if you’re not”. We hitched her with a beginner and went out It’s uphill in every direction so we weren’t scared. We turned out of the barnyard and headed up the road. They walked off slowly and even. We got up the road a ways and the son says, “Look at them they’re broke already”. When we went back we hitched another beginner with our new “breaking” horse. This one didn’t turn well or even hardly at all so I guess I can see the merit in yielding the head as Donn Hewes brought up. We got through it and she was better when we got back. The four of us all had a great time and hitched 7 beginners yesterday. They all did pretty well for their first time. It may seem like a big undertaking but with the right help we make it into a fun day. In years past after only a few sessions even the most difficult students showed signs of improvement and became good solid members of the working horse community. What better way to pass a winter day than a little excitement ,some good students, good friends and a good lunch to top it off.

[J-L]

There’s nothing wrong with that in my book. I’m sure some will disagree. When I was young my brother, Dad, and I would take in horses to break for riding and harness. Mostly for the big sheep outfits around here. In those days most were still using horses to pull their sheepcamps and commissary wagons.
My Dad would have us tie up a leg and sack them out for a while, then slip the harness on and bridle them. That was on day one, hopefully. Next day we’d do the same, plus tie their head around either way for an hour each side. Next day was ground driving working on ‘Whoa’. If everything was going alright the following day was hooked to bobsled with our old Babe mare, or Duke. Sometimes it was a rodeo, but usually they came around quick. We’d use them feeding cows and hauling hay.
Almost all of these horses were out of a Perch stud and Thorobred mares. By the time they got them up to us they were usually from 5 to 7 years old and had been running on the BLM after they were broke to lead. Getting them sacked out and harnessed was a hair raising ordeal even with a foot tied up sometimes.
I remember one we called Gray Eagle. He was about 17 hands tall and weighed 1400 pounds. He was a good looking horse and after a week of this treatment he turn out well. Made a real good saddle horse for a big horse. I saw him hooked to a sheep camp about 6 or 7 years after he left the place, I had to stop and go see him and visited with the herder about him. He absolutely loved that big old horse.

[Carl Russell]

I have been mentored by teamsters who were more apt to work a horse into shape than to spend time with round pen exercises. My approach has become a bit of a hybrid. While I don’t use a round pen, I do work on yielding and obedience around the barn, and in the pasture, but I tend to just hitch’em up and get to work.

Harnessing is often by degrees, bit and bridle for a while, then collar bit an bridle, then harness and un-harness, exposure and measure the response, but all the while pushing the envelope. When it comes to training them to drive, I may take a couple of short walks up the woods road, then on the town road (cars, dogs, etc.), but generally I find the best challenges I have are related to the work I need to get done.

There are some tasks like harrowing, or dragging pastures that can be less intellectual and offer more open space, but if I want to get the garden plowed, or move some manure, that’s what we work on.

I expect my animals to stand to be harnessed, and hitched, un-hitched, or to wait while in harness, and often these are things that just improve with repetition.

I have been thinking a lot about this recently, not only because of Threads like this one, or Donn’s, but because the weather has been excellent for logging on a consistent basis for nearly six weeks, and I have been working my horses in the woods regularly. This team has been doing pretty well since I started working them together last spring, which is the first time I started working the nigh one at all. Over the last month I have seen marked and continual progress in each animal, and in their “team-ness”.

This is not to say that this level of competency couldn’t be achieved by other methods, or even possibly quicker, but with this recent team I can see clearly how I tend to take on this endeavor. This is also not to say that I haven’t taken a risk that to some may be unacceptable, and to them it should be.

I will not, and do not “fight” with a horse, but I find that in the working situation I respond better to the challenges that need to be addressed. In other words, I find that I can relate better to the animals needs,when I have them engaged in the work that I expect of them.

It is important to note though that I do have many years experience with that work, and with reading and relating to the working horse, so the risk that could turn into a disaster for some, is in fact the arena that I choose when evaluating and training. My “round pen” is 150 acres of rolling hills, woodlot, pasture, and gardens, with 365 different challenges and opportunities.

Carl

[near horse]

I have a question regarding “getting your horses to do what you want”. Specifically, what happens (what do you do or should I do) when they do something I don’t want. For example, decidng to walk off before I tell them to or changing gait without my request. I usually stop the whole thing (whoa), then restart. Is that enough?

It’s also difficult to know when they’re “jerking your chain” and when they’re not. I would really like my guys to stand while being harnessed but right now it’s tie them up and sometimes they even want to dance some. I persist w/o losing my cool and get them harnessed up but am I “allowing” misbehavior or is the fact that they don’t “win” enough reinforcement. Just trying to do the right thing – these are relatively young horses (about 5-6 yrs).

As an old farmer in our area told me after I snapped the axle in the grain truck roaring up a steep hill in the field “Nothing ever happens to ya if ya don’t do nothin'”. Makes you feel a little better about screwing up. And a bit more courageous.

[manesntails]

If you think you’re traiining a horse that way you are not. You are forcing the horse to comply.

That is the old way and I have seen a number of good horses whose minds were completely ruined by these old methods. Since you have no real driving trainer to compare them to you think this way is great!

NOT

If your friend doesn’t have the time to properly train them he should buy them already properly trained instead of breeding them and training them himself. Then you’d see the difference and the difference is HUGE.

[near horse]

Ouch! Manesntails what are you responding to?:confused:

[J-L]

I tried to post another reply, but it didn’t go through.
What I wanted to say was that we had limited time to get many of those horses broken and back to the sheep outfits. They were definitely roughed out and not finished teams. The remainder of their ‘training’ was on the job. What I do now is different and I take my time. More time sacking, more time ground driving, more time in the round pen.
To get a team finished really takes a lot of time. I don’t see them getting really broke in 30 days, just started good. And a good team is really made in a few seasons in my book. Whether it’s feeding cows all winter or in the hayfield or on a plow. It takes time
I disagree with the manesandtails. It all depends on how you go about it. If you’re a good enough hand and can read your horses, you won’t blow their minds. What I got out of plowboys post was that they train them on the job. It didn’t sound like any real ‘force’ to me. It sure can be done.

[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.

[Donn Hewes]

Hi all, I have been thinking a lot about my training methods. In coming to the methods I am using today to start a green horse I am thinking about there effectiveness on two groups that you might not expect. One is supposedly broke horses that don’t do exactly what we might wish in all situations and the other is green teamsters who are never quit sure how to get exactly what they want from the “broke” animals. I know this is an odd set of concerns for someone trying to start a perfectly good horse for their own use, but that is what I am doing.

Listen to the questions we get from Geoff, Highway, and others. I think even though their driving skills are still new, what folks lack to some extent is a sound relationship with the horses. The relationship I am talking about is one specifically suited to farm work. Training horses in some basic skills would insure that the horse and person recognize who is dominant, how we are dominant, and why we are dominant, before the driving starts. The teamster would learn what makes a horse move or stand; that when we are driving we are really leading. Physically we are behind the animals but mentally we must be in front. If my method of training can be applied to a “broke horse” by a green teamster I think it could achieve a lot of good. My goal is when someone wants to learn to drive and work with horses they should start to learn to train them at the same time. Not so they can train green horses but so they can establish a sound relationship with whatever horses they get.

We often hear the adage, every day you work with horses you are training them. My question is; who is training them? Some of my good friends are farming with horses and have told me they are to busy to learn to train horses, or inexperienced, better to let someone that knows what they are doing do the training. In the mean time they wonder why their horses do this, or that, or some other thing. I suggest they take the time to start learning some basic training skills. It will be time well spent.

Plowboy don’t get me wrong, I have seen some great horses started that way by caring teamsters that had the skill, experience, and confidence to know just what each colt was ready for. Sounds like fun.

I took some more pictures of Connie today, but the camera doesn’t connect to my computer. It will be a few days before I post them.

[Carl Russell]

I think Geoff’s question leads to some of the points Donn was just making.

I don’t use a round pen, but I am constantly reinforcing yielding and leadership in every aspect of handling my animals. When it comes to trying to get them to stand still for example, it is not the standing that I concentrate on, but the fact that I have established with them that I have expectations of them and their physical movement.

The root to an answer to the Geoff’s question comes from the approach Donn expressed. There are those of us who look to others for guidance, those of us who learn on our own, and those who work to help others learn. We are all part of a continuum.

The value of Dennis’ original post is that it clearly lays out a type of training method that has been dismissed to some degree because there are so few people working animals, passing down skills and techniques from generation to generation, and as we are part of a generation who “get educated”, programs that stress curriculum seem to have more value.

Manes is right that just working a horse is not sufficient, but it is erroneous to assume that this method doesn’t involve more complex relationships with the animals. There are many old-timers who never needed to put into words the “relationship” they have with their working horses, because they grew up doing it, and in their generation there was no need to explain it, just do it.

I am not an expert, nor an authority, but I don’t think anyone can get work done effectively with horses without a thorough yielding and leadership relationship. The fact is that there are many ways to get that. It is after all an art.

Carl

[Robert MoonShadow]

For what its worth; I think that perhaps ‘Manes’ did what I did… as a newbie, I read your postings, and I thought pretty much the same thing = that you hitched a pretty ‘raw’ horse up to an old timer & went at it… but having read your other postings {I’m referring to plowboy & J-L, here}, that didn’t seem consistant. So I reread the postings here, and I understood you better. I’d misunderstood what you’d said, or just read it in a different light & that made a lot of difference. If you look at the postings, they could be intrepreted either way. What had initially made me wonder if I was reading it right, was Carl’s comments about the “pre-work” he does (harnessing, leading them around, etc.) & I realized that you two just must not have mentioned that part. I’m not sure, but it seems that if someone was to take a horse that hadn’t the basics done, slapped a harness on it & hitched it & a trained horse together to a wagon, that things could get very interesting. More interesting than this newcomer would want to face. 😮

[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.

[Iron Rose]

The books,videos,and clinics have there place for teaching, and most are offered by qualified people. The trouble is that a lot people use these and think that they will make them trainers. It takes years of hard work and sometimes a few wrecks to develop a training program that works for you. There as many different training methods as there are trainers. Some are good and well some are not. I’ve learned something from most every trainer I’ve watched , the trick is to keep an open mind. If it works for you thats all that counts.

[manesntails]

I can tell you that when you train a horse for anything be it accepting a halter on it’s head and leading or accepting a harness and cart and driving you HAVE TO break the whole thing down into little steps, one building upon the other, in order to TEACH the animal what you want. Just as you would not go in a stall, put a halter on and expect a horse to then lead you have to get the animal accustomed to everything one tiny step at a time.

If you do not do this, as in hooking a horse with no driving experience up with another who is experienced, you are only FORCING the green one to comply. He has no choice but to be pulled along or mimic what his partner is doing. Horses do not have a brain large enough to understand what is going on. What they do those first few times is totally blank out emotionally and are not thinking about what is happening past surviving it.

I trained Standardbred babies for 20 years, we did no round penning. We get them used to wearing one piece of harness, the back pad and crupper, then add the bridle and bit them in the stall, turning their head one way just a tad and tieing it to the rein ring. 20 minutes each side daily and daily, as they accept and learn to comply to the bit pressure we tie the head a tiny bit more one side 20 min. then the other until the horse is accustomed to how the bit works. It takes 7-10 days.
Then we line drive them for a couple weeks, with a person on each side with a long line attached to their halter on each side for assisting in keeping the horse going along as we are directing with the bit. We teach them steering, their whoa, their walk on and their stand. Then, with two people along, one on each side on a long line, we hook them and teach them how to pull a cart’s weight alone at the walk before asking them to carry the cart and our weight at the walk. We get them used to turning both directions and when they are calm with all this we go on to adding driver’s weight and then driver’s weight at the trot.

The horse learns step-by-step each thing that is needed to become a driving horse.

I read the post as a Gyp way of “training” which shortcuts the horse to accomodate the owner. I have seen a number of Haflingers who did not want anything to do with people, all trained the hook ’em and make ’em way. They were worked half the day the first day because that work needed to be done without any caring for the fact that that was way too much work for the muscle tone that the animal had. Nobody cared that the animal was stiff and sore the next day when they AGAIN hooked him with the other and made him sore again.

I cannot stand to see ignorance and unthoughtfulness towards animals. To put the animal’s physical or emotional well-being second is not acceptable when it’s actually cheaper to buy one trained correctly than to train one yourself the old-style ignorant way. It takes proper training to make a good willing horse who wants to work for you. If all you are worried about is getting your daily chores done and you do not know how to properly train your horses you should buy them already properly trained instead of abusing them through ignorance and unthinking abuse.

ETA; Back in the 60’s when I was being taught horsemanship by my Great Uncle, a third generation horseman, there is one thing he told me to always remember. He said if I always remembered this I would not go far wrong in training a horse, that is; To always remember that a horse cannot think of more than one thing at a time. If you teach one thing at a time you will have a compliant horse when you are finished. If you try and teach more than one thing at a time you are asking for more than they are capable of and that is unfair to the horse.

[near horse]

Excuse me if I sound “pissy” but my frustration is showing:o

Listen to the questions we get from Geoff, Highway, and others. I think even though their driving skills are still new, what folks lack to some extent is a sound relationship with the horses. The relationship I am talking about is one specifically suited to farm work.

I appreciate your response and I can’t speak for other newer teamsters but for me THE underlying issue is the confidence that what I am doing is the right way to achieve the objective at hand – be it standing, dropping the head, yielding …. AND what to do when an undesirable behavior pops up during work. The answer often seems to be “that shouldn’t happen….” or “if he/she was properly trained in ground manners….” That’s all good and well but the question still remains “What now?”

In the mean time they wonder why their horses do this, or that, or some other thing. I suggest they take the time to start learning some basic training skills. It will be time well spent.

This is part of the problem – in trying to get some basic training information (what should I do when … happens), and I’m talking concrete answers, we often get nebulous vagueties that leave us at a loss for the next step to take.

Or there are so many conflicting and sometimes contradictory responses that you just …..aaargh.

To “cool my jets” I just read an article from http://www.kbrhorse.net/tra/mistake1.html
“PUTTING ERRORS INTO PERSPECTIVE”. I felt better:)

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.

Plowboy,this hits the nail on the head. AND, I’d like to add just because someone near you has drafts and works them doesn’t mean they are someone you should emulate. “There’s a lot of competition among the knuckleheads.”

Lastly, Manesntails – before you come flying into a post w/ guns blazing, next time try using the same understanding on humans that you utilize on horses. Otherwise, you’re just Gyp training us.:mad:

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