Working Blind mare single

[Carl Russell]

Here is a short clip of my blind mare working in my Barden cart set up with shafts. A few of you may remember a few years ago I discovered that she had lost her sight, and I was concerned about how long I would be able to do what I do with her. At the time I was unsure about how blind she actually was. At this time, based on how she performs I am pretty sure that she has been sightless for longer than I knew.

When I say blind, I mean she will walk into the side of the barn if I am not leading her….

http://youtu.be/b-X0_pI8BEU<a

href=”http://youtu.be/b-X0_pI8BEU&#8221; title=”Working single horse” target=”_blank”>

[Paulk]

That is great! A lot of people would have got rid of her when they found out she was blind. I know a guy that has a blind riding horse and says it’s the best riding horse he has. It relies solely on his commands and has the ultimate trust with him. He was an unruly horse that he was training and like to run off when you tried to catch him. He slipped on ice and ran into a post. It fractured his skull and he still has a big indention from it but after it heeled and he realized he was now blind he decided to continue his training and just changed how he done it. He claimed he never had trouble out of him again. He has been blind for over 15 years now. Paulk

[Carl Russell]

I had been dealing with challenging dynamic between the mare and her team mate for many years. I went to using Liverpool bits so that I could have different adjustments for each horse to deal with their differences.

Recently I got another mare that is sighted, and is bay, matching my gelding, so I started working the bays together during my last round of haying. I was very pleased with how the two began to accommodate each other very quickly, and it changed my opinion about that gelding…

Once that change of mind had settled in, I began to think about the blonde mare, thinking how responsive she had been as a younger horse, and thinking that perhaps the change in dynamic was a result of her becoming highly sensitive to my direction, because of lack of sight, to the point where she was just way more keyed in than the gelding. This resulted in him lagging, and being frustrated with her, and her having no reaction to him, not working with him in general.

I decided to test this theory by hitching the blind mare as a single, and found that in fact she is extremely soft-mouthed, and as you can see quite confident. I drive her with very little left for her to decide, and she follows my lead flawlessly. It is a pure joy to work this horse single. Pulls like hell. Stops dead. Stands like a statue.

In a team she is too individual. Not being able to see prevents her from adequate communication with the other horse. She is so tuned into my signals, and so confident that the other horse is always playing catch-up…

Carl

[grey]

She is the supposedly-nonexistent “I” in “TEAM”.

[CharlyBonifaz]

vid won’t work for me ;-(

[Carl Russell]

Sorry… i must have missed that…

[Donn Hewes]

I had a horse a few years ago that had some issues. I sold her for a variety of reasons, but one of the things she did was stop on a dime. She was really clued into the teamster, almost to a fault. When you said whoa, she stopped like a boat anchor had been dropped. It was very distracting to the other horses to have partner that could shake the whole rig just by stopping. She was a hard horse to work in a team. Unfortunately she wasn’t much easier to work single. Just a little crazy.

[Brad Johnson]

Carl-
Great to see you working with that mare – she is a super horse and you two look like you belong together! I hope that she continues to be useful to you and vice versa…
-Brad

[Rod44]

I have an Amish friend with a blind buggy horse. Drives it all over the community. When he goes someplace he just gets out of the buggy and lets it stand there untied, just like the work horses. He says not use tying him as he doesn’t know where to go.

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