I have a horse who could use this. His initial training was not ideal and he came to us with a bit of a pony-like balk. We have been working with an HJ trainer for a while now and he is starting to show his potential for a nice 2’6" horse. Occasionally, he still gets “sticky” and balky with me though. He does have a fairly intense training schedule so I do my best to get him out of the jumping/training ring to keep him fresh. We do quite a bit of trail riding when we can and he always goes better once he gets that variety. My HJ trainer might laugh about this idea but it sounds like fun experiment.
Can I get away with working cattle in an English saddle ? LOL
Yes, I have worked cattle, other than roping, obviously, in my Stubben Rex.
Now, the time you maybe wish you had a more adequate saddle is if you have a really cowy horse that doesn’t carry the rider along, but is working focused only on the cattle.
Then you may interfere with the horse without more than the English saddle can give you, even fall off if the horse turns out from under you.
The more you practice working cattle, the easier it will be to stick with one, regardless of the kind of saddle.
Initially, for a regular horse, you will do fine in your regular saddle.
I doubt your horse will move like a trained cowhorse, but be more considerate of the rider on it’s back.
Following because this is basically my horse and I’m curious to read how other people have handled. Mine doesn’t get light in front/threaten to rear really but he definitely gets the nappy stuck feeling and will buck or kick out when forward is insisted upon. I’m six months in at this point and it HAS gotten significantly better. The suckbackedness still happens to a varying degree once or twice pretty much every ride but he’s far more willing to accept me saying ‘no, keep going please.’ I can’t even remember the last time it truly got bad with the bucking and everything. Cautiously optimistic in another six months it will be a thing of the past.
Teach him to collect then extend. If not up to that teach him to slow down. Praise. Go forward praise. 3 times on a circle. Always praise for slow before asking for forward. This can be done on the lunge and under saddle.
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You absolutely can work cattle in an English saddle.
At first (and generally), moving cattle around is very slow, precise work. Much of it will happen at the walk. You’ll need to bring your “jumper game” where you really think about how you use your eyes. Looking “hard” at one cow (and its eye or its hip) will telegraph to the your horse and to the cow where your horse will be going. Making your eyes “soft,” where you are scanning the whole herd is what you need before you choose a cow. You’ll ask your horse to turn on his haunches some. But none of this needs to be more athletic or quick than your horse can handle. And it’s kinder to the cattle to move them very slowly.
The neat thing about jumping (I’m thinking of a John French-good hunter rider now) is the way you change your ride from a “directing” ride aiming your attention toward the cow you want) to a “supporting” ride: less, hand, and offered forward and helping your horse with your eyes, body and leg to turn as needed to meet the cow where he will be before he gets there. In this state, the horse has locked his attention onto the cow the way he does with a fence and, as with jumping, your job is to give him that tactful, non-distracting ride that merely helps him complete the job he’s already engaged in doing. You already know how to give this ride since you can lope down to a fence when you see a distance and try to just not change anything. It’s really fun to be sitting on a horse who is into his job. And this is the horse/rider relationship you want to build.
Even before you think about moving a cow, you can have this nice feeling of your horse being locked on and curious and drawn forward when you face a cow (usually looking toward its hip), the cow decides to turn and walk away, and your horse follows her. That moment of the position of the two animals changes from stand-off to the cow turning away and the horse getting curious and brave enough to follow is great. That feels as good as having a horse see the distance you see and locking onto the fence that you know will just come up right without you having to do anything.
And for a horse like yours, why not do what he needs to do take out the balk rather than fitting in trail riding or cattle work or whatever as a sideline on his days off? I don’t mean to impugn your program or throw in a monkey wrench. But if the balk is a bit of “I donwanna… this is a grind,” take out the grind a bit and you might get just as far with the horse experiencing fewer unpleasant discussions. Oh, and I had a gelding like this who, one time, the pro had me jump out of the ring, mid course, jump a couple outside it and come back into the ring. Or you could keep cantering out the gate, take a lap around and come back in. Just spice it up a bit for the horse with some self pity about having to be in school.
With one of my boys some farmer brought his cattle dumped them next door and went back to where he lived. Every day they were on our land. I soon got sick of it.
Yes a 16. 3 hh tb. Yes a dressage rider in a dressage saddle.
No farmers don’t like you running beef off their cattle.
I started chasing their cattle on Andy. At a fast canter and gallop. Wahoooo!!
Our cattle knew we weren’t after them. They didn’t even get up but staid down chewing their cud.
Andy learned an eye for a beast. Their cattle learned if they came in here they would be terrorised. YEEHA!
With beef cattle you do not bring up one beast, you have to bring up the whole herd. You can’t bring up calves, they end up in the opposite direction!
That horse brought up a cow and calf and put it in the yards by himself. Yes I was on him in a dressage saddle. He was on a totally loose rein. He went walk canter that way to bring them back to the fence and walk canter that way to stop them going down the fenceline away from the yards.
EI hit Australia the next day and I stopped riding him
@mvp
you have perfectly captured the feeling of riding an engaged horse to a jump they’ve locked onto and want to jump. It’s such a fun feeling. All of this makes me want to work cattle now!!
I agree with this. The one at the barn is now a 5 year old. He was halter broke and then turned out in a field with buddies and a round bale until he was 3, and was purchased out of that field.
He was a jerk from the beginning during breaking/initial training. Every opportunity to flatten his ears and get a cheap shot in, he’d try. He’s a bastard on the ground (ear pinning, foot pulling, biting, threatening to kick, all even just for grooming or touching anywhere…), he’s a bastard under saddle riding fine for 20-30 mins (ears pulled, but no antics), then sucking back, refusing to move without bucking first, ears flat.
He is fine as long as you aren’t asking him to do anything. But… if he’s trying to walk off and you ask him to whoa, he’s grazing and you go to pull him up, you’ve got something he wants and ask him to give you a little space, he’s stopped and you ask him to move, you don’t go in the direction he wants to go, you don’t put the grain in the bin fast enough. ANYthing you ask him to do that isn’t in his agenda gets a snarky response of ear pinning, nostril tightening, tail flashing. He’s even an ass out with other horses, to the point that he’s lost group turnout privileges with nearly everyone but the stallion because he will.not.quit. pestering and it gets dangerous as the other horse is trying to escape.
His current owner is a beginner as far as training nuances, but a darn good rider who can push him through his stupidity without getting mad or rough with him. He’s shown a little improvement, as he’s beginning to understand the balking antics won’t get him anywhere. Maybe in a couple years he won’t be such a sour puss. He is extremely intelligent and I think that’s part of the issue.
@mvp he would probably benefit from moving cows around, honestly. It’s not so easy to find around here on a regular basis though.
Someone lent me her made cutter to sit on for a round of team penning. She said “Be careful: Once you feel what it’s like to sit on a horse who wants to do his job this bad and you are with him, you won’t want to go back to jumping.” It was a blast!
That short ride on a made cow horse and having learned to “hunt the fence with the horse” and then just enjoy the rest of the ride up to it, really helped me with my (hot and terrified) mare when she met cattle. At least I knew how to feel when she started to be drawn to a cow so that I could keep looking at the cow but “turn her loose” in my ride. That ride-- looking at the place you’ll go and automatically moving your body toward it, but using no other aids than your line of sight to regulate your horse feels fantastic to them, I think. IMO, you want to offer a worried horse this style of ride whenever you can.
I think the mistake people make with horses like this is that they just don’t really do anything differently than they would with any greenie. Most people just kind of throw them into full training with the hopes that they suck it up, and that doesn’t always work. You really do have to go slow and teach them to enjoy work. You have to be willing to try the “touchy feely crap” that gets written off constantly on COTH. If I have a horse like that I’ll take my time and make sure they’re enjoying our interactions. If you have a horse that’s pissy about being groomed and tacked up, why would it be any different when you go to get on and ride? It takes time to make sure that they’re “getting something out of your time”. That might mean letting him hand graze after each ride, or positive reinforcement work, or lots of trail rides, or whatever it takes to make sure that the horse knows that “work” can actually be rewarding. But like I said most people don’t have time for that so they don’t bother.
I think this is absolutely unfair to most riders/trainers. A horse who fundamentally does not respect or care to interact with people will not respond to this ‘touchy feely crap.’ A horse who has been left to his own devices for however long is a lot more likely to be one who does not respect or care to interact.
True, we are the smarter of the two and so can teach any horse to at least do our bidding best it may.
The question is, why do we want to keep insisting, if it is just not in some horse’s character/disposition to work with us?
We may feel accomplished by getting such horses to cooperate, but we won’t change who they are, not really interested in humans.
Or keep around a horse that beats on other horses, why insist other more amenable horses just put up with such in their lives?
We had one of our feral horses we started that was like that, didn’t like anything in his life, not humans or other horses.
Life itself was stressful for him.
We spent several months getting him so he would let us handle him and ride him.
A kind soul bought him and tried for two years to make him his trail horse.
Then he had to move and our riding center bought him back and, about to give up, tried him as a wagon horse bringing fresh cut alfalfa every morning from the fields, a treat all our horses got every mid morning.
That horse never did give up not liking anyone, but seemed to be very contented pulling that wagon to the fields and back to the riding center.
There is a place for everyone, human or horses, in this world.
The trick is to find what that is.
For some horses, we have to decide if trying to keep fighting their nature where they are difficult really serves a larger good, or we are only being hard headed to get our way or else.
For every one that we may make it work somehow, others just never get where everyone is happy.
All the time spent with those horses?
We could have been working with horses that love working with each other and all be much happier in the end.
Originally posted by EqukellyView Post
I think the mistake people make with horses like this is that they just don’t really do anything differently than they would with any greenie. Most people just kind of throw them into full training with the hopes that they suck it up, and that doesn’t always work. You really do have to go slow and teach them to enjoy work. You have to be willing to try the “touchy feely crap” that gets written off constantly on COTH. If I have a horse like that I’ll take my time and make sure they’re enjoying our interactions. If you have a horse that’s pissy about being groomed and tacked up, why would it be any different when you go to get on and ride? It takes time to make sure that they’re “getting something out of your time”. That might mean letting him hand graze after each ride, or positive reinforcement work, or lots of trail rides, or whatever it takes to make sure that the horse knows that “work” can actually be rewarding. But like I said most people don’t have time for that so they don’t bother.
True, we are the smarter of the two and so can teach any horse to at least do our bidding best it may.
The question is, why do we want to keep insisting, if it is just not in some horse’s character/disposition to work with us?
We may feel accomplished by getting such horses to cooperate, but we won’t change who they are, not really interested in humans.
Or keep around a horse that beats on other horses, why insist other more amenable horses just put up with such in their lives?
We had one of our feral horses we started that was like that, didn’t like anything in his life, not humans or other horses.
Life itself was stressful for him.
We spent several months getting him so he would let us handle him and ride him.
A kind soul bought him and tried for two years to make him his trail horse.
Then he had to move and our riding center bought him back and, about to give up, tried him as a wagon horse bringing fresh cut alfalfa every morning from the fields, a treat all our horses got every mid morning.
That horse never did give up not liking anyone, but seemed to be very contented pulling that wagon to the fields and back to the riding center.
There is a place for everyone, human or horses, in this world.
The trick is to find what that is.
For some horses, we have to decide if trying to keep fighting their nature where they are difficult really serves a larger good, or we are only being hard headed to get our way or else.
For every one that we may make it work somehow, others just never get where everyone is happy.
All the time spent with those horses?
We could have been working with horses that love working with each other and all be much happier in the end.
See I disagree. I think the idea that we’re entitled to our horses “rEsPeCt” just because we have two legs and a heartbeat isn’t right. When horses get left out and started late it’s not that they just don’t care to interact, it’s just that they haven’t figured out that interacting with us is a good thing yet. When they’re brought up correctly and handled on a daily basis they usually figure out that it’s in their best interest to cooperate and trust us. But mustangs or horses that weren’t handled? They don’t know that yet. So why would a horse that hasn’t been handled it’s whole life suddenly be expected to be a model citizen and do whatever we want? They shouldn’t be… not without establishing trust and respect on BOTH sides first.
I don’t have the time or inclination to get myself hurt by a horse who says “I don’t understand” in the form of dumping me on the ground, running me over, kicking me, or any of the million other ways that horses (who are much larger than us) can hurt us.
They must respect me because otherwise they can kill me. There is no other option in which I try to become sympathetic to the nature of something that is actively trying to do me in. I’m not a hostage negotiator.
Remember we are not talking here about horses who are just puzzled but generally tractable and willing to learn. We are talking about horses that flip you the middle hoof.
Sim was like that. It has taken time. A long time. He has been with us 10 years now.
I keep telling hubby he is not a pet. He cannot be treated like he treats the other horses,feeding carrots by hand, etc.
10 years later he is a lovely horse for me while free. Everyone else he needs at least a halter on.
He is now lovely to ride and forward for anyone and has been giving lunge lessons to a rider recently.
Yes I can cuddle and pet him and kiss him.
But he is not a pet! He reverts very quickly if you give him an inch he will take a mile. He is actually better trained on the ground than any of the others as I never give an inch.
Then don’t get on. At least not yet. I just don’t agree that you should “DEMAND” respect. You earn it… which takes time. Most people just have no interest so they “DEMAND” it which can make the horse resentful, especially the introverted type.
