I found someone local to me who can help teach me about the hackamore and how to use it and how to progress and the ins and outs of using it - lots of learning coming my way!
Oh, thanks, Adam…next time maybe I’ll read the whole post for comprehension!
Pocket, there are LOTS of ways to go about this bosal thing. I’m a beginner, here, having never had a REAL bridle horse or ridden in a bosal. I’ve ridden a real bridle horse, but…uh…I myself was maybe competent just beyond the ‘take a Christmas photo with everyone standing still’ stage. What I was good at was leaving my turn to rope a calf so that I could go let my rope down to the ground crew to set the rope so I could hold the front feet of the calf.
But in any case, your job is to find out how you, and Mac (or whatever horse you are riding), feel about what is going on. I found out for myself that Buck was a mentor that I wanted to follow, because of how my horse felt about the changes we made in our first clinic. A lot of stuff that Buck was saying seemed to be bass-ackwards from what I’d been taught by dressage types- like put your inside leg back, outside leg forward, through a turn. Don’t kick the horse to go backwards. It took a lot of time at Dr. Deb’s website/forum/articles in Eclectic Horseman to figure out what was going on, and that there was no ‘reconciling’ Dressage vs Vaquero when they’re done right. But watching Buck ride in person- the peace and partnership in his horse, the peace my own horse found, were profound.
I find that there are plenty of folks who can, and do, ride at ‘higher levels’ than do I, people that can really handle a rope and the cattle…that I don’t want help from, because I see braces, resistances, horses using their bodies wrong, that are not being addressed. That these braces and ickies happen, sure, but if someone doesn’t know to address them, getting help from them risks getting me, and my horse, in trouble.
You can always ride with a person, see how you and the horse feel about it, what works, and what doesn’t.
I have a good friend who is riding with a person who is brilliant with how the horse uses itself properly (having studied with Dr. Deb more than just a little). My friend’s horse has developed a much sounder and more comfortable way of going.
But my friend also has to field, and avoid, some RFD-TV trainer/salesman ‘approved apprentice trainer’ stuff, and sort of go around it. (Oh, yeah, uh huh. And can we go work on this other thing now for my lesson?) For my friend, getting the horse to turn loose, to maintain a feel, seems to sort of be a byproduct of a good ride rather than the Most Important Thing in the lesson in the first place.
Adam, thank you for your personal view, and your comprehensive reply.
I’m interested to hear about how you are experiencing the bosal.
Snaffles aren’t really particularly horse friendly by comparison,
Maybe the difference for me, is that I’m 1)riding a previously ruined ex-racehorse that can get athletically bronc-ish in a heartbeat and 2)I’m doing for-real cattle work, like we need to get THAT cow in now and get her AI bred. We have to get it done even if it gets ugly. I need the bite of a snaffle bit, the bluff of the bosal isn’t going to shut him down in a bucking fit or reinforce that he is NOT to blow past my hand when we need to stop.
Even so, my horse was so confirmed in the C2/C3 flexion from being draw-reined and ridden with a big brace, that I pretty much didn’t bother with trying to bridle him up for two years. He had to learn to NOT lean on the bit, and it took a while.
Did you have someone help you with how to get started in the bosal? What types of exercises did you start with…same types of things as a snaffle, or something different?
My guy was trained by Ray Hunt. He knows Buck, and will go to him for help, but they didn’t know each other when they were both learning from Ray.
The one thing that Buck does teach, to use an opening rein, I remember him being adamant about that being how you have to use the bosal to get the horse to understand what your rein MEANS.
I tried riding in my bosal last summer, and was not out of control or anything, but lateral flexion, and thus vertical flexion, didn’t work. My horse’s trot ended up really crappy, so I tabled that for a while.
Trying again this summer, I could pick up an opening rein, and my horse’s nose, ribcage, inside hind leg, whole intention, followed. It felt MUCH better. Once I get my horse good with holding a soft feel in lateral work (that which I found sorely lacking at the last clinic), I’ll go back to the bosal as long as I’m not doing fast cattle work.
