If you’re interested in learning more about Monte Foreman (and balanced ride saddles), here’s an episode of “The Horse Show” about him: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ujui1S0Ui4
Monte Foreman was awesome! I’ve done several clinics with Pat Wyse (a student of his) and have loved them and learned so much.
I was lucky to ride some clinics with Monte and lessoned with his son, Gary Foreman for working cowhorse and reining out at their ranch, here in Colo. Monte was definately ahead of his time. While the type of low, in the ground, balanced reining stop they trained for was dismissed back then, in the era of skating reining stops, it is now what wins.
I showed up at my first Monte Foreman clinic, out in Calabassas, Calif, somewhere about 1970-2, riding a ~50 lb western show saddle and using a modified spade bit. Boy, did he have fun with me, but I could do whatever he asked in the clinic. He let me try one of his saddles, and I liked it right away, not to mention it was half the weight to swing up on a horse.
Thanks for posting that.
So… is the guy a legend we should care about now, or a comparative legend in his time when “Cowboys said western horses didn’t have (canter) leads.” WTF? What kind of dark ages were those.
Still, I like Foreman’s open-mindedness to any and all disciplines. Johanna Fallis explains the effect on ranch-based cowboys well. And there was Jimmy Williams representin’ for English folks. People always think I’m weird because of my mixture of western and english. But it does get the job done for a lot of horses.
